 God's beauty is all around us and my goal as an artist is to capture and interpret that beauty on canvas and to take you, the viewer, along with me on this painting journey. Hello and welcome to Painting Journeys. My name is Kitty Lynn Klisch and we're going to take a painting journey today. We're still in Ireland and so I'm going to take you to a delightful cottage and have you meet through my painting Two Brothers. First of all I want to talk about our last episode. We were in Athlone, Ireland, along the Shannon River and if you remember this is what it looked like, the photograph of the painting that I was going to work from, the photograph of the place. It was just a photograph, needed some artistic license added to it. And so then when we closed that show then you could see how it was. It was laid in pretty well but it was still kind of rough in a few areas. And so I took it back to my studio and my home studio and there I put on some finishing touches. I really didn't have to do too much to it. I did add quite a bit of color to the water. I wanted that water, I wanted you to have the feeling of that water as it was sparkling all these different shades and the light from the bridge was reflecting into the water and the sky of course made the water appear much bluer than it actually was. And the swans, the swans they were delightful. They were right there coming right up to the edge, right along the walkway here and begging for breadcrumbs and things like that that we threw out to them. So it was really a marvelous, marvelous day painting along the Shannon River. So that was the completion of our last episode but now today I'm really excited because I want to tell you about Tommy Conlon. Tommy Conlon and his brother Patty are two gentlemen farmers and they live a few miles outside of Moat, Ireland and they have lived in this cottage that you see in the photograph here for three generations Tommy and his brother Patty were born in this cottage and they've never left it, they've never married, they're bachelor farmers and they're also storytellers. Well it doesn't show in the photograph but they have the most enchanting red barn and garden and so I was invited along with a friend there to paint one day and I was busily painting and painting and painting and every once in a while Tommy would come out and he'd stand in the doorway like this and he'd kind of like look to see like well what what are you doing is it okay for me to come and see you know very very sweet. The Irish Brogue was so thick I could hardly understand it but they were what two such lovely gentlemen and the stories they told me but anyway we only have an hour so I better start painting I want to get this all blocked in for you so that you can see it. I just have the drawing on here and as you can see now here comes the lesson part um as you can see the it's a thatched roof cottage and because I was taking a photograph the angle of perspective is very extreme and that's what the camera does it distorts reality and so knowing that I have adjusted this my drawing so that it would look like it actually looked when I was standing there looking at Tommy the angles were not so extreme you know they were a little straighter there's just not that much room for it to get that narrow that quickly so I straightened out the angles a little bit and I have Tommy standing here and he's kind of like looking you know like what are you doing when are you going to be done so anyway without further ado here I'm going to get busy first thing that what I do what I like to do is I like to draw in charcoal and then I like to uh fix my drawing with yellow ochre acrylic and then after that's dry then I can wipe that off now that acrylic is permanently on there and if you'll notice I never work with a with a an untone canvas I hate to work on a pure bare white canvas so I like to work you know with a little background on there so already kind of messed up so first thing I'm going to do I think is I'm going to lay in some of the dark that I see behind Tommy so that that will give me here's Michael I wear my darkest dark is going to be and my lightest light so I'm going to make a nice dark using a little bit of my Payne's gray and a little bit of my alizarin crimson whoops oh boy I didn't put the alizarin crimson out hmm that's not like me that's one of my favorite colors well we'll just improvise and use something else a little green into that to warm it up a little bit it's pretty dark back there you can barely see anything I'm already I'm just I'm just using the a regular palleted it's rather limited I don't have a lot of colors on it I prefer just to sort of keep it simple I like a I like a warm yellow and a cool yellow and my grade yellows and I like a warm green and a cool green and a warm blue a warm blue here and a cooler blue and this is just a cool red and this is some violet and that's my Payne's gray the one that I don't have on here is my favorite color of all and that's alizarin crimson some artists say that alizarin crimson is what they call a fugitive color that it will disappear you know in years to come I've never I have paintings that are 40 years old and my alizarin crimson hasn't disappeared yet so I guess I'm pretty safe okay now then we'll just kind of get this in here now as I was telling you today is not about giving you a finished product a finished painting it's this is a journey as I go across the canvas here trying to get the the darks where I want the darks the lights where I want the lights and the half tones where I want the half tones it's it's it's really important because without this dark back here I have no idea of how light to make my lights and as they say without the dark there is no light so there we go around Tommy's little hand there there we go he's such a sweet little guy he has a glass eye and I don't