 You are in the studio with Kitty Lynn Klisch. The geese are flying over. The leaves on the trees are starting to turn. Yes, autumn is definitely in the air. So sit back and relax a while because I am going to paint a lovely autumn scene in oil just for you. So first of all, let me talk about my equipment here. As you can see, we have a totally blank canvas but not to worry because, you know, we'll start putting something on it pretty soon. If you'll notice that canvas is toned. Now, the reason that I do that is, well, number one, it's very, very intimidating to work on a stark white canvas. And number two, the little spots of white that show through the paint on a canvas sometimes will make a painting look cool. So I tone all of my canvases with a cadmium red light acrylic and water. Just wash it down with some water and then put this thin coating of a cad red light acrylic on it and so that it looks like this and then it's prepared to draw on. Now, we'll be drawing on the canvas with charcoal, just regular old vine charcoal and with a kneadable eraser to take it off with, erase our mistakes. And then we'll be fixing it. But I'll talk to you about that later. First of all, I wanted to tell you about my easel. Now, I know everyone is really into the French easel. It's smaller and it's compact. Well, this is the Swiss easel and it's really a hum digger. It's so sturdy. It has these two little tables on the sides and all these little shelves for your paints and everything. And it's just a marvelous studio easel that is portable, very heavy. You wouldn't want to travel with it, but it is a great studio easel for traveling around from studio to studio like I am today. Okay. Now, let me tell you about my brushes. I like soft brushes. I prefer the soft ones, the sables and Langnickel or Isabay. They're both very, very good. I don't like a scrubby finish on my work. I prefer my work to have a soft quality. I've had critics say that my work represents a romantic realism. Well, I think that it has a soft quality. That's all I'll say about it. And I get that because of my brushes, the brushes that I use. And then of course, there's a couple palette knives in here. And of course, my trusty wipeout tool. I wouldn't do anything without that. Years ago, my teacher told me that the wipeout tool was more important than the brush. So I always have one at hand. Now, the reason I'm telling you all these things is because I'm thinking maybe, just maybe, you have some paints there somewhere in your house and you want to pull them out, maybe you want to paint along with me. And that'll be okay because then you'll all be doing something with me instead of just watching me. So go ahead and get those paints, pull them out and follow along. See what you can do. I want to talk about the picture that I'm going to be painting. Now, what I did is I took three photographs and I put them up here on the wall for you so that you can see. Now, this bottom photograph, this is a little scene in Gibbsville where I, close by where I used to live. I used to walk there and almost every day and I'd walk past this place and I just thought it was such an enchanting scene having come from California. I wasn't used to seeing scenery like this in the change of the seasons and we don't have that in Southern California. So I was quite taken with this little setting and so this is the scene I want to paint. However, I want there to be more color in it. So I, this is a scene that I shot with my camera from the car one day as I was driving through the kettles and I thought, oh my gosh, that is just gorgeous. I really want to have a picture of that because I'm going to incorporate that with the sky into a painting someday. And this is a good idea. You don't always want to just take a photograph and copy that photograph verbatim. You want to mix some things in. Make it personal, make it yours. Take a sky from this photograph and put it with something in that photograph and maybe add a tree from another photograph. And before you know it, you have a very personal painting that just belongs to you. And if somebody says to you, hey, that tree wasn't in front of that barn, don't worry about it. It's your painting, not theirs. Then over here on this little photograph here, I thought these colors were so vivid and so beautiful. And this tree right here is just such an interesting shape. It's so strong. And I just love the way that looks poking up there. So I thought that I would take some of this photograph. Now, I'm not sure how much, but I want to take some of this photograph and incorporate it into this, even if it's just to put these leaves on this tree because those leaves are kind of, I don't know, they don't do too much for me. I love this dark shadow here in the front and the uneven fence posts with the broken-down fence. And oh, I can hardly wait to get started. I am going to change this sky, though. And I want to have the sky a little bit more like this because this is such a peaceful