 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. My name is Kitty Lynn Klisch and I'm taking you on a painting journey today. We're going to be traveling to Ketchikan, Alaska on my canvas. I have a photo up here and this is a photo of the Tongass Narrows in Ketchikan. It's just south of the city and it's a beautiful, desolate place. Alaska itself is a gorgeous place to visit. Anyway, this is what we're going to, this is our journey today. We're going to journey on canvas and capture Ketchikan, Alaska, Tongass Narrows. I've taken some preliminary steps by toning my canvas with a cad red light acrylic and then I've done my sketch in charcoal. And then I've gone over it with yellow ochre acrylic and water, lots of water to just kind of set that charcoal in. So essentially now what I have is a value study with the lights and the dark areas and this shows me what my composition is going to be like. I work with a pretty basic, very basic palette and in fact I have more colors on here today than I usually show. It's just the basic colors. I have my warm colors over here and my cool colors over here. But what I want you to know is that this is not really a how to show. This is really a journey, a journey, a creative journey with me capturing this place where I visited and loved and it caught my heart and I wanted to capture it on canvas. And this is all about the journey of creating. So I'm glad you joined me today and I better get busy. Thank you. I think we're going to start with the sky. I'm going to mix up, I want the painting to be a little, of course I don't want to just copy the photograph, I want to create my own feeling. So what I'm seeing here is a rather blueish, I want to see a blueish sky. So I'm just mixing up some colors of blue and graying it down and then I'm going to add a little white to it and I'm going to get a nice gray, grayed color. And perhaps I see a little warmth coming through the gray in the sky. It was, you know, Ketchikan is actually, I never knew this before I went there, but it's actually a rainforest and their weather and temperature is very similar to ours here in Wisconsin except that they don't get as cold as we do and they don't have as much snow as we do. They do have a lot of rain though, but when the sun shines it's glorious just like it is anywhere I guess when the sun is shining. So anyway I'm just about got this how I want it to look and I want the, I want the right in here, right in here, okay, where the sky meets the water, I want that to get quite a bit lighter so that we will show the distance. I don't know if you realize it or not, but this is actually the Pacific Ocean here. And Ketchikan is an island, there's no way in, there's no road. The only way that you can get there is by boat or by plane and when you fly in to Ketchikan, you land at the airport that is another little island that is separate from the island that the city sits on. So here we go. Now I'm going to start with my horizon line and go up, I do want this just to be a little bit warmer, it takes a little while to get on my palette what I'm feeling I want to see on the canvas. All right, a little more light in there, okay, I think we have it now, all righty, and just wipe my brush on my paper towel here. My easel was made for me by a good friend and he did a wonderful job, it's kind of an unconventional looking easel and the fact that it's pretty big, but I really like it because it really serves the purpose well. Now I like to paint thick and juicy. My style of painting is known as a la prima, that means wet into wet or all at once. So I'm going to come down here and I'm going to establish my horizon line right there and then I'm going to start putting these nice thick, juicy paint strokes on and we're not in a rush today, we're just taking our time and talking, visiting and watching this creative process. There we go. Now once in a while I'll give you a little bit of, you know, there's certain techniques, certain rules that painters are not supposed to break, of course rules were made to be broken, but there are little things, you know, but one of them is that what goes behind something has to come out on the other side. Now we all know that the earth, that the sky lays in layers of atmosphere and those layers, they go straight across, they don't go up and down around mountains and everything. So what we have, this value that we have right in here, we want that to kind of stay pretty straight across there, all right? Now we're going to go into a little darker here and this we're going to soften, I don't like, a lot of people use the word blend, I don't like that word, I think blending belongs in the kitchen, it's an appliance, a blender and I think that softening is what you want on your canvas. And I have the choice, I can make this a cloudy day or I can make it a sunny day, but to me, because Ketchikan is the rain forest and it does rain something like ten months out of the year up there. I think I want to make it like that, I want to make this a little moody looking. My trip up there was just fabulous, it was a fabulous experience, I went one day to one of the most famous totem pole carvers, I went to his, I got to go to his studio and see him actually working and it was marvelous what this man could do. He even has one of his totem poles that he has carved, designed and carved and of course they're all designed from their native heritage, what's important to their particular tribe or background. But anyway, he even has a totem pole that he carved for the governor of Alaska, so it was very exciting to meet him and watch him work. And then I did a little gold panning, that was funny, you