 Hello, and welcome to Gallery Works. We're in the studio today, and I have a special treat for you. The holidays are just around the corner, and every year I do a Christmas painting. And I thought this year I would do it for you, the viewers, and you can kind of watch me as I go through my creative process. I brought in a mink teddy bear for my subject matter. The mink coat belonged to my mother, and when I inherited it, I had it turned into a family of teddy bears. So this is Papa Bear, and he's all decked out. He's ready for Christmas, and so we're going to try to capture this little guy on canvas. I'm working with top grade professional paints and my usual palette. We don't have a whole lot of time, so I better get started. Thank you for joining us today. I'm mixing up some teddy bear color with a little sap green and a little cad red light, because that's where I want to go first. I want to get him just kind of blocked in there. Okay, I am seeing an ear over here, and then the face is coming down here, and this is coming like this. Now this part of the painting is always very, very rough, because this is the drawing stage, and so it doesn't ever look like much, but you block it in so that you can see the shape of what you're going to finish later. Okay, so now then we have coming over here, and coming forward we have an arm. Take a different color. His scarf is like a Viridian green with a little bit of blue. Now I'm painting very thin right now, because I'm using a little bit of medium to thin my paint, because I just want this to just be a kind of a wash. I'm not really going for finish. I'm just going for shapes and values and colors right now. So that little scarf is going around his little neck there, and it's coming over here, and it's coming back over here. So now that tells me, that gives me a pretty good idea of where that arm comes in there. Okay, and so that arm is coming down and around and up right about here. And he has his arms and his legs are quite chunky on this little fella. Okay, now then I'm going to take a little bit more. I'm running out of paint here, a little more of the sap green and the cad red light, and come over here, and I'm going to make his little body coming right down here. And this right in here is that scarf that we're seeing that is coming down here. So that's not really brown. So we won't make it brown. We'll make it green. Now there's some detail on that scarf that makes it really cute, and we'll fix that later. Switching brushes and coming down here. Now right here is the foot, and I'm going to go just a little bit lighter here. Okay, and there is his foot, and it's coming down a little bit lower than the arm is. Now that's the foot, and that's the body. Okay, and then under here it's very, very dark. We're seeing a little bit of what is in shadow, and that's his leg that is coming back from the foot, and it's in shadow. In fact, all of this over here is in shadow. Okay, I like to have my paper towels attached to my easel like this. It makes it really easy to get to them really quickly. Alrighty, now then I want to lighten up his arm because his hand or paw is in front of the foot. So I'm going to lighten this up here so that we can see that that is the arm coming forward, and there's a little bit of light right in there. Okay, this up in here is quite a bit lighter too. I'm going to come up in here and lighten this up a little bit too, and especially around where the nose is going to be placed. It looks to me like I don't have this ear quite big enough. It should be coming down and around like this more. Okay, in there. And then the other ear is coming out a little bit more. Okay, now then I'm seeing, and it's a little bit darker. So I am taking a darker value and I'm putting that coming right out here. And then right in here is the other foot. This is a little bit heftier, and that foot is quite light. I'm trying to stay away from the white. I don't want to get into the white too soon, but this is quite light over here. And you notice how I'm not really doing much, but it's kind of a scumbling type thing that I'm doing at this point to show where everything is. Okay, now where he is in shadow on the side of his arm here, I need to show that because that's a little bit darker and that will give us a little more of a feel for the shape there. It's really very important when you're first starting the painting to try to be sure and capture the lights in the dark so that you can capture the shapes because that's what tells you what the shapes are. Okay, now I'm going to go with a real dark right underneath here and that's going to be where his shadow is where he's sitting. And I'm going to go with a real dark right underneath there and underneath this foot here. Okay, now he has an adorable little wave going on. It's like he's waving to us. And if I look carefully I see that that's coming out of right about here. And so it's coming right out where his little faces and then it goes on down into the body here and then it comes up here, gets a little darker right in here and then it gets lighter right here where the paw is. There we go. Now he's pretty cute. I want this to be shaped a little bit better refining my edges here because this is real important at this point to make sure that I have my placement correct. If I don't have my placement correct when I get done with the painting he's going to look all out of kilter and then you'll look at him and you'll say what the heck is she trying to do there? So here we go. That shows his feet, that shows his little paw and this light over here shows his paw here. Okay, now he's looking pretty good. I'm pretty happy with him. I notice I'm going to put these brushes to the side and or this one anyway and I'm going to take a larger brush and I'm going to come into the background and I notice that I have behind him over here I have a dark shadow and then I have some greenery and I have a poinsettia flower and some greenery here and some greenery over here but the background is basically green and blue so I'm just going to go ahead and mask that in starting with my dark I'm putting a little tiny bit of red in this so that it makes it very, very dark right back here. Okay, now right about here is where it's very dark and I'm working a little thinner than I should I'm going to thicken it up a little bit and go more for the gusto here. We've got a cool green behind and then we have a warm yellow green for our greenery that is coming up our boughs of greenery so I'm just going to let this all come in here try to get this covered rather quickly now over here we have a lighter side it's in light and it's a little warmer but even though it is warmer because of the light it's still a cool green over here so we're going to put this on and that even though it is a light green it's still a cool green I'm not going to worry too much about if I get everything just