scene, but I don't want it to be too peaceful. I want to add a little bit of interest, a little bit of curiosity, just what's going to happen. This looks like maybe it could be a storm rolling in. Who knows? I want to put those clouds in there, just to make us think a little bit about what might be coming. So now I'll come back over to my canvas. And I think, well, first of all, though, before I draw, I want to talk to you about my palette. Now, the palette that I use is a pretty basic one. As you can see, I lay all my colors out from the lightest to the darkest. And then also, you'll notice that it is all of the cool colors up to this green are on one side. I mean, all the warm colors, I'm sorry. And all of the cool colors are on this side. Now, what that does for me, I lay my palette out the same every single time. I never vary unless I may add colors. Most of the paints that I use are Grumbacher. I just prefer those. They're a good middle of the road. However, I do have one Windsor Newton here, the Indian yellow. Now, I'm going to tell you the colors. Take a pencil and a paper and jot these down if you want. It's kind of important for you to know the colors if you're going to duplicate the painting. Okay, this is the soft white, titanium white. This is your soft yellow. This is cad yellow pale. This is cad yellow light. This is Indian yellow by Windsor Newton. This is yellow ochre. And this one is cadmium orange, cad red light, Grumbacher red, burnt sienna, sap green, Viridian green, cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, phthalo violet, alizarin crimson, burnt umber, and ivory black. Now the black, oops, I'm almost going to lose my paint here. The black is on the palette. Not because I'm going to paint with it so much, but I may use it, mix it with another color. I very seldom ever use pure black on a painting. It doesn't look very nice. It is kind of dead looking. And I like to mix my colors. So without any further ado, let's get started with the drawing. Now I'm going to sketch this on for you. Now first of all, I'm going to look at the big shapes. Okay, now the one thing that you will notice is I have my canvas in a vertical position and my pictures are all horizontal. Now, so I'm going to have to make a change right there immediately. And so what that's going to do for me is I'm going to have this tree over here on the edge right over here and going right out of the picture. And then it's going to have some branches coming here and over here. Now for right now, I'm just kind of laying it in. I don't want to divide the canvas in half. So I must raise the line that separates the sky from the land. I must raise that up a little bit. And I think either raise it or lower it. And I think I'm going to lower it. I think I'm going to have it going right across about here. All right. And then I've got the trees. Now the trees are... One thing about photography, you'll find that it flattens things out and makes things seem like they're further away. So you have to take that into consideration whenever you're drawing a photograph onto the canvas for you to paint. So I'm going to make the trees just a little bit higher because I know that if I was standing and looking at that scene, those trees would not seem so far away. They would seem a little closer. So I'm going to make them just a little bit closer. And this is coming in. Now I'm looking at the top photograph, top left photograph and I'm just very lightly blocking in the trees that I see there. Now it's going to be maybe a little difficult to follow because I am combining the two photographs. So that might make it a little bit difficult for you to see what I'm doing here. Right now I'm blocking in some tree shapes and it's all at this point, I'm just blocking in shapes more than anything else. I'm not really going for accuracy. I'm not... I don't care about accuracy right now. This is a work in progress and it will continue to change as we work on it. Now that little barn, I don't want that barn. Of course, I don't want it right in the middle. If I put it right in the middle, then that's going to make it look like a bullseye. We don't want to do that ever. So I'm going to move the little barn shape right over on the side here. It's a good point to try to make the focal point of a painting to be either here, here, here or here. In one of those four spots, you're never, ever in the center and never, ever out on the edges. So now I'll just take my eraser and a racist mess I made. These needable erasers are so great for working with a charcoal. It's important to work with charcoal because you'll want to be free with your drawing. You want to be able to just lay it in and re-race it. And if you use a pencil, then it's, and you erase with a regular eraser, what happens is you take the finish off of your canvas. So always use the needable eraser and just charcoal and lightly sketch it on. That's your first step after you've toned your canvas. Okay, now this little barn. Let me