know, I don't know, some of these spots they always get you with their little gimmicks, naturally you think you got some gold but I don't know if it's gold or not, just shined, made you feel good, was pretty. I'm going to just go right into this because this is going to be, you know, some very loose tree leaves there, so I'm just going to kind of go in that and paint around it here. I want this sky to be nice and thick and juicy, have lots of action in it and yet I don't want great big brush strokes, I like brush strokes, I like to paint kind of soft, I like things to be soft, have soft edges and there's a place for crispness, crispness, there's a place to have crisp hard edges, but I don't know, I say I like a softer look, I think it just makes you feel better, it's not as jarring, you know, but then every painter has their own way, their own style of creating and that's a good thing, just think how boring it would be if we all painted in the same way, that would be awful, I was in Ketchikan, I went to a national park up there and on one of my future shows, I want to do a painting of a waterfall that I saw there, it was absolutely breathtaking, you just, you wouldn't believe how beautiful it was, I want to do that on a future show for you, have you go along on that journey with me and see that waterfall as I saw it, as I see it, these mountains in the background, they don't have a whole lot of color, you see right here, they don't have a lot of color, they are very gray and very set back, as I said, this is, the name of this place is the Tongass Narrows and the reason it's called that is because of these mountains back here that are jutting out from the land, the boats have to come in between there and it's narrow, so they call it the Tongass Narrows, a little more softening here and, K, now then I think, I think I want this warmed up just a bit here by the sky, by the horizon line, I'm going to add just a little more orange to that, warm that up just a little bit, there we go, it gives us some atmosphere back there, yeah, yeah, I like that, I like that a lot, and then that almost looks like little clouds rolling in, you know, as it's the beautiful part about painting, I said as you're painting, you can just tell yourself stories and just dream about being there, you feel it all over again, you feel the trip, the excitement of being in this little tiny plane that came out of Juno and the connection was to Seattle and then to Juno, Alaska and then you get in this little tiny plane and as you're flying over the water, you can see the whales, you know, the whale spouting and cresting and everything and it was just, oh my gosh, and then when you look down and you see this little tiny, tiny airport, this little tiny strip and you think, boy, this is going to be like landing on an air, on a great big airplane carrier, like the Army or the Navy has because somehow or another, someone's going to have to come out a parachute or something and stop us because we'll go right off the end of that runway and right on into the Pacific Ocean. There we go, I like that, that looks nice and soft. All right, now I want to get these mountains in and the mountains, all the mountains are, it's just a little bit more of a little deeper color of what the sky is there in the background so I'm just going to darken up my sky color just a little bit and I'm going to come up here and I want to warm it up. I can see right away that that's not warm enough. It's got to be warmed up. I'm having, for some reason today, I'm wanting to go too cool and I don't want it to be too cool. I want it to be warm or so. I want a nice warm gray there and where those mountains are going to be. This is coming like this and it's coming down here like this and then it's coming like this and up and down and around. There we go. Now that and this would be a little darker here to the bottom. There we go and then we have them on the other side and they're going a little bit behind the trees here. These pine trees were just so elegant but something that was amazing to me was that because Ketchikan is mostly rock there's no real dirt for the there's no real dirt for the trees to grow deep roots into so the trees have adapted. These great big huge pine trees have adapted themselves to just having very shallow roots and so they just barely they're barely clinging on and yet they're able to grow so tall the tenacity of them to just keep trying to grow when there's really no dirt to grow on. It's really amazing and then you see them and they just hanging in there just barely. Let's take this now and bring my sky down into this and clean this up soften it up a little bit here. Whoops. I thought we had that glued okay a little technical problem here we'll just fix it real quick here we go and back to my palette all righty now I need just a little bit of dark it's coming like this and like this and then up and then I want to put just a little more light behind it right in here coming down there we go a little darker at the base the idea is here that we're barely seeing these in the distance there and later on after I get some more darks in I may come and punch that up a little bit accentuate that a little bit more so that I have the the feeling that I want here all right I think that's looking pretty good maybe I'll put a little bit more warmth into this sky up here there we go yeah I like that warmth in the sky I think that really helps that even though it's a gray day it's it's a warm gray. Ketchakam people are very very friendly and very nice a lot of native people up there and in fact I met one man that was a medicine man and he gave me a native name he said that my