 Funding for Painting Journeys is provided by Veritas. Financial knowledge is power. Be empowered. 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 traveling today to the Great Northwest in Washington State. We're going to be painting a place that is very near and dear to me. It's a shy, shy beach in the northern part of Washington State. But before we get into that, let me tell you about what we painted on our last episode. This is the Mill Creek and it's in Cowliss County, Washington State. As you can see, I did do a little bit of work on it in my home studio. I did do some changes and I did enhance certain portions. I wanted to make this one area look like it was my focal area. And I'm really pleased with the way it turned out, the water sparkles just like I wanted it to and the sun is shining through the trees. Yeah, it looks just like it should. I'm really pleased with that. And so today I'm really excited to start out on this painting. As I said, we're painting shy, shy beach. It's near the Nia Bay Indian Reservation in northern Washington State. My brother used to go there as a young man and camp and fish. And anyway, I have the painting sketched on in acrylic, affixed to my canvas so I know pretty much where I'm going. Working with a regular palette, I always use the same colors. They're just more basic. I like to mix my greens. I have green on here, but I really like to add to it to give it a little more texture. So I better mix up some paint here. I think first of all, I want to kind of get the feeling of that sky in there. So take a little bit of the blue and add a little bit of cad red light to it and a little white. And that turned out rather lavender. I need something redder there. And we also need a little gold in that too. This painting is going to have a lot of detail or subject matter in it. So we may not, we'll have to see how far we get today. And I forgot to get my medium out. So excuse me, why don't I do that? I'm just an accident waiting to happen here today. Here we go. My medium out. It's actually just a odorless turpentine so that it's in the paint a little bit because I don't want it to be too thick. All right. Now when you're going from memory, you know, it can be a little challenging. I'm going to want to have some of that down in here in the water. And some of it down in here too. And I may lighten that up a little bit, put the, a little lighter going across here. This is a very interesting area when I visited there. One thing that really, a story that really interested me was that not too far north from this. They have a monument and what had happened is a, this was in the 1800s, early 1800s, this ship of Japanese sailors that were on, on, on a destination someplace else. And there were horrible storm came up. And so in those days, the only thing that they could do to keep their boat from capsizing was to cut their rigging, cut their mast. So naturally then when the storm was over with, they weren't able to go anywhere. They just floated because they had no, no way to, to go, to move. And so these Japanese, they got, these Japanese sailors, they got caught in this horrible storm and cut their rigging. Oh, I don't like that. They cut their rigging and then they proceeded to float. Well, it took them 18 months to float following the currents in the Pacific Ocean to float over to Nia Bay, Washington. By then, 14 of them had died of scurvy, but there were still three that were alive. And the Indians, the Chief, took them in and took care of them, these three. And the Department of the Interior was notified and they were, tried to make plans for these three Japanese sailors to go home. But it was, it wasn't, they weren't able to do that. So they stayed there and they took on, at that time there were other, a lot of other Japanese that were coming to the area, fishermen and things like that. So they stayed there to teach English to the Japanese that came over and they never made it home. There's a memorial, beautiful memorial there that talks about that. And I don't know, I just, I find that so incredible. How could they make it 18 months just floating like a bobber out in the ocean, in the Pacific Ocean? That is just really something. As you can see, I'm kind of graying this down up there. Because of the mist, there isn't, you know, real bright colors, like you would see in the tropics or in Hawaii or something like that. The colors aren't real bright. It's just more of a mist. And let's see, that can come over here too. So anyway, that was quite a story. And those fellows went through quite a bit, actually. This beach, I've lived in Washington State different times in my life. And this beach was not too far from where I lived. I lived in Clalem Bay, Washington. So Nia Bay, where the Indian reservation is, and Port Angeles, of which is right across from Victoria Island, Canada. In fact, you can see the cars at night from Port Angeles, downtown Port Angeles at night. You can see the cars on Victoria Island traveling around on the roads. And of course, that's when it's clear. And they have a nice ferry that takes you over to Victoria. That's a really nice ride. But anyway, there was a little town by the name of Joyce that I lived in. Went to school. And we would go to the beaches all of the time. To me, I am so in love with the Great Northwest. To me, it's the most beautiful place, or one of the most beautiful places. I know anywhere that you live, it's home to you and it's beautiful. But this place always calls to me. I always go back. And so at that time in my life, we were living in Joyce and going to a high school that had grades one through twelve in it. And it was kind of a different situation. And