 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 trip along the Mississippi River today. Have you ever been to the Mississippi? Well it's a beautiful place and I have some some nice photos I want to show you of my journey down the Mississippi. But first of all I want to tell you about what we're going to be painting and once again you're watching Painting Journeys. I'm really glad you joined us. Thank you for that. Okay this is a house that this is the what we're going to use as our reference today to paint and you'll notice that the house is on stilts. Well that's because the Mississippi overflows quite often and so it's very important. But this this home is these people actually live there year-round and I think that's so adventurous because can you imagine I mean one day you get up and the water's up to here and the next day you get up and the water's down to there and I don't know. I think I'd have my boat right out my back door. But anyway I I wanted to show you this and then I wanted to show you a painting that I completed a few years back when I was in Ireland and this painting today is going to propose the same challenges that the one that I painted when I was in Ireland. I painted this on site in Ireland and there again it's a building but it has a lot of greenery and trees and things in front of it and it requires you to make the decision as to what are you going to make the most predominant. Are you going to have what is in front of the building the most predominant or are you going to have what you know the building itself most predominant. And so I made those decisions there. There was a few years ago as we as we paint we get better at it and I can look back at this now and see some things that I wish I would have done differently. And so I'm going to try as I face the same challenges on this painting today I'm going to try to do it just a little bit differently. So I have it just lightly sketched on what doesn't show in the photograph is the fact that there is going to be a little bit of the riverbank here because otherwise it wouldn't look like home on the Mississippi if we didn't show a little bit of the river. Okay so let's get busy mixing up some paint. The palette is the usual that I always use same colors just different mixtures to get different results but it's always the same palette. Alright excuse my voice today I think I might be coming down with a little bit of something but from where you're at it won't be contagious so here we go. I am let's see here I'm going to take and I'm gonna make some dark I want to push some darks back in here and get some lights back there. That's the first thing I'm going to do. I'm going to try to work fast today. I want to get as far along on this as I possibly can so that we have by the time our short hour and that's all we have together is just one short hour and it isn't even that I think it amounts to about 56 minutes or something. Anyway I want to try to try to get as much done as possible so you can see where I'm going with this and then of course on the next show you'll be able to see the finished product whatever I didn't get done today. So here we go. Now I see some real dark back in here and I'm just gonna put it in. I mean it's really dark and then there's going to be there's going to be lighter greens that are going to be going over this but I want to set this back. I want to set it way back especially under the house here right in here. I love this little yellow house. I think that yellow is so charming on a house. Maybe a little dark down in here. Could use a little more green in there. There we go. A little dark on the shade of this of this tree right here. Okay I've got some dark back here. Now I'm going to take another brush and I'm going to go in and mix up a light sky. Now this sky looked pretty in this painting I mean in this photograph. It looks pretty washed out white. I like a blue sky. That's the wonderful part about being a painter. You know if you don't like the way something looks change it and make it your vision not the eye of the camera's vision. Make a nice little summery sky looking here. I'm just mixing up some cerulean blue with a tad of orange to gray it a little bit slightly. Little white to lighten it and now we have a nice pretty maybe I'll put a little bit of the ultramarine in there too just to give it a little cooler look because we have so much warmth in this area here in these leaves so we'll go with a little cooler looking sky. You want that you want different color temperatures on your painting too. I just took this trip this past fall and went with a group of people from our church and it was really something we went over to the Mississippi to La Crosse Wisconsin journeyed over there took a bus it was a lot of fun a lot of laughs and we got on this we had our own private boat the charter boat to take us down the Mississippi and what fun that was seeing I mean we they took us on the little back channels and we got to see all kinds of different animals and in in the water and everything I thought maybe there would be alligators but there weren't thank goodness that would have scared me after death because it was a real low kind of flat bottom boat you know I guess the Mississippi really isn't all that deep a river so yeah we're just bouncing that sky around here and there a little bit and then we're going to be putting the the trees on top okay all right now let's see here and we've got down here there's a little fence and we can see a little bit of the sky down there but I want that to be lighter because as the sky goes down towards the ground it always lightens up so I have to remember that so this little house was one of the first things that we saw as we were traveling down the river I think we were on a little like a tributary a little side part of it there we go okay now then we've got we get that let's see here I think we'll just go ahead and and put that yellow the sun was very bright that day yeah we're just yellow roof in there real quick or the yellow side of the house rather excuse me well that's kind of bright to gray that down a little bit I always like to use a little yellow ochre to gray my yellow that works pretty nice not nearly as garish that way too tiny very tiny little windows there I wonder why those windows are so small straighten them up a little bit here there's a little now this on this on the front of the house is quite a bit lighter because