 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 my studio. You're watching painting journeys. My name is Kitty Lynn Klisch and I'm going to take you on a journey today. But first of all I want to talk to you about where we went on our last show. We had traveled to Rome and the picture that I'm holding is of a monastery on one of the hills of Rome, one of the seven hills of Rome. And this was a lovely monastery on a very, the sun was going down and it was a very beautiful place, very quiet, very peaceful. As you can imagine Rome is a very busy place but this was one place where I could meditate a little and I loved it. So then at the end of the last show this is where we were. We had completed our painting to this point and you can see there's still quite a bit left to do on it. It's pretty much of a rough lay-in but it does give us a really good idea of where we're going with the painting. Okay now I'd like to show you the finished painting and that is right here. Okay this is the finished painting and as you can see I have defined the building a little more and I have added some branches on the trees. I have defined the trees over here on the left side of the painting a little more. I've added a little more light in the background and defined these trees, brought them up a little bit and brought these trees in and I have the sun glowing in between behind these trees then they're casting the shadows and then there this is very lit up in the front and as I was looking at it I remembered that there was this beautiful sun as it was going down there was this beautiful sunlight hitting the corner of the building and so I've added that as a little extra touch and then this right down here this dark area here was where the ground just dropped off and I don't know what was down there at some time or another may have been caves it might have been whatever you know it's such an ancient place but anyway so this is this is hillside monastery in Rome and I I hope you like it I hope you like it as much as I like painting it for you and now today we're going to travel a little bit north of Rome we're going to Tuscany an area of that is very popular in Italy and we're going to send Gigmagnano I have trouble saying that to a working farm that has been in the same family since the 1800s and so generation after generation has been working this farm it's huge they grow all of their own food and they sell they sell food they mill their own wheat they make their own wine they're a winery they grow their own cattle it's just it is just absolutely fascinating how large this is and how many generations of family that I met at one time while I was there visiting the farm we had a wonderful lunch and then afterwards we had wine tasting but I'll tell you more about that later let's get into the painting okay as you can see I have it pretty much drawn on and this is what we're going to be painting okay this was the front door and there was this quaint wagon that had been made out of like brambles or branches that had been bent and this big wine cask and and that says fattorio sendonata sen gigmagnano okay excuse the accent I'm not very good so anyway I have like I said I have put it on in charcoal and and I have secured it with a real watered-down acrylic now I'm I don't want to paint it with the charcoal on so now I'm going to wipe off any excess charcoal because that will discolor my paint when I start painting okay now the picture isn't quite as the drawing isn't quite as clear now but there's still enough left there for me to work with and there we go okay so now I'll take my palette and I'm going to it's just my usual regular palette going to mix up some I'm gonna start with the sky I think yeah definitely I'm just gonna mix up a nice warm Tuscan sky so I'm just gonna mix up a little bit of the blue here make a nice cobalt blue the sky in Italy was so blue it was breathtaking absolutely breathtaking and just my goodness so but I do I need to gray it a little bit so I will gray it with a little bit of its complement the red because we don't want to make it too terribly brighter it will be garish there okay now for today I think since we have so far to cover I think we'll just kind of do more of a lay in and and just so that you can see where I'm going with the colors and and everything I want because I do I only have an hour and I really would like to have this canvas covered for you so that you can see have a good idea of what this is going to be like I love this color blue almost the color I'm wearing today it's not really a cerulean blue it's not really a French marine ultramarine closer to a cobalt and I like that I get that by mixing the two together the ultramarine and the cerulean together and I get that nice cobalt blue okay I think that looks okay I think I put it just a little bit too much thinner on there but that's all right that'll set up we can always come back to that all right now we've got pretty much of a violet a lot of violet in here grayed violet in the building and so we'll go there next and so I'm going to just add a little little bit of violet to my blue now I need a little more paint this time because we have a bigger area to cover and as I was seeing I just I really want to give you an idea now I have to yellow is the complement of violet but I'm going to use my yellow ochre because I don't want it to be bright can't be bright it's got to be a nice grayed tone when something is how many years old would that be 1800 1900 2000 and something was you know like about 250 close to 300 years old why it doesn't look new that doesn't look too bad I'll lighten it up a little bit with some white by adding the white to the color I can always tell then I can tell if I have a good color well it's a little more blue some one of these days I'm going to surprise you and have all the colors mixed up so that you won't have to wait for me while I do that all right this looks pretty good