then we left and went back down to California where we were originally from. Now I'm just putting this on here because I want to kind of like, perhaps I should put a little something on underneath. I want to kind of make this, you know, island out here have the depth that it needs. There's a lot of darks there. But then there's also lighter trees too. And I'm not going for, I'm not trying to reproduce this picture. I'm just trying to, when I'm done here, I just want to give you my impression of this area. One day we were down by the beach and there was a huge octopus and it was trying to sneak up on her and get her. And some of the men there took sticks. There's logs and everything laying all over as you can see in the picture here. These are huge, great big logs that have washed up ashore because of the lumber industry that is so prevalent in Washington state. So you see a lot of these logs that get washed up that have fallen off the barges as the lumber has taken south. Anyway, they rescued this lady from the octopus and that was very scary. And I don't know if you've ever tasted octopus or not. It's very chewy, but that one was eaten. People here are extremely hardy. They make their living from fishing and the lumber industries, the mills. They're hardworking people. And like here in Wisconsin and other states, the Indian tribes have casinos and things like that to make their money from. They don't have that up there. They don't have any casinos or anything like that. They just do it the old fashioned way. It's work for a living. Trying to show this is this island and then down here on the bottom, it's quite dark and that's where the rocks are going up. The roads in this area are so narrow that if you meet a logging truck, you have to almost stop your car and pull over to the side to let him by. And those logging trucks, naturally they have their quotas to make, so they're moving very fast. It's very dangerous. Now we have this dark coming down right here and here. It's dark and it seems to come like this. I know I have my drawing on there, but I think I want to move the water line down a little bit and move this rock. I'm going to move all this down a little bit. I think I don't have enough room for the actual ocean coming in right in through here. So I'm going to move that down. I have to soften that edge. Of course, I think I'll take a different brush and soften the edge with some of the background because that's going to be in light. Light is behind, coming from behind. So we'll soften that up a little bit there. That's better. And then up here on the top here, I do see a tree. I think I'm going to make the tree. This tree that is in the photograph is leaning, or it looks like it's going straight up. I think I want my tree to look like it's leaning. So I'm going to just have it come down like so, so it looks like it's leaning there. Now I see what I'm doing here. I'm getting trapped in too much detail in a tiny little corner. The least important corner of my painting, and I'm getting caught up in trying to give you detail. And that is definitely a no-no. But I'm doing it anyway. Oh well. I'm going to come down in here and bring this over here. And then we're going to have this big rock coming up right in here, and right like this. And he's coming here. Then we have the water coming there. And there's a little bump here, more rock. The rocks are just wonderful. They're beautiful the way they just rise up out of the ocean. And when you see the water, the waves breaking against it, it's truly an awesome sight. Now this is going to come around here, and I'm just massing this in in some dark. I think I like my sky a lot. I think I'm going to be leaving that alone. They have a, at Nia Bay, they have a beautiful, I mean if you're ever in that area, do go and check it out. Because they have this beautiful museum that's dedicated to all of the artifacts of the Indians that live there. And it's really something, the stories that they have to tell. I think we'll just go into a little more of a golden color for right in here. And we'll lighten that up. Now this rock here, I think, let's see here. I'll go ahead and put that center in. He's coming down here more. And this is coming like this. We have this coming right across here. That's a little too dark. Let's go a little bit lighter. And a little more gold in it. There we go. It seems to be a little redder going right around here. We have getting a darker now and we're going into forming these shapes here. Now in the photograph, you'll notice that the tree is right on the edge of where this land. The land is coming around here and around here. And then it's right behind the tree. And that, for a painting, would be very bad composition, would not be good composition. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to make this, I believe, go all the way off over here so that we can see the tree when I put that on coming up. Instead of having it meet like this, whereas light on one side and dark on the other, I've got to make that choice. Either the dark goes all the way through and this comes around like this, of which that might be kind of interesting too. Maybe I'll do that. So the dark was going to come around like this and then the tree isn't hanging out there. And that's going to get lighter. I'm really glad you joined us today. It's kind of a, I don't know, when I am in front of a scene like this with all of God's natural beauty. I guess I get kind of tongue-tied, you know? It just makes me feel overwhelmed at the beauty of the nature of nature and especially of this area. Yeah, that's going to look good when we put the tree on it. And then this is going to come up this way