 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. Welcome to my show. My name is Kitty Lynn Klisch and this is Painting Journeys. We are going to take a journey on canvas. Our last show we were in Skagway, Alaska and the photograph that I worked from looked like this. It's a beautiful, beautiful falls called Little Step Falls in Skagway, Alaska. And so then when the show was completed, our last taping, I had gotten this far on the painting. And so this is what it looked like when we last left you. You see, it's not quite finished. It's looking a little rough yet. We get the general idea, but it's not finished. And so then I took it back, the painting back to my studio, and I completed it. And so I'm going to show you how it turned out. And here it is. Little Step Falls in Skagway, Alaska. As you can see, I've added some nice greens in here. And I've kind of lightened the log and I've darkened some of the darks. The water, I have grayed in some places. And there's more water because as those rocks were coming down, the water was running everywhere on them. And it was just bubbling and coming down off the side of this mountain. And it would hit these flat spots and then it would burst over the rock and then hit in the water below. And so I darkened some areas and lightened some and added a little more water, a little more greenage. And I brought my little pine tree here to life. And if you remember, I told you in Alaska, because it's all rock, there's very little soil on top of the rock. So the trees have very shallow roots. So I don't know how this little guy can be here because he doesn't have much to hang on to his root base, doesn't. But anyway, so then down here I lightened this up and to show that the water is actually so clean and so clear that we can see the rocks underneath the water. So this is Little Step Falls in Skagway, Alaska. Now we're going to take quite a journey. We're going to go to Italy, as I promised you last time. And so my first stop was New York, boarded the plane in New York and flew to Italy. It was an overnight flight. And this picture was taken, this photograph was taken on our first day. I had been up all night on the plane. We saw a lot of different sites, but not too much. But they didn't take us to any of the really important places. They just drove us around the city. And we were looking at different sites before they took us to our hotel for us to register. So this was a monastery. And as we pulled around in the front of the monastery, it was very, very busy. But as we came, as the bus came around, I caught this picture from the back. I thought it was just beautiful. The composition, it was getting later in the day and the sun was starting to set. And it was just, I just thought that that was so beautiful. The name of the monastery, I don't know, but it was on a hill. Rome was built on seven hills. And it was on one of those seven hills. So now I have done a very quick preliminary sketch on my canvas. And I want to take you on this journey with me to see if we can recapture on this canvas, this painting or this photograph here of the monastery on a hill in Rome. Okay, I'll take get my palette. And I'm just using the regular colors that I always use. I have a standard stock palette that I use for my paintings. And I think that I would like to start with the sky. And I'm going to take a little bit of a liberty here and make that sky just a little bit more, show a little more of the red in the sky. As you can see, we have a little reddish gold in here. And I want that sky to have a little bit more of that. So, whoops, I see something I forgot. I forgot to get my terpenoid out. Here we go. Without that, I can't thin the paint. All right. That's what I used to just thin it just a dab to make sure that it's the right consistency because I'm probably going to lay this in pretty thin. I think I have that little bit of red. I love red is my favorite color. I love red. I take the larger brush and wet it just a little bit and come in here. All right, now we're going to come down in here and behind around the building a little bit and a little bit on this side. Okay, now we're going to go a little more into the gold. And so I'm putting kind of a grade yellow in this. I don't want this to be real bright. I want it to stay kind of soft. I'll add the brightness later. Right now I'm working in a softer hue. I don't want to overdo. I can always go for more. It's always easier to enhance than it is to take away when you're painting. Now I don't want this to get too red on me here. As you can see, I'm just painting over my initial sketch. And that's perfectly okay because the paint is thin enough that I can see. And these trees, they might peek through and a little bit of light, sunlight might be behind there. So it's okay. You don't want to just leave them so hard. Okay, now I like that. I think that looks really pretty. Anyway, back to my trip. This was for me my dream trip. I had always wanted my whole life. I'm half Italian and many years ago when I was 14, I met my paternal