name in Alaskan would be Yishonishi and that stands for smiley face so that was that was pretty much fun and he told me that my totem would be a raven they really like ravens up there they have them on the totem poles everywhere and whether that's true or not it doesn't matter because it was very enjoyable and I made me feel very special to have an Indian name or a native name Alaskan native name not Indian so anyway there we go that's looking pretty good I'm happy with that I hope that it looks the same on on to you the viewer as it does to me there we go now the water water is darker and it's has just a little touch of violet in it in the background there just a little bit of violet and that is what shows the distance makes it look very very distant on the horizon line where the water meets the sky so here we go nothing ventured nothing gained okay and I'm going to soften that so that it goes back I'm gonna come up in my sky and drag my sky over that there we go that's what I wanted now I kind of lost my little mountain there so I'll have to go back in here and and reinforce him can see that now that I get the dark of the of the water in there I can see that my mountain's just a little on the light side when you're painting it's just a constant dance with the brush that makes you you know you you work a little here then you work a little there then you realize that what you did over here affects something over there and you have to go back and so now then this water it gets lighter as it goes in front of the mountain and there was a little darker back here but now it's going to get a little lighter and that's way way way out there and then that water comes right over here and I just noticed something I noticed a dark edge of trees right there and I didn't see that until just now it surprises me I didn't even put that on my drawing I just didn't see it before but we're going to get it in there real quick because we definitely want that there to okay now so that I'm going to take a different brush and I'm just going to quickly mix up a very very dark um green grade green I'm going to put some of the blue sky in it because this is there again this is not it's not bright there's nothing on this it's bright it's it's very soft and dreamy and we want to keep it that way so I'm mixing up a color that I think will be really nice to lay on top of this here for this little bit of dark that's going across there it doesn't seem to come out of this side of the trees it's just going across there okay maybe needs to be dark and just a little bit more here it looks like a little just a little bit of trees there you know what the what goes behind it's got to come out the other side so we're just going to take it over there now that's our prerogative as the artist to just make things come together just a little bit better and now I'll put that brush down I'll go back to my water brush and I'm going to soften that edge and put that way back there we want that to look like it's way back there there we go now I think that looks is looking really nice very nice and then as my water comes closer it's going to be getting a lot have a lot more action in it more color in here you'll see that the water has a little bit of that orange I think what I'm going to do is I think I'll eventually go back up into that sky and add a little more of that orange because I want that little bit of orange or red in the water there but I think it's looking nice and I'm quite pleased with it now I may come back and do a little more on the mountains give them a little more shape yeah I could do that I'll just come here on this side of this mountain here just make it a little bit darker there we go now we can see it just just a little bit better just doesn't take much at all doesn't take much at all yeah there we go and put a little dark here and this one here a little dark right in here too on this one here just to have him show up a little better there we go yeah I think that's I think that's coming quite nicely when I get the dark leaves down in here that's going to look really good you can see these leaves how they're all spaced and they're right in the foreground and I think they're going to be a lot of fun to paint when we get to that point you know I have been thinking I think that I really want to define these mountains just a little bit more it's kind of bothering me in here and I I think we could use just a little more light in there yeah I like that and I'm just going to come on the top here maybe and just just just a little just soften that down a little bit and I like those soft skies that are just so nothing is pronounced and I think I will come in here and reinforce this mountain right here a little bit let me see here right in here I think he's coming like like this and then he comes like this and then down and then okay I have a lot of light paint mixed up and it's well sometimes it gets a little difficult to get just the right color that you want to make come in there there we go okay that seems to work sometimes if you come into this right here would be considered the negative space and the mountains would be considered the positive shape usually if your negative space is as attractive as your positive shape is then you have a pretty good composition that's one way to tell and I'm going to lighten this just a little bit more there I want to give it just a little more warmth I don't want it to seem too too terribly cool just a little more warmth in there there we go now in my down here in my water now I have my violet on now I'm going to put some of this a little bit of the warmth that's in the sky and because the sky reflects into the