 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 in the studio today. I wanted to tell you that on our last segment we had, we were painting the Conlon Brothers. We were in Ireland and well I have the painting finished and here it is. I've done just a little bit of work on it. I've brightened up the the roof, the thatching on the roof and I brought the characters, the faces of the brothers into focus a little bit more and finished the the siding on the house. I think it was like a rough stucco or or something like that. But anyway here's the finished painting and I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Especially Ladi the dog, you know, she was there too. So anyway it was it was a great trip to Ireland. But now today we're doing something entirely different. Today we are going to go to the Botanical Gardens in Green Bay and that's where I traveled and that's where I'm going to take you on this journey across my canvas. I went to the Botanical Gardens in Green Bay and it was so it was just luscious. It was just a beautiful day, not too hot. The flowers were gorgeous. A lot of them were sort of gone but had already bloomed. But then there were these tree peonies and I just absolutely fell in love with this one tree peony. So but first of all I wanted to show you a painting that I did 15 years ago. You know being an artist is a journey in itself because as you paint and you mature in your art you change, you grow. It is a journey. You never stop evolving and changing and whatever you experience you bring to your easel. And so anyway I just wanted to show you this painting that I did. Now I did this painting 15 years ago. As you can see it's very loose, very sketchy. It was a bouquet of roses, kind of a still life type thing you know. Now today I'm working from a photograph that I took at the Botanical Gardens of this red tree peony. And rather than rather than dazzle you with a whole you know a whole bush of flowers or you know I thought I'd really like to get up close and personal and explore this peony, this tree peony, explore it in in high definition you know. So that's why I cropped the photo and enlarged it. And that's pretty much the composition that I'm going to be using. Now if you've been watching this show you know that I usually will tone my canvas with kind of a pale orange color. Today because I'm doing a painting with the red I wanted kind of a cool undertone. So I've toned it in a grayish blue and almost a violet. And then that the leaves, the green leaves are the complement of this color. So they should really pop out against that. That's the idea anyway. We'll see how it goes. Alright so and I seem to have lost my wooden palette. So today I am working on regular tinted palette paper. It's I don't want to turn it too much. I don't want the paint to fall off. But it's just a regular palette. I call this more my floral palette. You'll see I don't have any earth colors on here. It's all just the warms and the cools. Okay so here we go. Best not talk too long. We better start painting. Get something on here. I think first of all what I'm going to do is mass in some dark places for the background. And the background is I want it to be very very dark. I want this to be I want the green and the red to really pop. This is a little more of a contemporary style that I'm working in today. And we'll have to see how this is going to work. You know it's always it's always a challenge. You never know for sure just how something's going to a painting is going to turn out when you first start it. You can have the best intentions and end up with something totally opposite. But that's okay too because it is a creation no matter how it turns out. Something you've created. And that's that's a good thing. Alright I've mixed up a very very dark kind of a reddish black. I've used the colors that are in here. And I've mixed this up from those mixture of those colors to pop in some dark areas. I see some dark right up in here. Now this is going to look really kind of probably a little on the messy side to you. There isn't too much dark in there. And then now then these I think I will just go ahead and draw my flower. Alright I think that this is should be this dark area is right in here. Okay and then there's another dark area right about in there. And now I'm going to take a smaller brush and I'm going to sketch in the outline of my flower. Okay and I'm going to do that with this dark red also. Let me see this is the center right in here. So we have back in here we have petals. Then there's another one going back there and coming around coming in this comes in here and then it goes up. Now I don't usually take the time to draw on camera for the simple reason that it does take a little a little while to to get something the composition worked out. You know but I thought today I would because I have a little different approach for the flowers when I'm working in a more contemporary style. A little different approach and I'll be showing you that in a little bit here. Okay so this is going up like this. This is coming around. Alright so now then right across here is a petal and it's a petal there. A little petal coming out here. This is coming out here. This is a this is a petal here. You have to excuse me now I'm just kind of talking to myself. I'm talking myself my I'm talking my way through this for what I see here. Okay this is coming up like this and then down and this is coming up over here. There's a little split here and then around here and under here. I don't know if you can see that flower taking shape yet or not and then back in here we have another petal that goes completely off the canvas and it's coming in here. Alright I wish you could have been with me that day that I was at the at the garden. It was just such a gorgeous day. If you've ever been, if you ever go to Green Bay, Wisconsin, do go to the Botanical Garden. It is absolutely delightful. They have a water feature and so many beautiful beautiful buildings and added features. It's just it's a marvel. It really is. It's a very very nice place to spend a few hours just wandering through the gardens and and seeing all the all of the beautiful plantings and they have everything. It doesn't matter what time of the year you go. It's beautiful. Now I'm making this considerably larger than this because I want this to really be very modern looking, contemporary. I want it to really be all about this flower. The leaves I don't think are all that interesting. The flower is. So let's make it about the flower. Okay now we're going to come into the center here. I ended up with a little bit of a brownish look and I'm not real happy with that. So I'm going to