get that perspective just right there. Okay. I love this little place. It was, it's just so quaint looking. And in fact, I really wanted to, my husband and I asked if it was for sale. We were so enchanted with it, but it wasn't so we just get to paint it instead of own it. But then that's okay to refine this a little bit. We've got a little, let's see, this is a little more like this. I must tell you that drawing was never a, my forte, my teacher used to tell me, kitty, draw something every single day. Have that sketchbook with you and draw constantly. Well, naturally I never did. And so kids, I suffer now. And I tell my own students, draw every day, but I don't think they do either. Oh, well, here we go. All right, now then. We've got lots of trees that are around this little barn area. And the only thing that I think is missing here is a silo. And I think I really want a silo in there. So I'm gonna pretend that there's one right about here. Okay. Yeah, all right then. Now then we have this tree. Now I don't know, I'm thinking now that possibly that tree is too far over. It looks like it's going up the side too much. So let's adjust it a little bit and bring it over just a little bit. Before we put the tree on though, I think maybe we'll establish the foreground here. Now we've got this and let me see here. Now the barn door is on the side over here. We barely see it because it's pretty well hidden in the growth and the trees and things. And then this is coming around like this because it doesn't really have to be straight. And then there's another trees and things over in there. All right, now then. Yeah, that's looking okay. Now you notice I don't draw with a lot of detail. I just am just trying to get the idea, get the feeling. I'm more interested in a mood right now than I am in a perfect drawing. Okay. So now then I see that this dark, big dark shape right here is coming like so. And then we have the fins. I think that one needs to be closer together. My goodness. The whole herd of cows would get out if the fence was that far. Fence posts were that far apart. There we go. Maybe this one here. All right, now then. We'll put the tree right about here and he has a wonderful little curve to him. Let's see if I can capture that feeling in the branches. Now this is where we're going to use those leaves that are on the other, that small photograph on the right there that I fell in love with. Because those leaves will be beautiful on this tree. Okay, now. All right, let's see here. I think that's looking pretty much how I want it to look. And then we've got grasses and all that business coming up over in here. Maybe this could be a little bit bigger. So it's a little more in the foreground. Now, I have the luxury because I'm in the studio and I'm working from a photograph. I have the luxury of just a second here. There, that looks good. Points right to the focal area. Anyway, I have the luxury of because I'm working from a photograph of not having to worry about the shadows moving. When you're working outside, the best thing that you can do is just mass in the dark shadows immediately when you start painting. Immediately you would mass all this in and get all those darks in place. And everywhere that you saw a dark shadow, you would mass that in and make sure that you get that secured because within minutes that shadow is the shape of that shadow is going to change. And at that point, you're really, if you spend your day, changing your painting and trying to catch up with the shadows while the painting won't be done and it won't look like much when it is done. So you want to, when you're on location, when you're outside, mass in your shadows and leave them. It doesn't matter if four hours later you're still finishing up and those shadow has changed from say over here, say that shadow was there, okay, when you started the painting and now it's all the way back over here. Don't worry about that. Keep the shadow where you put it in the first place. I have the definite luxury of working from a photograph and my shadows aren't moving. So that does make it quite a bit easier. But it would be kind of nice to have a little bit of a shadow coming off of these. Say, say I, it looks from the photograph, it looks to me like the light is coming from, say, like the left and more to the back and the left coming across to the right. But I'm thinking if that were the case, then this is dark here in front. But why couldn't these guys, these fence posts, why couldn't they create a little bit of a, just maybe just a little short shadow there, just to give a little interest to that foreground then? I think that's, yeah, I think that's a nice idea. And then we know already that this is all gonna be dark because the light is coming there again from here. This side of the tree is gonna be light and this side is gonna be dark over in here. Now then, I think I'm pretty happy with the way this looks. I'm gonna leave this be now and I'm gonna show you the next step. We