water and so and I'm making these strokes go up and down now the reason that I'm doing that is because I want the water to look like I have like it has depth and the one way to do that and this is real light over over here I just see that now you know sometimes it just seems like you do one thing and then it's like the domino effect and you have to do something with somewhere else somewhere else and just keeps going now I see I want I want this up in here to be just a little bit darker that looks okay and I'm going to put some more of this color here in here like this and then I'm going to go into kind of a of a bluish gray and come down in behind here because not I don't see that rather warm feeling everywhere I just see that and coming like right through the center right in there in that area that's that's my real warm area so now with my downward brush strokes and the reason for that that I make them go downward is I want to like I said I want to show depth please forgive me if I repeat myself I just kind of talking and thinking at the same time and and there we go now I'm going to come in here now this is my real real dark little jutting out area of rocks that's that's that now I don't want to paint over it I just want to come in here though because it is quite light in there and now I'm going to come with a little bit of the blue and put that in there okay and then over here we have a little bit of the blue coming and this is where this little part is jutting out okay now I'm going to take a smaller brush and I'm just going to make some little little tiny strokes that go back and forth to show a little movement in this water and the idea is not to completely cover what you have done as far as you don't want to cover your strokes that are going downward because that's what shows depth but the surface of the water while the water is deep and goes in a downward motion the surface of the water is usually has movement you know the wind may be blowing or it just might be more of a turbulent day maybe maybe the tide's coming in or the tide's going out I don't know what was happening this day that I was standing right here taking the photograph okay now now you see how that kind of just lays the water down I'm going to step back and take a little look at this I see it just a little bit it's a little bit crooked so I'm going to take my dark brush again I want to straighten this up here and I want I just want this to be just a little darker and a little more predominant in there there we go and then right in here I want my mountain there there we go now I've got a nice horizon okay and then I'm going to wipe the brush and I'm going to come back over here and I'm going to reinforce this light that I have right in here there now we have a nice skyline and you see how that just made that look like it goes so much further back okay now we're going to come on down with our water brush and we're getting into a little bit more into the bluer as we come down into here and I'm doing the same thing now now I'm coming here in this lighter area and it's going to get a little bit lighter so the brush is going to I hope you all can see this it's it's little tiny short strokes and it just goes so long so far and making it look like real water that has depth you never want to just paint the water um just you know flat straight across like you're painting a wall okay and then we'll come with a little blue over in here soften that into that that's always the secret that softening so that it all flows together beautifully that's what we want we want a beautiful little scene here I really can't wait until I get this those darker trees on there when they come down just a little bit in here I see this is just a little bit bluer right here as we're getting close to the where we're going to put those trees on that's getting just a little bit bluer and it's light right in through here now then I want to take a different brush and I'm going to paint these pine trees now there they are that's not dark enough that's very very dark we want that to be very very dark up here and just make this tree he's not so perfect kitty come on let's get that guy gives that guy some character there this is coming out over here a little bit okay and there's I see five trees there like I was telling you those these trees when you walk through the forest there great big huge trees just I mean you could almost as big around as a car have fallen over because their root system is so shallow they've fallen over and where they've fallen over and broken off new trees have are growing up it's the most beautiful fantastic sight to see it really is the trees are there they're not real full as some places I've been they're a little more sparser but boy do they have the character with these little trees growing out of them I guess that's what constantly happens the the evolution up there of things just they keep on um receding themselves reinventing themselves almost from one form to another it's really really lovely now I'm going to put a little take a little dark and put in here in a few places where I want to be really really dark in between here so my trees really show up okay this looks like it needs to come down a little bit and out just a little bit more see that right there that's what I want to capture that movement that that feel of that sticking out over the water actually this guy is a little bit wider so we're just bring him out a little bit and there we go there they are and then right in here this is kind of a kind of a bluish gray um underneath here where the shadow where the shadow is coming underneath those trees that's kind of a kind of a bluish