come back in here and I'm going to put a little bit of dark in here. Right now I'm just sort of what I call scumbling. Scumbling it in. This is quite a bit darker back under here. See there? Oops, I didn't mean to do that to the paint, to the photograph. Put paint on it. Okay. Now then, we've got some nice reds. I have the cool reds and the warm reds. This is, you know, there's parts of this flower that are very, very cool looking. This is coming up in here. And then there's a little bit of dark right in here. I love, I love to paint flowers. They are so, they really speak to me. They're so beautiful. A lot of times I just block in the whole flower with the color and a dark color and then wipe out. That's a nice approach too. But today I think I'm just going more for the the dark and the light areas on the on the flower. Now this is going to stay pretty dark back here. I need a little bigger brush. Working too small. And I'm thinking when I'm not talking it's because I'm really concentrating. I want to do my best for you. I have an idea in my head and trying to get that on the canvas for you. So if I don't talk that means I'm thinking. Here's a little bit of a brighter red coming around here. There's a little bit of a brighter red coming into this. Coming down into the center of that flower. And I will have to, there we go. I will have to wipe some out because we do have these little yellow stamens or centers, whatever they're called. That's one thing. I don't do well with learning the names of things. Just to show you what I where I'm going with this. I want to take and just put just a little bit of light against that dark. Just so you can see what's going to happen here. There. So you can see the contrast of what that what those petals are going to look like. That'll give you a little idea. Now I'm going to change my brush here in a minute and by creating that dark shadow there then that creates a ruffle in the petal. You see that? Yeah. Just like that. And then this is going to come down a little bit. We're going to go into the really dark again. And we're going to come in and we're going to paint into the negatives space to shape the ruffle part of that of that petal there. And then right here I'm going to put just a little bit more of a color. And that's going to be coming down into this. And that's the center of that one there. Okay. Now I put that there for you so that you can see where we're going with the colors. Now I'm going to take different brushes, a brush, and I'm going to come in here and I'm going to get some of the green because you without the the greens the greens the green it's really it looks like it's a warm green but it's not really it's it's primarily a cool green and I'm going to make it primarily cool with just a little bit of warmth. And so instead of painting individual leaves of which are very boring I'm going to mess this in a little bit here. And after I do that then I'm going to pull out I'm going to pull out the leaves that I want to see. And the mixture of the paint see how the red is going into the green there. That's a good thing because that makes it more harmonious to have the color of the of the background into the subject and this subject color into the background. I'm just kind of putting that on there and right away you can see how that's really getting some pop. Let's get some green over here on the other side. Right now this right in here is really quite dark. I see a spot right there that's very dark. Okay and right down in here. And then when I put this dark on I'm going to like I said I'm going to pull the light leaves out of that. I just I want to get the greens on there for you so that you can so that you can see. I think that's going to be better. I don't spend a whole lot of time looking at the at the photograph because that's exactly what it is. It's a photograph. And you know when you want to take this journey across the canvas you don't want to be copying. You want to be creating. That's what it's all about is creating. You know taking something that you think is beautiful and interpreting it bringing it into you digesting it however you want to say it and then bringing that out of you so that what it comes out on the canvas is your interpretation of the of the subject not a copy. Who wants a copy? If we just wanted to copy this is a gorgeous photograph we'd just be happy with that. Right? Right. So anyway well I on a little sidebar here I reached a milestone in my life last the end of May. I retired from teaching. I had taught for at the Plymouth Art Center in Plymouth Wisconsin for 18 years and I must have had hundreds of students over the years come and go and I had students that because I had when I moved here to Wisconsin I had talked about a journey. I had started teaching in my at my home studio and so I actually had students when I retired from teaching I actually had students that had been with me for 20 years so that was that was really it was a painful process you know there again it was just another journey in life but you have to you have to address it you have to talk about it so I think while I'm thinking about it I think I'll just share some of my my feelings and thoughts with you when one journey ends and another another one begins it's a period of transition in your life and you go through certain emotions there's a sense of loss and but at the same time there's a wonderful sense of excitement because it's a new new beginning new exciting things could happen now I'll have time to you know possibly do more shows do more shows for you for painting journey shows maybe you know maybe that would be something that I could think about I will have time to paint you know to paint in in my studio I which that's something that I very seldom ever have the opportunity to do I I paint here in the television studio for you once a month but I don't really get to paint much oftener than that where do I want to go well let's see what happens if we do this whoo-hoo I like that so it was sad the last few classes I cried a lot you know it's people become your friends and sometimes some some classes I feel really crabby and think oh my goodness when is this gonna be over with and then other classes I'd look at them and you know you you get these people would become your friends you get to know them so well that they become friends and and then all of a sudden they're out of your life they're gone because you're no longer in the same same position you're not you know they you have no reason to get together with them since you're not teaching them anymore and you know life is busy life goes on so we'll see we'll see what the next the next where the next journey takes me now I