know I'm not sure what happened but why he would have that but it's rather noticeable when you're talking to him and you you have a little bit of a trouble trouble or I did anyway I'm ashamed to confess I had a little trouble not looking at the right eye you know the one that wasn't glass but oh well we're all human I'm back in there as a table and I'm going to tell you why that table's there in a little while as soon as I get this laid in a little bit better you're going to get a kick out of this all right so now then maybe there is a I think there's the hint of a chair back in here I just put a little bit of a chair now then these things are just little little things that are just kind of showing up in the you know you probably can hardly see them but I want I want to suggest that there are things going on back in here the inside of their cottage was amazing because it was filled with three generations worth of of stuff right back over here where the back of the cottage is is actually where Tommy and Patty were born they never left this place and when their mother was alive you know they took care of her and she had all this lovely China and lace curtains in the window and it's all still there just like just like it was it's all still there the beautiful lace curtains and in the windows I'm going to I'm going to tell you about that a little bit later here I want to just get this this window in here okay you know this is this is such a joy to be able to share this these journeys with you this this was really a special one the whole trip to Ireland was just marvelous but when these two gentlemen you know invited me to their farm to paint one day it was so special it was you could you know really tell that they weren't used to having um too much company and um the wood they don't burn wood over there in Ireland they burn peat and so they had an old-fashioned it really looked like a um a wooden stove or an or like a electric well it looked more like an electric stove because it was white but it burned peat and that's what they cooked on and this peat inside when they were sitting there and talking to me this peat fire was just burning away coming out of the out of the opening you know where the burner would be on the stove well here's this big fire coming out of there and it's not maybe a foot away from from where Tommy's head is sitting and he's as he's sitting in his chair and so we had the the we had the the the stove and the fire and then there was a chair and another chair with both both fellows sat there and they as they told me their stories and everything but it was I couldn't believe the peat that uh peat if you don't know what it is as far as I understand it it's something that is thousands of years old is vegetation that is grown over and I guess decayed and then layers and layers of it have decayed through the centuries and it hardens and then they actually have peat fields where they harvest it and so that's what they that's what they were doing they they harvest the the peat and that's what everybody uses in Ireland to for their heat and for their cooking so it's and it looks like a oh you know what a presto log looks like one of those round pressed wood things that you put in your fireplace kind of looks it has the the look of a presto log only in shape more like in a brick because as they cut them they cut them into bricks so and they burn like crazy they burn really good all ready and then this back here's got a little more brown to it and I'm just kind of going around this and getting the the um this is where the door jam is here and then this is a little lighter here so anyway when it's around lunchtime I guess and I'm out there painting away and pretty soon Tommy comes to the door way here and he says it's lunchtime come and eat lunch well I'll tell you two bachelors um and I don't know I was just you know like I was wasn't sure what they would fix what they what he had fixed and I felt that it was a great imposition to go and eat his food anyway I mean believe me they're not rich they're quite poor and I felt it was a great imposition for me to go in there and eat their food and that he'd even made this lunch for me was just amazing but I went in and to my absolute surprise here was the table all decked out in uh with a nice tablecloth and beautiful china with a rose pattern on it and the table was set perfectly just as if I was like a queen or something and he had made this marvelous salad all fresh I mean the the the salad was so fresh it was like he had just picked it but it wasn't the right time of the year for him to have been able to go into his garden to pick these fresh vegetables tomatoes and lettuce and and everything that he had in this salad but it but it was just so yummy and he'd made this really nice sandwich and everything and and then he's running back and forth from this peat stove with the teapot um you know making uh bringing me tea and things like that and I said well well please sit down and join me you know and he says oh no miss oh no miss this is for you um I don't know it was just it was so special and I I I've got this picture here of of uh the table and the lace curtains and Tommy is bending over I think he was putting butter on the table anyway I snapped this picture of him I was just so flabbergasted at what he had done you know this beautiful luncheon and the stories that they that they told um the two the two brothers we sat there after lunch with tea and they had a they had a border collie dog a black dog and that dog just adored them dog was always right there he sort of seemed to like patty better better than Tommy but he was right there and and he um the two of them were telling me what it was like in the olden days the olden days for them you know I guess it was quite a hard life because they didn't have modern machinery to to farm