more. There we go. Now we can just kind of block that in. You can see I'm not painting for finish. I'm painting to just block it in and have the colors that I want there where I want them. It's almost like an underpainting. Okay, there we go. All right, now then. Let's see here. Well, we have to do this on this side too. I'm trying to get some, a good underpainting color to make it seem, this seems to me to be a little lighter green and a lot of moss and things that are growing in that area. We'll get those logs in there and the details. We'll do that. Maybe we won't be able to do that today, but we'll do it. We'll get it. Next time you tune into the show, you'll see it when I bring it back all finished. That's what's so fun to take these back to my studio and finish them up and then bring them and share them with you when they're all completed. Okay, I kind of like this the way this is going. Yeah, this looks pretty good. Now this is all really dark in here and this is more sand. This coming out here and coming back in and right in this area. We have a real dark, dark tree evergreen bushes and stuff that are coming up from the foreground here. Usually I like the foreground of my paintings to be very light so that you have the sense that you are, can go into the painting, you know, go in like this. But here in this particular shot, I was standing up above, so we have to show that we are standing up above. So we'll just go ahead and put this in here, this dark. And it is going to be a little darker because of the fact that I'm making the painting so that it's more like sunset, more towards the end of the day. Make that a little bit darker in there. And I'll have to do some fancy stuff with a brush to make it look like branches and things like that. But there again we won't get too hung up on that. Okay, now I think I should put the water in. Now I'm just sort of, as you can tell, I'm just sort of feeling my way. I think I want that waterline right about there. We'll definitely need to have some glow on the water, something like that. Maybe we'll make this even a little bit lighter back in here. Then we can make this lighter too. A little bit of the red to show. I think I should have painted the water before I painted all the land. Well, live and learn, right? After all, you know, if it doesn't turn out right, we can always just wipe it out and start over again. That's the solution to that. I don't really think, let's see, I don't really think I want that water to be that. I want that water to be a little gray or thinking and talking to you and kind of thinking on my feet here. A little more lavender-like. And in here, the water is definitely going to be a little bluer because this is shadow coming down, reflection coming down in the water right in here. Maybe a little brighter green in here. Let's see here, where's that brush hat that I was using? Is this it? Okay, so now we want the water to be just a little grayer coming down in here. Now that looks a little too similar to the land, but remember that that's all going to be changed a little bit. So a little more blue in here. And my strokes here are going down because that's what describes water. A downward stroke and then you go back and you go across and that gives you depth and makes you feel like you're looking into water. And I'll show you what I'm talking about in just a second here. There we go. I think we'll take a little bit of the yellow and red there. I'm going to lighten that up a little bit. And we're going to come across here. Now that's quite a ways back. So then this right in here, we're going to have that water coming across in here too. Maybe with a little more red in it. And by doing this, it helps to make the water look more like water. And we don't have our foam yet from the tide. I think that's what's coming. It happened right here. The tide is either coming in or going out. And that's why it's part of the land is showing and part of it isn't. I think I want to make that water a little more violet down here. You know, I think that's what we need in here, some violet. And there again, as I was telling you for the most part, I'm not going for finish or for detail. I'm just blocking it in and getting a good sense, a feel of the painting. You know, painting is truly like a journey, a journey across the canvas. And if you, while you're on that road, if you hit a dead end, then you have to change course. You have to change direction. And maybe what you had originally planned for the painting, maybe that doesn't work out. So you have to be open to what the painting is telling you and make the changes that are necessary to make it work, to make it sing. That's a nice word, sing. Let's see here if we just brighten this up just a little bit with a little violet in there. That would look pretty cool, I think. Okay. And then on this side over here, it's going to be a little bit lighter. And back to the blue. Oh, it looks like I painted over my rocks, didn't I? I didn't mean to do that. We'll just put them in real quick here. Okay, they're kind of a dark. Let's see. This one is coming right about him here. And this one is over in here. You can't see him because he's kind of hidden behind the tree. When you go to a beautiful natural place like this, you know, you always want to try to refrain from picking up rocks or, you know, we used to scour the beaches for driftwood. That was always an okay thing to do, but you don't want to take shells and rocks and things that have washed in. We had a really lovely collection of the glass buoys that would float over from Japan. They come in all different colors. I like big, big bobbers. We had a, my family had a nice collection of