grandparents. They lived in Northern California and they grew grapes and they had come over from Italy. And I remembered that I had asked my grandmother where in Italy had they lived. And she told me that they lived near the foot of the Alps and that they had a vineyard in Italy, Northern Italy. And my father was quite, quite tall and fair. And I myself, you know, I say tell people that I'm half Italian and they kind of look at me because you think of Italian as smaller, darker people. But we're up there closer to, you know, Switzerland. And so I guess that's why look like we do with the blue eyes and everything. My father looked like I do. Anyway, my whole life I wanted to go to Italy. It was my dream and I finally made it. And my, the reason that I took this particular tour was because we were going to travel all over Italy from Rome North. We saw everything. We spent a few days in each place and it was absolutely marvelous. Just marvelous. I, I, Rome was a shock that because people had already told me, Oh, don't even think about driving over there kitty. It's so crowded and everything. You'll, you'll just, you can't, you can't drive. You can't, you know, don't even think about renting a car. And I didn't. I was really pleased and glad that I was on the bus. So when we landed in Rome, as I said, we drove around in the bus and they showed us some sites. They drove us past the Colosseum of which was, you know, breathtaking. I mean, it just, what can you say? What can you say? We got to go back there a few days later or two days later and, and, and see it. But it was just, oh, it was such a place. So awesome. But everywhere we went, we were in this big bus and managing through all this traffic and horns honking and the bus would back up and these little teeny tiny cars would be behind us. And there was one lady in the back of the bus that was always screaming at the driver, there's somebody behind us. There's somebody behind us. And he would, and he couldn't speak English. He only spoke Italian. And so he would try to tell her in Italian that he knew that and that the bus was equipped with mirrors. But anyway, so there was a lot of excitement, a lot of dense moments. And I remember one of the first places that we that we went to was the Cathedral or the Basilica for St. Paul. And I believe that is where I saw the eternal flame. And we stopped and we went inside there. That was really, really beautiful. The thing that got me the most, I think, were all of the statues and the architecture. Everywhere you looked, the architecture was just unbelievable. I mean, it was just so ornate statues and and carvings. And I mean, just nothing like I had ever seen before. It was just amazing to me. And it was a little, little smoggy there too. Anyway, the food, food was just marvelous. Really scrumptious, light, light. You know, you think of pastas being very heavy and and was they mean pasta that was so light and taramasu. I think I had taramasu for dessert every single day. I was in Italy. It was marvelous. Of course, I haven't had it since. Probably won't again because that's part of the special memory. Right now, here we go. We're getting this sky laid in. We have some of the gold going up into the sky, as you can see, so that it looks like the sky is the sunset is happening here. Okay, and I think now need just a little bit of a brighter yellow. Now this trick will be, as you all know, yellow and blue make green. So the trick is going to be to get this yellow, this little bit of yellow up there without, without it turning green. We don't want a green sky. No green sky, please, Kitty. So let's see here if we can just put just a little bit of the yellow in there. And there, there. It always pleases me when it works. Just a little bit, maybe a little over here. I have found when I'm painting that if I put the blue in first and then lay the yellow over the blue very softly, that always works a little bit better. Okay, now I think we might take a little bit of this and put some little bit of this in the sky back here, maybe a little red in there. There we go. It was really something when we got to our hotel and you, we were overlooking this river and the bridges had apartments on them and people had decks that were built up and they had like flower gardens and things on these decks and it was just, it was just amazing how what little bit, what they could do with such a little bit of space. It was, it was, it was enchanting really. And the sun setting over these big beautiful statues. You know, we're so limited here on the, on the show because I can't, I can't do the really big beautiful paintings that I would like to for you to, I'd like to do for you to show you the statues and, and, and everything. I'm going to do a little wipe out here and here. Okay, try to get back my regular, my first drawing here. This is a little tree in here that I believe if I'm not mistaken that that was called an Italian Cyprus. They were everywhere, absolutely everywhere. These very unusual trees that looked like they'd all had flat