with so they had to do things the hard way and as a matter of fact their house still doesn't have indoor plumbing um there's a cute little outhouse in the back that is that has a bright yellow door they're really colorful okay very colorful their outhouse has a bright yellow door and the barn is a brilliant red I we couldn't get any redder I couldn't make a red that red on my palate um they like color that's it that's good in color and everything except for their dress they're they they dress pretty pretty uh calmly or however you want to say it now we see this here as something that is very very white okay I don't want to make it that white that is so stark and cold as I travel across this canvas I want to give you the view or something that is more harmonious that isn't jolting that doesn't make you want to go brr that looks like snow so um I'm not going to make that so white I'm going to warm it up a little bit but right now I think I'll lay in the uh the straw on that straw roof so I'm going to put a darker um color underneath and I'm just going to kind of now you have to bear with me here because I'm just going to scribble this in in the direction that I see it go because remember today is all about just getting the canvas covered it's not about detail in an hour's time we don't have enough time to do the detail so I'm putting the undercoating of what the straw is going to look like and hopefully I'll be able to get back to that to make some straw on there and show you what that looks like but if I don't then you'll you'll know to tune in to the next show and um I need a bigger brush kitty I always didn't have a tendency to work with this brush that's too small I need to get in here and get this going there we go I don't know if you've been to I learned or not but you can just see so many different shades of green it is so beautiful the whole country is just gorgeous you drive along these little country roads and you see these little places like Tommy and Patty's house here you know these little cottages stone cottages or stucco whatever it was and they're all the yards are all surrounded with with stones that they pick from the fields to make the stone fences even the cattle and the sheep are kept in their in their pasture by stone fences isn't that just unbelievable you know just a stone fence keeps them keeps them in place we're here we have to use electric fences and all kinds of things I don't know though maybe here we're using electric fences to keep people out instead of the cattle and who knows they were telling me that places like theirs are being taken over and new houses are being built in their stead and you know that's kind of it's kind of like when we tear down a place an old farm building or something like that we tear it down and we put up a shopping mall or a condo or something like that well that's kind of what's happening in Ireland too of which is really a sad thing and when I was there Ireland was undergoing a revolution a technological revolution in that they were really a very affluent country doing very very well with technology you know the internet and all these things that people have to play with now and so it they were they were gaining wealth people had wealth that had never had wealth before and so you drive down through the countryside or on the long the streets and there would be people that would perhaps would be next to Tommy and Patti's place and they'd have this big mansion and I guess you see the same thing here you know but it just looks so out of place you know I just I don't know it'd be kind of nice if I think if all the mansions in the world could be in one district and all the people that wanted to live a more simple life could all just be in another area but I guess they would call that segregation there we go that's another thought to think about so anyway trying to mix up the nice color for this place I'll probably add a little bit of light to it I don't want it to be like you know not white because it was white but for right now I think I'm just going to put some of this on it oh that doesn't look warm enough kitty let's get some warmth in there oh if you could see the mess I'm making on this palette oh my gosh if I get out of this one okay I'll be really making a miracle it would be a miracle here but maybe it'll work maybe it'll work there's always more paint to add right let's keep working it too yellow all ready and scrape that off I'm going to put a little bit more blue back in here and hope I don't make green because I have yellow on my palette and if I put blue and yellow make green I don't want green I want a nice warm gray color all right let's see here do we have it now that's a little bit better what does it need kitty I always talk to myself I don't know sometimes it helps and sometimes I just get more confused what can I say there we go a little more white now that's good enough we'll just smear this around and and we'll come back to it later and add some my idea right now is I want to get to Patty I don't want to leave him hanging there with no paint on him so that's a shadow up in there that is the that is being cast by the by the thatch roof so there we go that's quite a bit darker but when I add a little bit to that that it'll be okay it's okay to have the different colors in there makes it have a little personality really don't have to paint things exactly as you see them that's the part the beautiful part about being an artist is you can paint what you feel how you want it to look this is working pretty good I think probably looks pretty yellow but if it's not right why I'll fix it later sometime I'm gonna have the paint mixed up before I come but I don't know then it you know for me as an as the artist it's not fun to figure out all the answers before I get to the studio here it's more fun to shoot from the hip and give