see this is being a little bit darker you can see what's happening here all this beautiful reds take my wipe out I'm bringing this out here I'm gonna take my wipe out and I'm gonna tool just a handy little tool I have and I'm gonna make this petal right here a little bit bigger I want that to be a little bit larger and that's gonna be a nice half tone here right under here there we go and as soon as I do that I realize that I need to make the the you know you have to have the dark against the light so that means that I have to come back here and punch that up without the dark against the light you have no shape that's what creates shape and okay and then now we'll go over here and this pedal is I want this pedal to come out here so we wipe this out a little bit here yeah I want it to come like this be huge if things don't grow the way you want them to then just make them grow however you you think they look good and I think this guy looks good coming like this and over here like this okay and then we're going to have some dark I have to change my brushes I have them the most terrible habit of trying to do a one brush painting I get into that habit and it's it's really not a good thing so I'm trying to be good today I'm being good I'm changing brushes now then this really needs some dark behind it because it's behind this pedal right here when we get it in so that's gonna be more like that we want that one to stay more in the background and this one right here it's gonna be a little bit darker coming out of here it's all about that dark against the light and this one down here okay we'll make that just a little bit darker maybe we'll have a little bit of green in there all right now this is a separate pedal here so I'm going to have to take the green and bring the green up in here because this is a separate pedal okay and there okay and now then we'll have this one coming down from here and then now we're gonna go with a little bit of light right in here isn't that neat and I like to kind of push and pull that's really fun too there we go now remember I warned you that this is my interpretation of the flower I'm not trying to make a copy of it and I'll go like that and that will create a pedal and we'll just move that out just a little bit there and have a little bit of green come up in there there we go that's kind of like a little fringy thing there okay now then over here we've got some darker right back in here this is a little darker in here and there's a pedal this big pedal right here is coming down right in there and it's quite dark coming right here that is very dark where that pedal is coming that's coming out of there and then we have a pedal coming here it's the one thing about peonies I love I love to paint roses and I understand the rose anatomy quite well I think but peonies I haven't painted too many peonies they're usually so difficult looking because of all those paddles alrighty there's that I'm gonna try for a little bit of a coral look here on this edge coming right in here okay now we'll get what's behind here in there let's see I wonder when we went to Green Bay on this on this tour we not only saw the the botanical gardens but we went to this lovely older house and can't think of the name of it right now but it was it was one of the founding members of of Green Bay it was his original house and it was right on the Fox River and his wife had was a China painter and she painted all the China in the house and the docent was telling us that that we went into the dining room area and there was a service for 12 at the dining room table and everything was there except for coffee or tea cups there were none it's all hand-painted can you imagine hand painting China and making it so perfect that each piece match the last piece I can't imagine doing that but anyway the lady said that they never could find any coffee or tea cups in the collection and later on I was sitting outside and I saw this this cup in the bushes well not bushes they were plants it was a it was a pasta I saw this this cup and so I went and I got one of the docents and I said you know I don't know why but I think somebody threw the cup through a cup from the set out here in the bushes so they all laughed at me they had a good laugh what it was is somebody had put the cups out there with with little numbers on them so that you know it was some kind of a hunt-like thing if you found the found the cup and could answer the question or something you won some sort of a prize well needless to say I felt kind of silly but that was okay you know I'm not the first time I felt silly let me see here let's let this go up here we've got lots of light over here and then see we need some green in here this area right in here right in the cup here we need green that's what so crazy about this is the odd the odd shape of the flower I mean it was so fully opened and and when I photographed it the angle that I got it it was just awesome I think what I'd like to do is just to show you what that's gonna look like is lighten up and and put in a few of the leaf suggestions not gonna make them too definite I don't want them to definite but just perhaps just a little bit here just just so that you can have a little better idea of you know the the lights and the and the darks maybe we'll put a little light in there and a little bit more here I'm just working very loose right now I take this back to the studio I'll probably putz with it and make it look a little more a little more defined there but that does help and that does help to have a few leaf marks and some different shapes in there I think that helps a lot maybe we'll have something coming in over here I don't really want it to come from the corner that's a no-no so I have to go back in with the dark and get rid of this right here there we go okay and I like that little bit of that little echo of the flower color over here on the side I think I'm gonna lighten that up just a whoa I love that red see I just gravitate towards it dang it there we go let's see it just it does something for me it just really does and then I'll probably when I sign it I'll probably sign it down in here and red of course red red is yummy red is the color for passion strength love all that good stuff you go put a little light on this right in here and I should probably quit dinking around here and just get this canvas covered huh kids I was in my classroom right now I'd be telling the student if the student was doing this thing I'd say get that canvas covered there we go we're almost there I don't like the shape or the direction of that stroke I think I'll change that now then okay right in here we have this lovely flowery petal nice