top haircuts. So the traffic, the traffic was amazing across the street and down about a half a block from our hotel was this little fruit stand and I was just dying for some, for some fresh fruit. I think that's the way they do their shopping over there. They don't go to the big supermarket and buy all their food for the week or two weeks or a month like we do here. They go shopping every day and they buy fresh produce and that's what they base their diet on. They don't eat a lot of, of things that have preservatives in them and, and like even the wine, but even the wine tasted different. It didn't have all the preservatives in it that we have in our wine. So consequently, you don't get headaches when you drink, which is a plus. Anyway, so I was trying to cross this very, very busy street and I had another lady with me and she was really quite alarmed about crossing. I mean she was, she was really frightened, you know, but our guide had told us when you want to cross the street, you just have to do it. You just step on out there and that's the only way that they will stop as long as you hesitate. If you hesitate, then they're not going to stop for you, you know. So I had already made it across the street, bought my fruit, gone back to the hotel room and so at dinner this lady was saying, oh, I want some fresh fruit. I see this stand across the street and I said, well, I'll take you over there if you want, you know. So here we are, there, I like that, yeah. Anyway, here we are on the street and I start out and she won't, she won't move, she won't budge, she's afraid and so I walked out, I marched out into the middle of the street and I put both my hands up like this and to show stop and it was like, it was like magic. Everybody stopped. I mean all these lanes of traffic, all these little cars, they stopped and then she came across the street. I think she must have felt like a princess or something that every, I had stopped traffic for her. So that was kind of an exciting thing and we giggled as we went and bought our fruit and went back to the hotel room. It was a lot of fun. I think I'll just lay that building in and the building is quite lovely. I like it. Everything in Italy is so colorful. The greens, I found all the greens to be rather gray and dull, kind of olive drab, but the colors of the building, they make up for it with the colors of the buildings and the, all of the statues and the architecture and everything. So I'm just going to lay this in. I'm just laying it in. It's probably not going to look like this in finish, but I just want to get something down there so that I can have something to go by. So this is what is known as blocking it in. This will have many more colors on it. There's a little building right in here. I think the fun of this program is seeing how these paintings are when we end the show and then when you tune in for the next show to see the changes in the painting, when it's been finished and fine tuned. That's always an important part of the painting process and when I'm alone in my studio and I remember and think about my trip and how I felt, all of those things. It's really a nice way to reminisce, take the trip back again, this up here. Now you notice I do a lot of scrubbing when I paint. I kind of save the brush strokes for more of a final finish. I just kind of scrub it in so that I have an idea of where I want things and how I want it to look. Let's see here. This is coming over here. Now we do have a dark line that's going across here. There. I'll just scrub that down, bring it down a little bit. That's okay. We'll come over here. There we go. That little roof seems to be quite bright. A little bit of light on it. Let's see here. We have this. It's kind of tricky to get the perspective of the building. That was a building in the back there. Let's even this up a little bit here. You're probably thinking, oh my goodness, that's the crookedest door I ever saw. Now we have that on there. That's looking pretty good. We'll put a little bit of dark in the, we'll get a little window over here. We'll just put a little dark there. We'll put a little dark right in here with this. Now this is actually a balcony and the door is open. You can just imagine a monk or an abbot coming out and sitting here on this little balcony and viewing his backyard. We have these little windows up here and I'm just going to, I'm just suggesting them. Let's see how many of them are there. There's four of them. All right. We'll have to go in. We'll clean that up later. I don't want to waste any time and we've got some little windows over here too. There's a couple little windows in here, right in here and then there's a couple of little, they look like little skylight things that are coming here on the roof of this smaller building in the foreground. Let's see here and there's, the light from the sky is kind of showing in the front of them there and they're kind of tiny but they're there so we want to show them. Okay, let me see here. Now I think we'll mix up some greens and start blocking