you something that may be not be it might not be exactly correct but at least you see the the journey the journey of traveling across the canvas and some things you have to adjust and some things you sometimes you'll surprise yourself and you say oh I love that and then you're all happy with yourself you know so I don't think I want to come to the to the television to my studio here in the television station because I don't want to be all prepared and cut and dried and know exactly what I'm going to do it's more fun this way I hope you agree I really hope you agree we're getting that in there pretty good okay okay and then down below here this green that they have that is in shadow here they um they have that going across the bottom there of the building before it meets the the um driveway the ham sandwich must be getting close to lunchtime I keep thinking about that lunch and how gracious he was and how he just waited upon me like I was a visiting queen I just was I was so touched by that but anyway and the ham oh my goodness I don't think we have ham like that here it was so good there we go okay now that covered up a lot of a lot of area and a fast amount of time that's good it's good okay so now we'll get that brush back and we'll put the that bluish green in trying something uh a little different this time I usually get the um cerulean blue comes in a hue of which is kind of a synthetic color and it's much more inexpensive than the true cerulean blue so I want you to know though for this show I splurged and I bought a tube of the true cerulean blue and it's a very lovely color I like it now I'm mixing it with all kinds of other things so you're not going to have a chance to really see to see what I'm talking about here but maybe we can put a stroke of it here or there okay now we have this coming across here and there again I'm trying to really rough this in fast because I want to show you I want to get Patty on there oh I'm sorry this is Tommy not Patty a little bit in the window and that's darker there in the window box right here because it's in shadow around this and that's quite a bit lighter so we'll take a little bit light and add around the flower pots that are sitting on the window edge and now we'll take some more of the blue and put on the front of it here then we'll fix that up later I have a feeling that line isn't very straight but oh well okay maybe it needs to be just a tad darker up in here I know it does there we go because that's in the in the shadow there I'm just going to go ahead and throw in those little red pots there no they're not red pots it's the flowers that are red okay the pots are a dark green very dark green so I'm mixing my blue with my green to make the pots here's a big one here and then they do have some red flowers in them but I'm not going to put those in right now because I I have to put the the white on first if I put the red on then I can't put white on because the white will bleed we'll pick up the red and it won't stay white so this white window frame is going to have to stay like that for now all right and then as we're going into Tommy's we'll we want to show a little bit of atmosphere as we're going into here into his place to show that that there is some atmosphere in there that's not all dark in other words the light is actually coming in so we put that on and I think up here on the top we're just going to come in with a little purple and a little bit of the black and make this really really dark there we go and then we can see the atmosphere a little bit better as it's going in there okay so now then let's start on Tommy Tommy's got some nice brown pants on I think they call these fellows gentlemen farmers because even when they were out farming I have a hunch that this is pretty much how they were dressed there we go there's something that's a little richer looking mixing that brown with my sap green and my cad red light now I'm trying to get a nice beautiful rich burnt sienna for the brown in Tommy's pants all right so there we go whoops I should have gone behind there there's a little space there in between there that is white let me get a little brush there and come in there and fill that no uh well yeah I guess let me see there that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me why would that be white this is coming down unless that's just a little bit of the door maybe that's just a little bit of the door there all right okay now get over here and come on down and these pants we've got wrinkles in them and things like that but we're just gonna get them on there and then we'll come in and make the little wrinkle coming up this way there's one here a little break above the shoe here it's coming this way a little bit of light on this side right here so I'm because that's them the house um the reflection of the house I'm taking some of the house color to make some of my lights here okay that looks pretty good for the pants the sweater's a real dark um green a cool very cool green and you better believe it's irish wool too tummy down here on the bottom it's kind of rounded he's a smaller man in the sense that his you know dark shadows coming up here in the sense that his little shoulders are quite narrow but through the years he's developed a little bit of a tummy on him and so that's what we're seeing there so we've got to show that because that's part of his persona that's who he is okay and now we're gonna go with a nice warmer green and make that sweater show up a little bit more I want to get this um on here for you so that you can see have an idea of where this is going just coming around like this and then there's a kind of a pattern on the sweater it sort of goes like that and then there's a buttons and a see here we want to finish this arm a little dark right in here and then the arm is coming and that's coming down