cannot paint over this until we affix this charcoal to the canvas. And how we're gonna do that is we're going to take, first of all, we're gonna take, this is acrylic that I've mixed with water. It's yellow ochre acrylic and I've mixed it with water and I'm gonna just affix the drawing with the acrylic. It'll take a few minutes, so bear with me. When I was in class, years and years ago, I hate to tell you how many, my teacher would, you know, we would always start our paintings with the traditional way and a little thinned oil paint and we'd splash it on and do our drawing then and then we'd just go right into the paints and everything and it was, of course, the paint was very, very thin and so if you're working along and you do something wrong and a certain area isn't right and the teacher said, wipe it out and my teacher loved to tell me he'd wait until I was almost done with the painting and then he'd come over and he'd say, this whole section is all wrong, wipe it out. And I'd wipe it out and sure enough, there would go the drawing that was underneath because it was, you know, only put on there with the paint, oil paint interpenoid. And, oh, that was very distressing to me because I wasn't very good at drawing. So I finally learned that if I took and I affixed my drawing with acrylic, then he could tell me to wipe out as many times as he wanted to and I didn't lose my drawing. So to this day, I still affixed the paintings with the acrylic and then later on when we're painting, if we don't like an area and we have to wipe it off, we haven't lost anything. For me, this is the most difficult part. The most important part of the painting is the most difficult. You see, paintings are, should be thought of as like the human anatomy, you know. The composition is the most important part of the painting. That's the drawing and the placement of the subjects on the canvas. And then you have the muscle and tissue that hold the bones together. So you put the composition is the skeleton and you put the muscle and tissue over the bones to hold them all together. Well, that is the values. The muscle and tissue is the values, the darks and the lights, okay. And then over the whole thing, you put color all over the whole painting after you've got your drawing done of which is the most important thing. Then you have your values all decided and everything and that's the second most important thing, a pleasing pattern of light and dark. And then the third and least important is the color and that's like the skin you drape over the bones and the tissue. Now, there are some artists who are what we consider colorist and they would definitely disagree with me. But for every artist, there is a way to do things. You know, we all have our own favorite palettes. We all have our own way that we like to do things. When I paint, I paint in an a la prima style, a la prima meaning wet into wet. In other words, I don't wait for areas to dry and then go back in. I paint it wet right into wet. I'm not concerned about layering or anything like that. And for myself, I find that this gives my paintings a fresh look, you know, a spontaneous look. And although the technique of layering and letting areas dry and then building up color on layer of transparent color on top of transparent color, that's very beautiful and it's very technical, you know. But for myself, I'm more of an emotional painter and it depends upon how I feel is how I paint. So anything that is too technical and requires a lot of exactness just isn't my cup of tea. Now you see how loose I'm making all this and you're probably thinking, oh my gosh, is this going to look like anything? This lady's making a heck of a mess here. But trust me, it'll be pretty when we're done with it. Our program is going to be divided into segments and for this segment, we have talked about the drawing and we've got our painting on the canvas. As far as the drawing is concerned, we have it secured on the canvas. Now the only thing that I didn't get are those clouds. Now this is my trees in the background. I think that the clouds I'm seeing, I'll just do this freehand here, are kind of coming like this as I look up at the picture. They go down behind the tree and then this right here is more cloud and right up in here. Now sometimes, and then there is a nice cloud pattern going across the top here too. Now sometimes when it's like this, it's hard for me to tell which is which. So I'll put a C for cloud so that I don't mistakenly put my trees up too high and I'll put a T down here for trees and then that way I'll remember where I'm at. Okay, now I think that that's looking pretty good and when that dries, we'll be able to take a paper towel over it and wipe off all the charcoal and just the drawing will be left. So this concludes this portion of our show. Be sure and be with us next time when we start laying in the sky and I talk to you about the process of painting. So goodbye for now. This is Kitty Linclish. You're in the studio.