in. In fact, I think what I'm going to do here, there's a tree behind and I'm going to mix up some green and alizarin crimson and a little bit of ultramarine blue and I'm going to come right back here on this tree in the background, right about there. Okay. Now he's behind the tree that's in the front and he's coming up. He's really quite dark. He's coming up here. He's coming. He's got a thin branch that's going here and here coming out there and that's going up like that. Tell me when to go. I want that to be a little darker right there and this is coming up here. Then we have another one that's coming up here and they're, they're sort of tree branches are sort of like pipes. They're joined and at joints they don't, you know, they don't usually, they're not usually straight. They're just kind of like elbows on a pipe. So you have to paint them that way. Otherwise, you just paint them in like swooping arcs. They look weak. They don't look strong. So you have to like lay them in so that they, they bend and okay now that's all coming from that tree right there and it's going to be covered with the, the green on the top. That's one of those unusual looking trees that looks like it has a flat top. Now the one that's in the foreground is lighter colored because it is in the foreground and I see a little dark on the side. So I'm going to come up with some dark on the side and right on up and then it sort of takes a little bit of a turn at the top. He's got a little bend in him. Needs to be darker. There we go. And then he has a beautiful big long branch that is coming out right here. There again, as I was saying, a lot of this I'll have to go back to my studio to refine. Right now, my goal is to give you the, the essence of it. You know, I always tell my students you have to bake the cake before you frost it. And it's just, this is what I'm talking about. I have to put this on here before I can go into the details or I, it won't look right. You know, a lot of that is covered with the, the green from up above. Okay. All right now. So we have, I have to take a smaller brush because we have a small skinny looking kind of a fir tree right about, right about in here, I think it is, it's coming up. And it, and you notice how it's bent? I think these trees endure a lot of wind, a lot of wind. And there again, I don't want to do too much on it because it's going to have to be refined. I just want to sort of block it in and so that I know where it's at. I mean, I do know it does have this one great big branch that's coming over here and thinking as I'm painting. And so I'm sharing with you this process, this journey of, of putting what I see in the photograph onto the canvas. And it is a journey. The painting, the journey in painting is learning how, first of all, is learning how to see and, and how to make a good composition. So that's where you start. And then after that, we have a little tree back here, after that, you have to capture what you see on the canvas. Then you have to block it in with lights and darks as you see them. So it is a journey. Each step leads to the next one. And it's, no one ever knows it all. And that's why painters have such a love affair with painting. Now this is that funny little tree that is kind of, looks like he's had a flat top, comes in there. And then there's another one that these branches are going to, just right above it. I went to see the Sistine Chapel. They only allow so many people in at a time. I've never felt so overwhelmed to think that someone could paint something like the Sistine, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. All those years ago, when they had, they didn't even have paint in tubes like we have now. All they had were the minerals and rocks and things like that, that they ground up to make their own colors. They were actually businesses that they would go to that would, that would make the different colors for them. And to think the color and the, the imagery that was there, it was breathtaking. It was like time stopped. It actually stopped for me. It was the most beautiful thing. That's another thing that I'll never forget about my trip. I haven't, we're going to be painting scenes from Italy now for the next few shows. And I'm going to be telling you about the different, the different places and we'll be painting from those places. And I want to share, I want to save some of those stories and tell you them as I'm painting in that particular area. But we did, we did travel. We traveled all of Northern Italy. We saw Venice and Sienna and Pisa, Tarbolli, and all the way up to the Northern Alps and even went into Switzerland. It was just really, really something. It was the trip of a lifetime. I don't know that I don't ever get back. It was very, it was the type of trip that is for the more, a younger, more hearty person. It was very vigorous or rigorous, I guess is the, is a better word. But I hung in there because I had finally made it there. All right. Now we've got some color on there. Let's put a little bit of blue in these guys here. There