okay here we go now I'm not going to thin it quite so much this time just a little tiny bit using an odorless thinner odorless turpentine to because it is so noxious the odor and I can't really stand that so now the painting today like I would if I were painting this outdoors from life I would actually just kind of come in and I call it scumbling because I want to get the different colors in the different places that they are so I would be scumbling it in like this quick thinner paint quick application not wearing anything at all about details and considering shape more shape and and color temperature and value that would be very important now that I do see a little orange up in there so I might take a little orange here and mix in here and just go ahead and mix a little orange in here yeah there we go back to the blue we do have these beautiful areas where the the brick it looks to me like what they have done over the years is put some kind of a plaster over the original brick foundation so we have this this look oh no I guess it's not brick it's stone stone and then there is brick so there's a little bit of that showing through and then this over here is lighter that's more the stone color so we're going to go a little bit lighter in there and as I said I'm not going for detail at all right now I'm just I just want to get the little too yellow a skill of orange in there I mean we'll we'll put the rocks and all that good stuff the neat stuff on afterwards we'll suggest those for right now we just want to get it paint on it now we do have a tree that's going to be coming over this area but we have to do what's behind the tree before we can do the tree all right there okay I do see a darker a darker line coming across right here okay now this is all pretty much a dark green behind but I'm gonna I'm going you know the the windows are like the eyes I always think that the windows on a building are like a person's eyes the windows are the soul of the building like a person's eyes show the soul of the person so I always like to go there and do the windows first and I think I'm just trying to mix up something that is going to look like it has a little bit of a reflective quality because as you can see in this window right here we're seeing a lot of I believe they have the blind down so we're seeing a lot of the sky being put in there and reflected into in the window I make that kind of a little bit bluer there a little lighter and there is that beautiful red around there around the tube right now if I hit the red on first the red would bleed into the blue so that's why I put the blue on first over here this window is has a darker grayer cast to it right here when we arrived at this place was earlier in the day almost lunchtime and they took us to this building where they had all these tables set up big long tables and it was a feast for the eyes because from one end to another was all this wonderful marvelous different types of cheeses and breads and just everything that you could think of that you would want to taste and fruit grapes and apples and oh I mean it was just it was just really inspiring and then there were all these carafs of wine all different kinds of wine and the owners came and welcomed us and told us manja eat eat you know and did we ever eat like crazy like we hadn't eaten in weeks and drank all the wine and when as soon as the wine carafe was empty here he would come with another one as soon as a plate of cheese was gone here he would come with another one such hospitality it was it was just absolutely phenomenal the hospitality I mean it it I can't remember ever being made to feel more welcome anyway so then afterwards we took a tour we needed to walk around we were pretty full so we took a tour and they showed us all these old old buildings and places that the buildings each have purpose a purpose to them you know they they one would be the pig farm the pig barn and the chickens and the goats and you know it was just amazing to me to think that a family all the children grandchildren great-grandchildren and right on down the line since 1800 have made their living working this farm and it's still going strong today it's just amazing to me we do have oh that window looks crooked that's cockey kitty don't you love it step back a little bit and you look and you say oh dear let me see here okay now there is a little bit of a of a darker edge in these windows right here because we are looking we are looking from an angle and that's a little bit too much but I've got a big brush and I'm not going to worry about it I just want to give the idea of what's going on there after we left this place we drove through the Tuscan countryside over to a town by the name of Sienna in each place that we went we had a different guide the guides have a union in Italy so as you travel around the country each our our main guide was not allowed to act as our guide in the other cities because she didn't have a contract so they're very well regulated there so that everybody can make some money I guess anyway she the guide that we did have a guide that we did have in Sienna was a man and he was oh my very macho and he was telling us that once a year in the plaza they have this plaza most of the towns over there have a plaza and the shops and everything are built around it and the town square whatever you want to call it and then in the middle is the is the place where people sit and shop and visit and talk and all of that sort of stuff so it's it's quite interesting but so he was telling us about how once a year they have this fantastic horse race and they put sand down all in front of all the shops and the plaza is built in a way is scooped out like a dish like a like a shallow bowl so that no no matter where you're standing you can see the horse race because they they bet on it of course and it's a very dangerous thing because there's only about 14 feet from the front of the shop to