gray coming out there and then it seems to go into kind of a violet let me see here a violet in a blue then this this seems to be jutting out here it's not quite dark enough kitty this seems to be jutting out there there's lots of rocks and and things like that in this area right here and I call that finish work and some of those things will have to be put in later we do have this little bit of a of a line coming right through there there we go and that's all coming out this way here and then over in here it's a little bit lighter now here there's a couple little things there I think they're just rocks we don't have to worry too much about so much detail you know that's not the idea the idea is to get our impression of something not not a photograph if I just wanted to have a photograph of this I would just keep what I've got up here but I want I want something that has been created by the hand as well as the eye okay now I'm up a little bit of the the warm in there okay and that's going to be that beach area that's laying up here and here I really want to show you before we have to close I really want to show you just a little bit of what this would look like coming up from the top so just just so you get a little feeling I will be taking this painting and finishing it after the show today and then at our next show be sure and catch that because I'll have the painting all finished and framed and I'll show you what all I've done to it to do the finished work on it so that'll be kind of fun for you in the next segment of the show to see but I just want to show you real quick where there's going to be the some darks and and everything and there's going to be a few darks in here too coming down and and and then I want to start this water now this is kind of important we have the blue water coming water brush when you're an artist you have to have lots of fingers to hold all the brushes let's see a little bit blue are there kidding there we go now we're going to come out a little bit of blue right across there I see what I didn't do I wanted to bring this guy over here across too so you can see the composition and he's quite dark he's just like a little rocky like sandbar thing coming out there and then he goes over here into these kind of real mellow looking rock structures I'll have to make them a little darker than that or they won't show up against the water constantly mixing constantly adjusting one touch with one thing and means that you have to go back and adjust something else that's too that's not right that's too well I don't know what it is too but I don't like it there I like that better and then we can have some white on the rocks notice I don't I'm not real careful to make it exactly the same that doesn't that doesn't matter it doesn't have to be this is my impression of what I see here doesn't have to be exactly like the photograph you can make it just as pretty as I want enhance it now I'm going to take my water brush and I'm going to come across here and I'm going to drag this down a little bit and you see what I'm doing here I'm dragging that rock down into this it down into the water so that it looks like we have the reflection into the water now I take my little brush and make my little movements here and it looks like we have a reflection of that coming in there all right now then we're going to take that big brush again right there it is okay now we're going to I want to I want to put the reflection in the water and the reflection in the water on these trees is going to come down like this now then around the edges of this I have to put the watercolor and on this side it is a little bit it is a little bit bluer so I'm going to come right up and next to this and put this on here and my little short brush strokes down okay and then when we get over here now a slider it's that warm color again so that's going to go in here let's see here a little bit more warmth right in here and then we're going to have the go back into the blue I'm kind of rushing now because I wanted to be able to show you more of this today and okay now then I'll take that little brush and I'm going to I'm going to make my my reflections in my water of my trees all righty I'm going to make I'm going to reinforce my dark a little bit here okay now I see the water on the side here needs to be a little bit lighter this needs to be real light right here now we're going to go like this okay and then as it comes down here it would be darker and then I just just briefly I know we're almost at a time I hate to leave you today because I'm really having such a nice time sharing this with you that I am going to come down here and I am going to take and make a little bit of the beach color just so you can see a little bit of what that is going to look like when I put that beach on there it's going to be something like this coming around here and then it's going to get a little lighter with the with the blue blue water it's going to come right up to that and let me see here this is going to be like this we'll take our brush and just kind of soften it in and so that you can see it and then that beach is going to come right on onto that and I hope I hope that you've enjoyed your journey with me today to Ketchikan to Tongass Narrows in Ketchikan Alaska and I hope you'll join us next time when we go to a different destination and and you'll also be able to see how Tongass Narrows looks when I'm completed with it when I've completed it I promise I'll have it to show you next time so please do be with me once again this is Kitty Linclish I really enjoyed taking this painting journey with you I hope you've enjoyed coming along bye bye for now