we go. That looks a little better, a little bit of blue in this one too. Now, when I get this back to the studio, I'll probably put some, some sunlight around the plants. I don't want to get into, or the trees. I don't want to get into that right now. We do have a brighter yellow-green on bush that is our tree that seems to be coming up in front of this one. So we'll just kind of like make that there. We can come up into that. Okay, so he's kind of like in front and that helps to set that back. There we go. And then he's coming down. And when he cut, where he comes down to the bottom of him, I see that he's getting darker. Do you see that? Yeah. Yeah, there it is. Okay, a little darker yet. We have all these strange, and I have no idea what these were, these strange bushes that are in front here. They just, some kind of an Italian evergreen, I guess, is what my guess would be. They were quite interesting. So I think what I'll do is I'll just mask them in in dark. We've got them back in here, and they're real light at the tops. And then after we mask them in, I see we need to fill that in there we go. And then we have to remember that we need the light against the dark. So we'll just come down the side of this tree with a little bit of light there, and that'll kind of show that that tree is in front of the other one that is behind it. Perhaps we'll go back there with a even darker dark and make that, we need that to show up a little better. So now we have a tree in front of a tree. There we go. It's just all a matter of light and dark. That's, that's what's important. And these guys here, now I'm, I'm gonna just go back to my large brush, and I want to really get this on here, because I'd like to be able to show you a little bit of detail today. So I'm just going to get this all kind of blocked in here real quick. And you notice how I'm painting? It's, it's like I'm feeling what I'm seeing. I feel this, this, this growth, this energy. And having seen it, having actually seen it, you know, I can still, I have it internalized. And I can still feel what that looked like. It's, and it was just kind of, you know, like a, like a little forest of these strange looking little, little trees. And it was awesome to look at. Over here, we've got a big tree that was in front of, and coming up here, you know, where the little monk would come out and sit, perhaps have a cup of cappuccino. I tried cappuccino while I was there. Oh my goodness, was that strong? Wow, that was really strong. Strong stuff. Okay, now you see we're, we're starting to get this, this feeling of these little, of these little guys in here. And I'm adding a little bit of darker and some, a little bit of red to it, you know. And because I see that in there, this is, this is what I'm seeing in here. Come down here, and over here, now then. Now right about in here, you have to get a different brush, right about in here, we have some of this beautiful, orangey red that we have in the sky. And so we're going to take a little bit of that, and we're going to put underneath these guys. Now that's too bright. That's too bright. We have to tone that down. Lighten it up and tone it down. Always looking for that. Okay, there we go. That's what it looks like. And we'll just put it right back up in there, and like so. And then it's coming like this right in here, and down this little hill here. Okay, now then over here it's darker. So we'll just, we'll just put this right in here. I have to share with you a secret. And the secret is that when I'm on camera, I have this sweetest little fellow that comes and lets me know what time it is, because when I'm painting, I'm clueless. I just lose all track of time. So he has to come and put a little sign up to let me know how much time I have left. So when you see me looking away from what I'm doing, and I'm looking for him, that's what I'm doing. I'm looking for how much time do I have left to play, because I'm having so much fun. So now you know the secret of why I have that strange look on my face sometimes. Maybe it's disappointing because I'm being told that the show should be over. Oh ho ho, I'm liking this. Alrighty. And when I say that, that ho ho ho, I'm liking this. I'm not, I do not mean that in a way that is braggartish, oh so, or however you want to say it. I mean, I don't mean it that way. I mean that it pleases my soul. It's, it's what I saw, what I feel, and I'm getting it out there. And I'm sharing it with you. That's what I mean when I say ho ho ho, I like that. It's, it's, it's being able to, to share these inner thoughts with you and be with you on this painting journey and, and to share the things that, that I did and the places that I went and this is, this is marvelous. It's, it's, I'm blessed. I am so, so truly blessed to have this time with you. I really am and I hope, I hope that you are feeling blessed in some way that you can take this journey with me as I travel to my different destinations. Alright, now there we go. So what do you say we put, we'll just take a minute because my, my