the end of the walkway and then the the plaza starts you know the the this indentation in the ground where everybody stands is the town square and it's like they put all this sand down and the horses race around in a circle around and around and there's eight different families or factions in the town and they each have their own district and they each have their own flag and so when you are in somebody else's area the last thing in the world you want to do you know is be caught after dark in somebody else's area and whoever wins the race then they then there's a big like a the the winners flag he gets to that group ethnic group or group of people that live in the town in their region of the town they get to display the the flag and and boast and be a big deal for the rest of the for the rest of the year until the next year when it when they do the same thing again and it's so dangerous for the horses because there's hardly any room at all I don't know I don't know if I could watch that but no matter the the square itself is built so that no matter where you are standing you can see you can see this with this little bit of roof on there so that we can see what's happening here and that will be end up being the shadow so everyone has a great view of this race and they bet on it and it's a holiday and then and tiny narrow streets my gosh so so narrow the street some of them are so narrow that three people cannot walk down it more like little tiny alleys right here to accent this accentuate this a little bit I'm just gonna suggest a little bit of the brickwork here so that you kind of get an idea there we go okay all right now then back over here we've got this green tree I will change brushes again and I'm just gonna very very lightly suggest some of the tree when you're traveling abroad it's it's a wonderful adventure but it's a little intimidating too because you know I I wondered before I left should I learn how to speak Italian and all the people that I knew that had already been to Italy told me no don't bother everybody speaks English over there well that's not true let me tell you not true they don't all speak English and so they're in some places there were was a lot of sign language going on which is kind of funny making sure that you get can they understand you and can get your point across now let's get a little dark kitty I'm gonna have to paint back into that I can tell that but I just want this I want to get something in here on this side something that's not blue or violet show a little contrast here I'm just gonna play with that just a little bit up here it's very hard for the viewer especially if you are a non artist to understand this because it just looks like I'm making scratches and anybody could do it but I have to tell you they're educated scratches right so that gives us a little color now when I come back in here I'll of course be giving this some brights and some lights and all that stuff now we have all this green over here this behind but let's do the door first I'm hoping today that we'll be able to get far enough along that I can show you a little bit about the finishing that's a beautiful old door gorgeous just gorgeous so I'm mixing my own oak color by mixing a little bit of the green with the red which gives me a really nice nice warm kind of a brownish color and I'm not gonna worry about the the slats right now in the door I mean the the boards that make up the door I'm not gonna worry about that I just want to get get it masked in so that we can see what it looks like there now we do have some areas on the door that are a little darker so I'll take a little alizarin crimson and mix with my green and that's going to give me a nice mahogany color the cad red light and green give you a nice burnt sienna or a warm brown and the alizarin crimson and green gives you a nice mahogany color of some deeper richer color and that's kind of come around here so now we have a little bit of a shadow on there okay and then I notice that the door is a little dark at the bottom too right down in here I think of all the places that I went to or I visited when I was in Italy that visiting this farm had a very large impact on me it was it was just so quaint I could have set up my paints and painted there for you know probably months and and been quite content I mean it was just such a lovely old place and I wish that I could bring show you all the pictures that I took you know I when I'm getting ready to do the show I I pull the pictures out and try to decide well what's doable what's going to be interesting you know to the to you the viewer you know and there's a pretty good looking door anyway I just there's so many things that I wish that I could show you but we don't have time okay that's kind of orangey and yet it's kind of gotten a little blue in it too and I'm not gonna worry about making the the brick look just yet because that's that's all pretty much finished I just I just want this on here so that you can see what it is gonna look like in this area here that's a little darker coming around there and then it goes back to the light and it's quite light on this side and this comes in here a little bit all right now then this guy up here to change our brush again and go back to a dark brush there we go this guy up in here is quite dark it's in shadow I want to gray it though I don't want it want to warm it up a little bit I don't want to be too there we go that's nice just just just enough so that the viewer feels that we have something going on up here that is very dark and in shadow but not enough that it looks strange and garish okay so that's that's what's coming across the front here and then underneath there it's going to be a little bit darker the stone underneath here it's going to be a little bit darker and it's going to be a little bit darker right over in here and right back in here I don't know if I talked to you about the wine in Italy it's