 All right, greetings and welcome to the waterways exhibit here at the glass. I'm Kerry Kautzer and today I'm going to be doing a painting demonstration for those who are here. As far as myself, some of the things I've done over the years, probably past 10, 15 years, watercolors primarily. I learned through my great mentor, James Michael, and we have Bonita Buddhist here also in our audience, who is a great artist in her own right as far as oil painting. I worked for the city of Sheboygan as the director of WSES and I've done video productions for 34 years and painting has become a little more than a passion. I think any artist that loves to paint feels really strong connection of what they're doing as far as trying to get their emotions onto a canvas or a board or drawing or photograph. There's a lot of things that create great joy for that person or people that are viewing their art. So today I'm going to start out by doing a watercolor of some evergreen trees that are located in Maywick Park. Now if you have any questions, those who are at home are viewing this, you're going to have to just listen up, watch the program. Many times when I go on site, plan air painting, I'll do a sketch and it's a value sketch of the scene. You want to look for values, shapes, and colors and that's what I was taught and that's what I primarily try to capture on my watercolor paper here. We're in the coffee shop so you have to bear in mind there's noise. So if you have any questions, fire away anytime. Want me to talk about what I use for supplies or anything? Okay, I have my handy dandy brushes here. My mom knitted this bag for me many years ago. So it holds all my brushes and I use everything from a large three inch brush to smaller brushes. When I'm painting outside, I paint very quickly. I'm more of a loose painter, not into doing details. So I have large brushes and this is a Goliath brush, which I like a lot. I'll probably use that today. The paints I use are watercolors that come in a tube. Dry watercolors come in a pan or these round dots. But I use tube watercolors. Brands vary from da Vinci to Winsor Newton. So that's about it for this. As far as the paper I use, it's 140 pound, rough, this particular piece of paper. There's several different types of paper. Smooth, fine grain. So prior to going out painting or anywhere, if I'm painting indoors, I'll put my paper, this is a half sheet from a full sheet. I'll cut the paper and I'll put it in our bathtub and soak it for 15 minutes. Then I'll staple it to the board. And then it dries and it stretches it really nice and tight. I've tried to use tape and it doesn't work. I don't know how you do it, Evie. Are you still using the stapling? Blocks, okay. Yeah, then you don't have to mess around with this. This is a, right, it's called a homosote board. You can buy sheets of this from Menards. Another commercial there. So I have everything set up. Many times I'll go out and backpack all my gear in a larger backpack. But if I'm traveling somewhere, I'll take a little, this is a small watercolor kit. Very small. Where you can just do five by sevens. It's almost like what Evie was talking about. It's just a miniature set of what I have here. It's far more portable. And that's what's really unique and nice about watercolors. It's great for traveling. Sometimes I'll get the whole board or paper wet. And it'll be a very wet and wet process. And the paints will run and blend together very nicely. Many times with watercolor you're going to be starting light to dark. That first color was cerulean. With many paintings you can try to get the illusion of distance. So you create the working from back to foreground. So I'm just kind of just throwing paint on randomly. That's the way it looks, but I kind of know what I'm doing. Or I have an idea of what I want. Two of my favorite colors to work with are cobalt blue and burnt sienna. They usually give a nice gray. Painting outdoors, this painting would dry a lot faster because of the conditions. Whereas indoors they seem to just lay there on the paper for quite a while. There's a lot of moisture in the paint. And on the paper itself. If you see this up close you can notice that the paper is already kind of buckled. Which I'm not real thrilled with right now. That's why I have this handy dandy dryer. Not because of my hair. And with watercolors as they dry they will be a lot lighter. So you probably are better off in the first stages. To go a little bit darker than you think because it's always going to dry lighter. It's not very dry, but it's good enough. How do you do that in the boundary waters? Battery operated hair dryer. Now you just put it in the sun. I don't paint this large. Well I mean not a canoe trip or something. I've tried just about every kind of trick. You find out in a hurry if it works or not. I'm just randomly placing what I believe would be that, and perceive in my mind the branches in the sketch go. The branches, or the foliage of the evergreens. Just kind of shapes. You know the trees are going to be green or kind of bluish color. Or yellow. There's going to be several different variations of color of the cool and warm colors. This is a cobalt, some Viridian, and ultramarine violet. It's more or less the purple color. I'll mix each one together in the palette or right on the... Some of this ultramarine violet, I really like this. I really like this color because you can... In winter scene it creates the shadows in the snow. I'm going to put in some yellow ochre. So that gives this side of the painting a little bit of zing. Go back into the trees. I just keep working my way in getting darker and darker. And trying not to lose the background by covering it up. It's probably would not be a good idea at this point. A really dark, darker color would be indigo, which I like to use. It's a very dark blue. Any more questions why I'm working? It could be a gray day, but I'm thinking the sun's coming from this way. I'll try to put this shadow over here. This is definitely the lighter area. I'll drop a little bit of red, alizarin crimson, since it's Christmas-y. Tis the season, right? Now I'm dating the video. I'm not dating myself, maybe. Both. And occasionally I'll step back and look at it. Try to understand what I was thinking of when I started. The same color again to create a different... If you want to make it darker of the same color, you just hit it again. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not work. I think as artists we can do that. We want to make our paintings colorful. That's what attracts people to look at them longer than just glance at them and walk away. They want to study them or give them that wow, that feeling that's something I haven't seen before or something that reminds them of something from their younger days. And that creates a vibration. Right here? I find that as interesting as the more colorful area. And that's the area I'm going to just put some calligraphy as far as trees. In the winter months things are usually pretty gray and the colors are just not there all the time. Also on days where the sun is overcast. Right here? Yeah. And the key to a lot of painting is when to stop and just... I'm getting to that point now where just... Okay, enough is enough. Because I'm running out of time here. The next performance is coming up. There's a few places where the paint's running. That's okay. And something that someone brought up, happy little mistakes are always fun. I mean, they're okay to leave. And I'll do a little bit of a half hour. You'll watch the timer on video. Okay, I think we're done. Just put a mat on it and there you go. So thank you for watching my demonstration.