the sun is hitting that so that's going to come up here and come down okay yeah that's about the same the right value I think maybe this is just needs a little couple brushstrokes in there to show that all right and right under right under the roof here it's gonna be just a little bit darker and it's gonna be a little darker right in here and then we've got this nice dark roof and it's a little darker as we come right in here that's too big a brush they always tell you paint with the largest brush you can I don't know I just can't seem to do that I feel like I have more control with a smaller brush right in here and right over here it's real dark and then it gets a little lighter towards the top where the light is hitting it we've got this little guy coming out here this little Eve right here there's a little window in there and then I'm gonna take my sky brush because I don't like the hard lines I'm gonna take my sky brush and take some this lighter sky here and I'm just gonna bring that right over the top of that just bring that sky right on into that roof line there so that we don't get the feeling that it's so hard I'll go back in here and set it back in there there we go nice and light now we'll probably be going over that at some point but at least I have it laid in all right now underneath we have some very dark area underneath this house and that is because we can see the underside of the house and put a little red in there a little alizarin crimson so it doesn't look so black there we go that looks a little better and probably gonna have to fix my corner here oh that's going up I say gotta look at your photograph kitty there we go there we go all right now that's need a little more yellow in here just show here that's where the window is going to be we'll just kind of pop that in there for right now see the windows kind of blackish so we'll just got a couple windows right in here nice and bright and that's good and square these off a little bit oops every time I go back and fix something I mess it up that's why you shouldn't fix but I can't keep myself from doing it fix this line right here take the darker too many brushes go in here there we go nice sharp line right there there is a little porch sticking out here now we got to get what's behind it that green okay we'll take this brush that's that real dark green again makes up some nice dark green put around in here and I'm not going to worry about my posts the stilts I'm not going to worry about those just yet because I'll wipe out to put those on all right now we have greenery up in here and it's breaking over the house here and it's coming over the porch here it's nice and light and bright up in there very light and airy I'm not going to worry about putting in the the trunks yet just trying to mass mass us in a little bit so anyway we're after we pass this house that I absolutely fell in love with we journeyed on further down the river and we came to a big bridge that went across the river and it kind of connected the one side of the river to another side where there was a very on our side of the boat there was a very quaint little town I want to show you a picture of that bridge it was really it was kind of arched and at first I actually thought that we were in the Mississippi here I'm gonna pick this this picture up and I'm gonna show it to you I actually thought we were in in St. Louis because the bridge is arched and of course it's not nearly like the bridge in St. Louis but kind of reminded me of it I was hoping I was hoping we were gonna just keep going forever so anyway though then a little town that was let's see here I think how's that looking okay sure all right now this side here looks seems to be a little cooler in the greens yeah all right and we've got we've got a cooler green that's coming up in here so we're gonna mass that in a little bit very interesting the the the history of the river and what they were we're telling us about all the different happenings that had gone on I'm sorry to tell you that I don't remember a lot of it but then getting to that age you know where you don't remember as much as you used to but anyway it was very interesting there the river has a very colorful and kind of a naughty history this little town it that was alongside the river was just a sleepy little town and didn't look like there was as we were floating by it didn't look like there was much going on in there in the town except that they had this big gang walk and I'm pretty sure that that is probably well here let me show you this is the the town and there's this big building that looks like something that you would go into to go down you know to enter something on the river and anyway and I think I think just for the sake of letting you know here I think what they were entering was this great big casino it's the floating the floating casino and it used to go up and down the Mississippi the name of it is the lady luck it held a ton of people and now and they would they would go out into the water where gambling was legal and then they could gamble and have their showgirls and and have their fun and then when they docked all the people would get off the boat you know so I thought that was really an interesting bit of information and they keep the boat really updated and in good shape because I think I think what happens now as people go aboard the boat and have dinner and things like that so and I need this to be much much bluer a lot of unusual looking things you know the old mixed with the new this next photo that I'm going to show you is it was some kind of a mill of some sort and I'm sorry I don't know what it is some of you out there probably do but it was this really quaint looking mill in fact I really almost wanted to bring it today to paint that for you because it was so quaint looking now we're going to come back here and go for detail later but for right now it's just all these mixes of greens is what I'm seeing but anyway this this mill and then in front of this mill are well let me show you in front of this mill are all of these like pleasure boats speed boats great big fancy boats and in front of this old mill and the contrast the contrast of the of the old you know against the new the old way of life the old way of working against the new way of enjoying yourself and everything I thought that was pretty interesting you know I just kind of like that that the change between what was and what