those. Hang them on the fence outside that went around our property. All right. Let's see here. Now we're back to this sky behind the tree. And that seems to be pretty light back there. I'm just going to come right on over, put that in, and it comes all the way down. I guess it doesn't. That should be water. Of course, a lot of this is going to be covered from the tree branches. And the water is going to be coming up here. I'll just show you a little bit of what I have in mind for this. Water is kind of light as it's coming over here, in here and out, and then back in here. So it just looks like a little bit of water coming up over the, you know, splashing up there and coming up over the cliff. Now I should darken this right in here so that you get a better idea of what that looks like against the water. Okay. So the land is coming right in here. It's coming like so and coming around. Then this is coming around here like this. And it's quite dark in here. Comes out like that and like that. Okay. So now then you kind of get the feeling of the land being separate from the water. Over here on the other side, it's really quite, the beach is quite, has kind of a reddish cast as it's going around. A little more red in here. Okay. Now we'll just go ahead and quickly put on that. Well, this has a nice little light spot right here on it, on the top of it, where the sun or something is hitting it right in here. Now we'll go for the tree. The tree is very dark because it's in the foreground, but I don't want to make it as dark as the picture because I know that the photography has made it look darker than it actually is. So that's something that you want to be very careful about when you see dark objects. You don't want them to be quite as dark as they are in the photograph because that's not really the way it is. If you were standing there and looking at the tree from life, you would be able to see that it's not as dark as what it shows in the photograph. So now we'll just come up here like so. We have a branch that's coming out and going up. Then it's coming up here. It will have to be a little bit darker right in that area because it's going in front of this, and this will be a little darker right in here. It gets a little skinnier as it goes up and out. And let's see now. Now we'll see if we can put some branches on it. Not too many, just a few. I just want to show you, give you an idea of where I'm going with these branches. They're going to actually cover up quite a bit of what's on this side of the painting. And by the time we put the greenery on it, these branches don't seem to go out and up. They seem to just go out. So I'll have to be careful because I have a tendency to want to make them going in all going up. So as I was saying though, if you ever get a chance to go to Washington State, be sure and go to the northern, western most corner of the state and go to the ocean. It is so beautiful. You'll fall in love. If you're lucky enough to get a nice day, it does rain a lot. In fact, for our next episode I'm going to be doing a large tree that's probably two or three thousand years old that it grows in the rainforest. In the center of this area, more inland, there's actually a rainforest. And I never knew. I thought rainforest, that would be tropical. Not in Washington, but it is. It's a rainforest and it's raining most of the time. And it's really beautiful and green and lush. It's really something. Okay, I'm just going to quickly because I know we're running out of time as much as I hate to tell you that. I know we are. I'm just going to quickly try to put a few branches to kind of like give you an idea of what that's going to look like a little bit up on there. You have to get much darker though. I hope you're able to kind of get the feel of it to see how it's going to be. I don't want to do too much with this because I know that I'm going to have to do a lot of repainting here in order to get this fixed up right. There we go. I think I need to fix the water right over in here. It seems to me that it needs to be a little bluer in here. Right where this island is and I'm going to bring the island out just a little bit too because it seems to need to come behind this tree a little bit. It's something I just noticed that I want to fix there. So we'll just bring the island out a little bit beyond the tree. And then we won't have that problem of the kiss again. Kiss is when some two lines meet, converge, and instead of one thing going behind the other. Okay, I think that's okay. And put some little bit of this in here. Kind of give it some little blue down here. I hope you've enjoyed your journey today with me as we've traveled to Shy Shy Beach in the state of Washington. And I hope that if you ever get the chance to go there, that you will. It's beautiful and wild, very, very nice place to go. Okay, and I think maybe we need just a little bit of water splashing up on this rock right in here. Okay. Now, the next time you see this, it'll be all completed. And it probably will look a lot different than it does right now. But I do, I really do, rather than leaving it all so bland, I really do like making it into a, the sun is setting and giving it more color. That's the way it looks when you have a clear day of which you don't have too often in the state of Washington. Thank you so much for being with us today. Next episode we'll be going to the Olympia National Rainforest. And I hope you'll join us again. Thank you so much for being with us. Once again, my name is Kitty Lynn Klisch and you've been watching Painting Journeys. Bye-bye for now. Funding for Painting Journeys is provided by Veritas. Financial knowledge is power. Be empowered.