perfect on here as far as the greenery and things like that are concerned because what I really want to show you is how I paint the teddy bear he's the star of the show Papa Bear Papa Bear's got a shadow he's casting a shadow right here and that's nice because that comes down and sets him off really good here there's a little bit of a shadow in here the scarf just kind of disappears into that of which is kind of nice okay and then we have some greenery there but we've got to have something behind there that is dark so that our yellow green shows up the warm green that we're going to use for the greenery on this okay now this is all in shadow down here quite a bit of shadow right there that he's casting and that'll be a nice background for our greenery there again always trying to think step or two ahead you know that's very important when you're painting try to have a plan try to know where you're going and why you're going there that's really important why are you doing what you're doing what is it you're trying to say because if you don't know the canvas won't know and then the people will look at your painting and they'll think well gee I don't really know what she was trying to say so I don't know if I particularly care for it okay now I'm going to come in here and I'm going to well I'm going to change brushes I'm going to come in here and get a smaller brush and no maybe I'll just leave it like this here and use this one here okay we have kind of a brownish looking stem that's coming down right here and going off into nowhere and then we have a some bristles that are coming over over in here and then on this side here now I'm mixing my two warm I'm making a warm green with sap green and cad yellow light that makes a very light nice warm green and that's going to be my greenery up in here and there's some that's coming off of here and I'll go back and put detail on later for right now I'm just trying to cover the canvas underneath his little arm and I think his arm needs to be just a little bit thicker a little bit bigger here that's a little darker in there now I'm giving it kind of a greenish cast I might change that I'm not sure but I do know that whatever surrounds an object it reflects into the color of the object so if you have a brown bear sitting in a green background you're going to see a little bit of the greenish in the color of the bear you have to excuse me I talk and stops and starts when I'm painting because my brain is doing one thing and my mouth is doing something else here I just want to lay this in I don't want to give it a lot of detail this is not the time to get into detail just kind of lay it in make sure that I know that it's there and as soon as we put red on our canvas we know it's there red is my favorite color I guess you can tell because I use so much of it and this right in here is the real dark green again because that's in shadow okay and this comes over here and then it gets a little bit later we have this adorable little violin in the foreground and it doesn't look like I've left enough room for him but I'm still going to try to get him in there I don't know if I told you at the beginning of the show or not but this is a two part show this is the first session of a two part show that and you'll see the second session the next time you view gallery works and that's where I will be doing the finish right now all I'm doing is just trying to mass him in and make him make sure that my composition is correct and that I have everything I want where I want it and that my shadows my lights my darks those are values values are the second most important thing in a painting the third and last important part of a painting of a good painting is color now I know there's a lot of colorists out there that would disagree with me on that one but that's just the way that I teach and the way that I was taught that composition is first and then and then color and then color and we've got some blue we've got some beautiful blue in here that's coming up and I'm just going to put it in there and I'll deal with it in the next segment of the show when making it come to life right now I want my canvas covered and I'll be able to step back take a look at it and make sure that I have everything where I want it it looks to me like there is a brown some brown in here like a pine cone or something in there and there is a pine cone back over in here too okay and it needs to be darker right in here where he's going back into that now if I wanted to just be hmm have a little fun here I might take and put a little eye right there and a suggestion of an eye there and if it gets too big on me then I just have to just come in and take it down hmm it's getting smeary now okay he has a kind of a tan nose I'd much rather he have a pink nose even if he is Papa Bear let's pink up his nose a little bit here okay now I can go ahead and start with a little bit of my finish work because I basically have the bear on here there's some green behind these flowers here oh you're so cute cute little guy okay now I think I'm going to come up here before we go to break and I come up here and I'm going to paint a little start painting a little thicker and just start getting that covered a little more completely in preparation for the next show so that we can see the things better my main joy in life I feel really blessed that I can stand behind an easel and paint it's a wonderful feeling to be able to bring happiness to others through your work and paintings like this especially bring happiness to people everybody loves teddy bears and everybody loves Christmas so this is very appropriate for this time of the year it's not too far off on it for us now we must start thinking about it what are we going to do we're going to go who with all those things that we have to think about during the holidays when I'm done with this little bear he'll just go home to mama bear and baby bear back into his little basket by my bed I think this is looking very very good I need some good strong hard for the branches I'm just setting this up at this point so that I can put my branches on come back and take some dark and put underneath here because I want his little shadow to be sure and show up and then when I put his fur on this could be in shadow a little bit and a little bit stronger and this could be in shadow a little bit stronger right in there okay and I think we're about out of time now I think I'll just take this and make this look a little lighter as it's coming over his little shoulder and little knot there this is way too much fun way too much fun I there's nothing this juicy paint is so wonderful I could eat it listen I don't want you to miss the next show because in that show I'm going to be finishing up this little guy and once again this is Kitty Lynn Klisch with Gallery Works today's theme is the Christmas bear thank you for joining us bye bye for now