time, my little nice time technician is looking at me. So I think any minute he's going to come and say, okay, I just want to take and make a few of these little, little tree-like things for you so that you can kind of get an idea of what that's going to look like there. There we go. And there, okay, over there and some over here. And they had kind of a blue look to them, maybe, maybe a little bit of the sky. There, that's better. Okay, now then here in the front, we actually, there was actually another building here built into the side of the, of the hillside. And you know, I mean, one's imagination, I don't know what it was for, but one's imagination could tell you that, well, maybe during World War II, maybe they came down. Maybe this was kind of like a cave-like place. And maybe they came down and they hid in here, you know, away from to like a bomb shelter or something. You can think of all kinds of things that this could be. You never know. But it was there and it was some sort of a structure. Right now I'm just trying to get the canvas covered. But it was some, some sort of a strange structure and there, okay. Now, now we'll try to put some detail into that. There were some rocks and they were coming over here like so. And there was a, like a little roof-like thing on it. It was kind of odd-looking. It looked to me like it had probably fallen into ruins because there were places that looked all broken down. And so that was kind of like the roof of it. And then in the center, it seemed like it was really very, very dark and kind of, let me see, a little bit bluer, maybe, maybe a little bit like this. And it just was kind of strange. And then now when I take this back to my studio, I'll refine the building. Now perhaps we need just a little bit of light in there to kind of show a little, oops, that's too much, down just a little bit there. There we go. It looks just like rocks in here. It was just, it was just strange looking. I don't know how to explain it. It was just, just strange. It just looked like a place that people would go to hide down in the side of the building there, on the side of the hillside, rather. All right, now let's see here. We'll take our green, our lighter green. So I'm using a cool green because I want, I want this to be a cooler. You know, we have a cool yellow and a cool green. And when you mix the two together, you have a little bit of a cooler. I do hope that you will join us, our next show, where I, so that I can show you what this turned out, how this turned out once it was completed and the fine points put on it. There we go. Maybe that means just a little more light, just a little more light right in here. We want that to, there, there, there. We want that to really glow there. That's it. All right, and then there was probably a little bit of light on top of these guys. I'll just show you just a few here so that you can kind of get the idea. And maybe there was a little light on this tree, yeah, there was. There we go. Have a minute here. I think I'll take, and I think I'll just kind of accentuate a little bit of these guys here. This poor, scraggly-looking tree. He certainly didn't look like anything I saw in Alaska. Just a little bit over here. Okay, we've got a pretty good lay in. So I guess we have a few minutes left. Let's try to put a little detail on the building here and give you a little better idea of what that looked like. I do, I know there is one thing that I must put on. Let me see here. There's my little tiny brush. Oh shoot. I must have left it in my paint box. Well, I'll try to do it with this one. This is most important though. This was right on the top. And then I'll probably come in with a little bit of blue and try to clean that up a little bit. When that happens, you just go like this and you put some blue back on and then you try it again. There's nothing to be afraid of. You can do anything you want if you want to that enough. All right, let's try this again. There we go. Good enough. So now I think we'll put just a little more dark, just a little more dark in the base of these. Some nice darks in here to kind of pop those a little bit. And we have a little bit of a cast shadow coming over here. This is over here. Looks to me like one of those needs to come down a little bit. I have it up too high. So we'll put one right in here. You have to be sure and tune in next, the next show to see this completed. I think you'll be really happy that you did. And I'll be really happy that you did too. And so here we are in Rome behind a monastery on a hillside, one of the seven hills of Rome. And we've captured their back garden on canvas. And thank you for journeying with me today. It's been a very special treat to share this with you. Be sure and catch our next show where I will be showing you the completed painting. And then we'll go on to another destination in Italy. We will be in Italy for a few weeks. Thank you so much for joining me. Once again, my name is Kitty Lynn Klisch. And you've been watching Painting Journeys. Thank you. Bye-bye for now.