amazing they don't put there's something that we put in our wine that causes you to have headaches when you drink it not so in Italy and some kind of a preservative we put in our wines they don't put it in over there and consequently the children can drink the wine instead of milk it's really it's really interesting how that is and when you drink the wine you don't feel like you like you've had too much are you you've overdone it or you you know your stomach is upset or whatever it's just nice you just it's just pleasant okay now I'm going to go back to that green brush and well I better let me see here now I'm this is pretty solid in there I'll just put a nice dark green in there once again I'm darkening my green with a little bit of the red now I'm going to go in underneath and I think I'm going to take a cool you know you have a warm green and you have a cool green your warm green and his sap green your cool green is for Rudy and I'm gonna take that cool green and I'm going to go in there and I want to I want to make this kind of pop and then I'll come back and and find my leaf patterns afterwards right now it's just all about defining the shapes the shapes of what is what is happening up here this is rather an ambitious painting today I must have woke up feeling very rested to think that I could tackle this in an hour here so we have a little bit of this coming down here and then we have a lot of this green up in here and it's almost covering this little window comes down a little bit that's there again keep wanting to go to the detail the details fun it's fun to put in the detail but you know it's like building a house if you don't put the foundation under the house then the the house won't stand so we have to put this is our foundation we've got to get that before we go into the detail and then this is coming around here like so and then this is coming down here underneath a little bit hmm it goes up and around this window I didn't I forgot to do that window and get that other brush okay that window is a little bit darker so we'll make it like that that'll give it some life of course that a lizard and crimson is my favorite color there we go and later on when I come back and I do the details on that window making it a little darker there because it is it is a little darker on the side but by adding that little bit of red in there I'm really making it look like you can look in that window okay I'm gonna go back to the green brush and finish up with that putting my green around so it's up and around in here it's coming down in here behind the barrel over here this is coming along in here and this is coming around like this in the foreground let me get some of that on well I guess I'll get that barrel first it's big not barrel I think that's called a wine ton looks like a ton of wine let's get that guy on there and you can tell he's really really old again once again I'm gonna make up that nice rich brown color I'm gonna put a little bit of blue in it to see how grayed this is right in here you know I want to make that a little more gray and when I put some highlights on that and I'm trying to paint so I'm going with the movement of the object back here it has a little bit more of the red in it and of course there's all those staves that are going to be going horizontal that we'll have to do but we won't worry about those now because there again that's finished work I do want to lighten that up just a little bit so that it looks a little rounder careful get too much paint here there we go here there we go now as we go down and around it's gonna get a little darker and I'm gonna have to go behind here behind my little willow wagon will branch wagon and put the dark in there that wine cut and then I'll just have to draw over that because it we need that dark underneath there because that part is in shadow you're constantly thinking about light and dark and shape right now then we will do the front of it doesn't that look marvelously worn I love the way that looks I don't want to get it too too dark and I want to try to make it as true as I can I wonder can you hear that you hear that scratch scratching sound it's not annoying to you I do an awful lot of painting like this just kind of scratching it in I don't know I don't know if that's appropriate proper and I'm not that's where if some famous art teacher would approve of my methods but they work for me they make me happy and that's why I do this because it makes me happy and I love it and I love being here with you and letting you join me in this journey across this campus as well as across the ocean like that I think we need to get a little bit of the ground color I'll go back to that kind of it seems to me like it's a real light kind of a grayish here starting from like right about in here and going over there now we do have some more green that's gonna have to go on there that's a little darker underneath there that looks good okay that works works for me nice little shadow and out there now I have gone beyond my picture and that's because I didn't want the painting to end right with half of the barrel on there so I'm gonna have to make up what is behind there my guess is is that it's probably has a little bit of a shadow to it and then there's that tree that's there so all of this is probably a little bit of shadow and because the the this little cart is made out of a material that you can see through I actually have to put kind of a light surface behind there so that I can pull out the cart later if I don't paint what is behind the cart before I paint the cart then all those little holes will those little areas will show so I'll come back and redefine the cart later and then this would be some nice light here in the foreground to the green brush I guess it must have gotten dipped into something else just wipe this one off and use it all righty now we're gonna come back behind in here create a little more green more drama