is I thought that was really interesting so that's why I wanted to share it with you here we go and now we got a little bit coming over here and you know this is this is probably pretty boring for you watching me do this but I just want to just get this green danced in there so that I can come back with some branches and I'm just making these shapes here this is the problem when you have a painting where you want to put a lot of green and then in front of something now this right in here seems to me to be a little bluer coming down that whole section there of the tree right now back in here we have the dark green again you know that's not dark enough let's see here getting a little too much paint on the brush let's just take some of that off and start over with a little darker green there we go we made the house here it's really dark by the side of the house that dark in there's looking for the dark spots and the light spots and then there's real light a real light spot coming down light and warm coming right here against the dark okay and then we have like a bush here and we have the green right here now we better take our wipeout tool and wipe out where we want our oh okay there is the porches coming here so I'm gonna have to re repaint that after I wipe this out a little bit because that's where there's a little porch coming off of it and I want that to show all right now then right in here we have a stilt coming down and that's on the front side then back here we have one coming down but he's on the back side so he doesn't go all the way up and he's not as long we have another one back here same thing he's in the back now here this one here is coming clear from up here and coming down we have another one in the front right here and we have another one over here okay so we'll get those stilts kind of placed in there and that's kind of a light gray back there because it's behind it's in shadow so we have to keep that in mind they're pretty good size let's see do I see another one back here yeah I think I do right there and then these ones in the foreground just a little lighter and a little warmer I think this place is so cute I wouldn't mind living there person lives there year-round I think at one time the person just wanted it to be a like a little summer cottage but then they came in and they fixed it all up and put it up higher on higher stilts and and now they live in a year round I just I can't imagine anything better than living right alongside the river except for the scary times when it's flooding of course now these are kind of wide as you can see so we'll just go back in there and when they're all up with some of the darker green and well I just got the 30 minute sign I thought I'd been going a lot longer than that that means we're halfway through the show and I have more than half of this canvas painted hey I'm doing okay quiet being too quiet I should be talking to you I'm really concentrating I don't like that at all but we'll be fixing it we'll come back to that later I do needle a little dark a couple of windows up here okay now I think what we're going to do is we're going to start on some tree limbs and I want the tree limbs to be oh let's see let's make them a little more of a violet color and we've got a big one coming right over here and we're going to make some branches come off of that I don't want these to be too straight and this guy here he's a little lighter at the base and then he gets darker as he goes up because that's where the shadow is now this coming all the way up here we have this and then we have a little little things coming off of it my brush is too big to make those little tiny branches so we're just going for the the larger ones right now there comes one over here and you know you never want to make those branches look like wet middles they're always jointed even on a weeping willow tree you want to make the branches jointed otherwise it just it has no structure it has no strength and just like a pipe you just you know make make lots of joints on it and it'll it'll be very forgiving if you make a mistake that way because it will resemble a tree much more than just little wet noodles I call them wet noodles do got something going over here too and something coming down over here all right okay let's get before we get too involved with anything else let's get some of this foreground down now that's that's nice and light and bright that Sun is just a shining on that all righty and then it gets a little cooler as it goes away over here see how the yellow changes and it becomes a little cooler kind of always watch for that color temperature that change in temperature okay and then down here now where we have this dark this is this is cooler and it's coming down into this right here into this bank and that's the bank coming down into the river there and so that's darker and it's quite dark right along in there and of course we have we have some branches and twigs and things like that but that's that's kind of finished work we don't we don't want to start tackling the detail right now we want to try to keep the broader approach going okay so now we do have we do have some rocks whoops that's not a rock kitty that looks like a I don't know what but it doesn't look like a rock let's get that off of there I don't like it and I needed I need a different brush I have 15 layers of paint on that one clean brush will be much better let's see here now I have lots of brushes to wash when I get back to my home studio today that's okay that's what they're for use them and wash them and use them again oh we got these rocks in here some rocks over here I want this tree to just kind of come down into that a little bit with a little I have a little bit of a light on warmish light on that tree on that side there where the sun is heading up right there and in here we have kind of a half tone bring this up and because I want the river oh now this is real light over here yeah okay this is this is very light in here let's get this going here nice and light nice and light night lots of paint lots of paint yeah let's just get that on there and we've got a looks like a bunch of brown rocks let's see what we'll get here there again it's in the it's in the light so the light is really hitting it and I don't use brown I make my own brown I make my own earth colors I don't I don't use an earth color like your earth colors would be like burnt sienna burnt umber