juicy paint that's really looking good put just a little bit more light right in there back into the dark and come back over with the dark there there we go all right now then we have a petal here coming down right here and we have one coming right here okay so we'll make this add a little bit of blue and make that just a little bit of a darker and I like to I like to push and pull with the petals now that one's coming out of there a little lighter yeah I'm thinking out loud forgive me please I'm thinking out loud this is the part of the painting that requires me to really concentrate on it so that nice and bright there here here and coming around there and let me see here okay now we almost have it covered when we get the whole canvas covered if there's any time left then we'll be able to put some highlights on and some lights and some some darks all righty I think that should be just a little darker in the center here coming up and then I want to go really bright right in here and step back and take a little look here okay and I want to echo some of that right over in here make that petal look like it's a little bit brighter there this needs a little bit more red I think I paint with a very impasto style where it's just I like lots of thick juicy paint I don't skimp with my paint I really pile it on I like that effect the best it's like a feast for your eyes that way okay now sometimes I make a move and it's the wrong one so then I have to go back and correct it this to be just a little bit warmer there all right this is really sparkling okay now then this there's this little red petal that's right in there and then we're going to have the canvas covered okay right in here I love to paint flowers oh ours are so beautiful just have to be careful not to take that one stroke too many because then you ruin what you're trying to do there it is looking for that dark brush we have to get back in here with some darks and clean this up a little bit now that I have the the canvas covered make these cup a little bit more I think we can come up here and lighten some of the lighten some of the petals that are more out towards the edges about right in here I want to see just a little bit of of a little lighter okay and I think we'll do the same down here do you know you have to be really careful that you don't do the same thing over and over and over again it's really important you know to try to not repeat yourself because then it becomes mundane it's the spontane spontaneity that is so terribly important that especially in a painting like this where you want it to feel like it kind of like rolled off of the brush rather than that you had to really work really hard on it now I'm going to I want to soften this in now I want to do that so that it makes that look like that is cupping right there and I have to wipe out right here in the center these little yellow I think they're called stamen I'm not sure I'm sure what those are called you know that's the thing the names of things just don't I really don't care about the names of things I look at everything in in as far as shape and color and value I don't I don't look at things for what they are that doesn't mean anything to me I don't care what it is to me it's just a shape or a color or a value okay now a small brush um there we go I brought the good brushes today now we're going to make that just a little bit darker coming out of here that's just a little bit tricky right there and then maybe we'll get them just a little bit brighter okay and then we'll go real bright see this right here right in this area right here that's my focal area that's where the darkest dark is meeting the lightest light that does it I I think though that I want to come back in I think I made too much of an area right there so I'm going to come back in and skinny that up a little bit I like that better okay now then let's see here we can put some nice right in here this right in here that's going to get darker again I hope you enjoyed this journey today um I know I haven't really talked too much about where we went but today was more just about the journey through my mind as I tried to capture this flower on canvas now we need some of this dark right under here to separate that one and I don't think that one should be so so light I'm going to come down a little bit with drag that dark down just a little bit down into there you know it's fun to put these bright colors on but then you have to restrain yourself a little bit because you know you want some things to be in the back and some to be in the in the foreground so let me see here let's take a little bit of this right in here and put that right there and we'll take a little bit more this is actually where the light is hitting and we'll take a little bit more and we'll put right in here okay and then we'll put just a little bit more red back here on this one here just a little bit to kind of make it not quite so dark maybe we'll just take a little bit of this echo it down here just a tad like how that's coming I think I'm going to change that shape that's another thing you want to watch out for is those shapes do they complement each other you know the negative space in a painting is just as important as the positive shape if the negative space is interesting then the positive shape will be interesting too there we go we'll just have like a little curve there like it's curving isn't that fun okay it's wild it's it's it's free it's exactly how I feel today wild and free yeah this was this was fun I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did this was a lot of fun I'm just going to take them just touch up these just make these flower or these leaves have just a little more I know what I'll do I think I've only got a couple minutes left we are sorry to say almost out of time I could be here with you another hour easily I think I just want to show you one more thing before we have to wrap it up and I have to hurry now so bear with me I just pray it's a wing and a prayer that this is going to work there we go all right well I think it's you know what I don't even know that I'm going to have to do anything other than frame this I think that when I bring it back I probably is going to look exactly like it does right now because it's alive it's vibrant it tells our journey that we went on today it explains it in fact it's almost like a map highs and lows and brights and darks shadows and light yeah yeah this this was a good journey and I thank you so much for being with me today um you know without you I wouldn't be here so thank you for joining Painting Journeys today once again this is Kitty Lynn Klisch and I hope to see you next time bye bye for now