and we're gonna have some green coming back behind here and I see a little bit of the building back there and so when I when I do the finish work on this I will be putting that in and then this is this is dark back here and in here too because it's quite shadowy back there there we go okay now then we have little wooden barrels please those are called whiskey barrels right in here is one and and that has the green growing out of it so we'll put just a little bit of a darker green growing out of that so we can actually see that stuff is coming out of there okay there we go that works okay and then over here it's the same thing we have another little barrel whiskey barrel and the detail of the staves and all of that will put in on finish in fact I'm quite excited for you to watch the next show because then you'll get to see all of the changes of bringing this to life that's always really exciting for me this coming out of here a little bit of shadow in here behind there we go this right here is a little almost looks like it's from Spain this little jug right here kind of a orange and pottery Mexican pottery it looks like it's made out of that red clay that we see so many flower pots made out of this looks like something that would have held a head and chicks at one time or another if you know what those are they're the funny little plant that keeps multiplying and you put it in something like this and it just it just seems to just keep multiplying and poking out all the holes and I don't see anything in there but I don't like that I don't like the fact that there's nothing in there I am gonna paint this barrel over here because I promised you I'd get this canvas covered you know and this is that was those were half barrels down here so now this is a whole barrel this one here and he's coming like this and then he has a flower pot sitting on top and he's darker brown he's much darker what am I thinking yeah he's much darker and he's shaped like this and there's a flower pot on top of him and the flower oh I think I want to see some red just for the front of it let's put some red flowers up here you know it's our painting we can do whatever we want and if we want to make red instead of purple we can yeah there we go and then we'll come in with the dark green behind clean that up a little bit and shape it that's called coming in from the negative space there we go here is the top of the barrel and that little pot is sitting on it and just just because I want to put a little highlight on it on the pot there we go now you can see that little pot sitting there and let me see here oh this is actually right here there's a there's a like a old piece of wood that goes across the front and there's a bell hanging on it and the only thing I can think of is that when the oxen pulled this cart the bells would jangle and I would imagine that was probably so that as people heard them coming they knew the man that was selling the goods was coming because they could hear is his jingling bell that's my guess anyway sounds good huh so we'll just go ahead because it's kind of like you know sticking out there so we'll just make it a make a little something there so that you don't there we go and this is coming down here a little bit more and now this is all going to have to sit up more before I start putting in the the wagon that's going to have to sit up quite a bit give us a little shape this little shape over here this looks like it's floating doesn't it oh well you'll see it next show you'll see how it's supposed to look next show because we're almost out of time now there's not too much left that I can do so I did get it I did get the canvas covered though I'm happy about that let's see here we can take a little bit of dark we've got just a couple minutes here we can take just a little bit of this dark and kind of outline some of these places here where the where the it's kind of like worn away and it shows the rock wonder how old that is well I guess it's from the 1800s I would think maybe we'll just show just a few rocks in here and soften that line to to kind of make that look more a little more shadow like yeah that looks alright it's not too bad for a rough in if I was painting on location this is what I would leave with is something that looks very much like this and I'd have a good idea of where everything is and the colors and values that it was and then I would go from there some of it I might make up and some of it I might make look like what I actually see that's the artist prerogative no wonderful there we go little bits of the building behind I hope you can see that just thought maybe that that would be a good idea to show a little bit of that building through there and we'll play a little here a little bit here and soft on those edges there we go make some little more of the shadow over in here and then like I said now we are going to have that that little carry wagon that's made out of branches that are all twisted around I know there must be a name for that but I don't I'm not sure what it is you know it's really a joy to be able to be here with you and have you have you join me as I reminisce and explain my my process to you I truly feel blessed to have had this time with you and I think we accomplished what we set out to do we have it all the paint everywhere covered with paint a little more cast shadow in that area maybe a little more here yeah there we go there we go and I got I have to take one more bravura stroke and that will be right here in the foreground to bring it to life I said one stroke but I cheat and I say two thank you so much for joining me today it has been an absolute pleasure to be with you and have you join me on this journey and be sure and catch the next show because on the next show we'll be able to show you the completed painting of the working farm in the Tuscan region of Italy and thank you so much for being with me today until then bye bye for now