there okay and then this arm is coming over here all right and then he's got some nice blue a nice blue very crisp clean looking blue shirt on let's see there and this has got a little darker shadow here and here to show that the he's got the shirt on there now we'll take the wipe out and we'll wipe out some of this blue that's right in here that's in his face here okay there we go now then I'm going to mix up a flesh color and I'm just going to base in his his face in a flesh color I'm not going to go for for any detail now you'll see the detail um at the next at the beginning of the next show um of the next episode so be sure and catch the next show after this one because that's where you'll see all of the refinement that has been done on Tommy a little green in here I like to mix either a little bit of green in the flesh or a little bit of blue here I'm picking a warmer color and putting it in and I'm going to just hope that that's going to work is this the brush I had yeah okay all right now here we're going to come right in here and paint his face all one color one value one color one shape and we're going to do the same thing with his hands hands are darker okay and then that hat is kind of a kind of a violet like um grade violet you should have seen these fellow's garden they had the most I mean it was kind of wild and natural it wasn't all like planned like like we would do here it was just beautiful and natural and just the most gorgeous flowers blooming everywhere and I didn't even we were so fortunate because we didn't even know what the weather was going to be like when we got there and because typically they have a rainy season just like we do and the weather was the weather was beautiful we had sunshine almost every day and every place that we went the people were warm and friendly it's just a marvelous place to visit a marvelous place to take a journey to there's his little shoes now okay he's coming now then we're going to take the big brush again and we're going to come and put in the because we're running out of time we're going to come in and I have the nicest cameraman and he always has to give me these little he holds up a sign for me okay he holds up this sign and it'll say 30 minutes 15 minutes 10 minutes I just got the 10 minute signal now can you tell me where the last 50 minutes went I have no clue but anyway back to this so here we go all right and tell me you're going to get a little messed up because I'm hurrying now I want to make this a little bit want to make this a little bit darker next to the building oh that's probably too dark I'm going to have to soften that a little bit and then as it comes out I want it to be a little lighter and I'm out of white so I think I'm really in trouble here it looks like I'm getting running out of time here about the same time that I'm running out of white paint so that's kind of a good thing huh there we go and we'll just kind of scrub in the the street there or the drive not really a sidewalk it's just pretty much got the the canvas covered of which is a good thing that's what I wanted to do today and let me see I think what I'm going to do is I just want to show you what that thatched roof would look like a little bit more here well we have a couple of extra minutes here it's all different colors of hay or straw straw I guess it is so it's going to be kind of like this let me see if I can make it across the canvas on that and there'll be some dark spots in it and some of it comes comes down a little bit more it's really kind of kind of cool I had never seen that before I went to Ireland and you know they they have to I asked them about their roof and they said that they have to they get on the roof these two elderly gentlemen get on the roof and put more hay up there or straw when it starts to leak so but I always wondered what in the world keeps the straw from blowing away you know I mean is it must be some kind of of like a there must be some sort of like I don't know like like a glue or not glue but something that they adhere it with I would think I just got the five minute signal you know what that means so okay all right so that gives us a little bit of an idea of what the straw is going to look like um and it just kind of comes down and and it's actually even tinier than that and some of them are even bolder as far as the color is concerned and some of them are grayer you almost need a feather brush for this okay but that gives you the idea of the straw and um okay I have a couple minutes left here let me see and I'm not going to promise anything because I don't do that well under pressure but I'm just going to go ahead and see if I can just give you an idea here's some hair it might would be wider there's some hair and there's some hair he has rosy cheeks I shouldn't have started this guys I'm messing poor Tommy up I'm making him look like a little monster here that's okay Tommy I'll get back to you and I will fix you and you'll look handsome there we go you'll look handsome when I'm done with you kiddo there at least now you get a little bit of an idea I want that one eye to be bigger because it was was of course the glass eye that I didn't know which way to look all righty just a little bit we need just a little bit for that smile a big smile that he had and a little bit of light for a little shape of a nose this has been so much fun today sharing this with you I hope that you have been enjoyed it as much as I have because to tell you about this adventure this journey and share it with you has been very special to me I'm I'm really glad that you joined me and once again this is Kitty Lynn Klisch this is painting journeys every episode we journey to a new place be sure and catch the next one because I'm not sure where we're going to go yet but you'll like it I'm sure so come along thank you and bye bye for now