those colors I like to make my own colors like that and then that gives you it gives you a cleaner a cleaner look okay now we're going to have the river bank coming right here we want this to come down as a shadow cast shadow this is all coming down as cast shadow from what's above I guess we need a little more green in there now we're going to have some nice blue water coming in the foreground that the the sky has hit and made it look kind of blue oh how pretty I like that I'm sorry I guess I shouldn't say my work is pretty but I do like that I like what's happening there I like it a lot okay now we still have 15 minutes to go hopefully we're going to be able to show you a little bit of finish today that'll be a treat all right pull this up and flip it over there we go some clean towel all right I'm going to come in behind here with some dark fill that in with some very dark okay I'll make some smaller branches these are just a ton of branches coming off this tree and and we really don't want to have all of them on here uh let me just way way way too much this is coming off of here and coming over here some nice dark branches up in here that's much darker if you ever get a chance to take a trip no matter how short it is down the Mississippi don't hesitate to do it the scenery changes so much I mean you just you see so much and the wildlife is just phenomenal the birds and the um regrets and the waterfall I mean it just it's you know and the little animals that beavers and things like that that live close to the and the and the beaver the dams that the beavers build and then there's the eagles and the eagles they build these big nests up in the trees when they and when the eagle lands in the tree you the whole branch because he's so big the whole branch just bends and quivers as he alights in his nest it's just it's it's such a marvelous marvelous adventure what a journey what a journey now I think we'll come back on top of that and we'll put some leaves patterns on top of this that will kind of set those back a little bit okay some of these leaves look like they're like they're kind of lighter this might be too much too much paint on here a lot of the canvas showing through that but I'm not going to worry about that to heck with it who cares we'll take care of that later time and place for everything let's just get some leaves on here make it look like these are leaves and not blobs of paint and I don't like this thing here even though he's in the picture I don't like him so I'm just going to make some leaves go across him and that'll set him back a little bit see there's a way to handle everything all right let's see here maybe I think I want that water to be a little more sparkly whoops I think something fell down gang but we'll just keep going and so it's okay with you guys it's okay with me we'll just keep going that that's too that is too yellow I want that to be more blue there in the foreground for the water all righty and then let's see here we've got this little bit here and that seems like that needs to have some dark in it well okay here didn't do that little porch yet and it's kind of a kind of a gray color it's kind of a gray color too a little white in it okay now we need that dark back in here all right let's see here maybe we can do a little something with these windows let's pray we don't mess them up maybe just a little darkness at the top then we'll do a little yellow over here okay I think we did pretty good today on this I did want to tell you another little part about the trip we after we took our cruise we stopped by this this mansion there was this huge mansion at one time this man was the wealthiest man and all of all along that area anyway in the cross area and he built this gorgeous mansion for his wife and the sad part of it was is his wife who was from New York she'd never liked living out there with the Indians and everything and so she never she would come and visit but she wanted the children to be raised with a city education so she lived in New York and he would go there and he would he would build this dream home for her that she didn't care to live in so they if turned it into a beautiful museum at one time one of the children were thinking one of his children after he was gone were thinking of turning it into a horse farm and so they built this big enormous beautiful stable and of course that never that never came to fruition either you know it's just sometimes your dreams just don't come true your dream maybe not might not be your mates dream or your spouse's dream or whatever and so when that happens then you just got to plow ahead and do what you think is right and that's evidently what this gentleman did his kids seem to really enjoy the place i had this um well i'm just going to show it to you here i think um i think i'm going to wipe off the bottom of this a little bit because i came back in with too much light and i don't think that looks good there we go that looks a little more like water now hear that knife i love that sound pretty scratchy anyway so i'm going to show you a picture of the mansion now and uh and there's there was this gorgeous absolutely gorgeous pond that was there i mean i just myself i couldn't imagine anybody building something like this for me and me not appreciating it and wanting to live there but i guess ladies back in the 1800s had different ideas so anyway here is a picture of the mansion and in all of its splendor gorgeous walkway up to this enclosed front porch where you could sit on a on a hot evening and uh and this is a picture of the pond with the flowers around it was so beautiful just such a that was just the nicest journey one of the nicest journeys i've taken in a long time i really enjoyed it and so this is our this is our little river our home on the mississippi and it's looking not too bad it's got some room for improvement but it's not looking too bad for an hour it's time i'm really glad you joined me today and once again my name is kitty lynn clish and this is painting journeys and i want to tell you if you really enjoy watching my show please think about sending a little money to w s c s shabuigan uh that's our station and we could use the funding to keep quality programs like this you know on air for you so if you think about it send a little money our way we could use it once again as w s c s shabuigan tv and thank you so much for joining me i'll see you next time bye bye for now