 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. Once again, my name is Kitty Lynn Klisch and this is Painting Journeys and we're going to journey across the canvas today to a new destination. We're going to the great northwest. But first of all, I wanted to show you how our last painting turned out. If you remember, we were talking, we were in Ireland, the back roads, country roads and we came across this farm that was so lovely and as I mentioned, I couldn't really tell if somebody lived there or not because there wasn't anything going on but anyway, it was quaint and it was beautiful and here's the final picture. Without further ado, we better get started on our trips to the northwest. The area that we are in today is the southeastern part of the state of Washington and in fact, it's Cowlitz County. My sister lives there and I had the wonderful opportunity to go and visit her and this is a little stream or creek, as we say in the west, anyway. It's the mill stream and there are a lot of mills, of course, the paper industry, the logging and everything in Washington state but there's so many areas that have not been logged out that are so beautiful and still so natural they're almost untouched. The water is so clear that you can see the rocks through the water and it runs fast. It runs much faster than it does here in the northwest. It's really very beautiful. It's really God's country and I love it there. Today, what I want to do is I didn't have an opportunity to start my canvas. I had some ideas of how I wanted to start it. I think what I'll do is I'm just going to block in quickly, try to block in some values and we'll get started with that. My palette is my usual palette. I always use the same colors practically in every painting and then I mix. Each artist has their own palette. This happens to be mine and I will mix the various grays and other shades that I want from the colors that are on my palette now. You don't just paint with pure chroma. You have to mix and gray. For right now, I had hoped to do a lot of work on this painting with a palette knife. It's a little too thin. I thinned down my paint quite a bit and I want it nice and dark. I just want to block this area in back in here, too thin. Let's put a little blue in there. There we go. I want to block in the darks and I see that is coming around here like so and then it seems to come back up, maybe not that low, up about like this. There is a shadow here that is where these trees here are casting this shadow. That's going to be dark also all along in there and dark across this back here where the water is. Then there's another shadow that's coming like this and then it kind of comes across here almost like a long finger pointing. Water is moving very fast and what's so fascinating is that you can actually see the fish in the water. It's really fascinating watching them. Great big salmon and a fish like that especially when they're going upstream to spawn. It's just incredible. You see these huge fish in this shallow water and sometimes they have to fight their way up rapids and dams. The Grand Coulee Dam is really nice because they actually have a fish ladder for the salmon so that the salmon can get up the stream to where they want to go to hatch or lay their eggs. Then it's so sad because then they swim out back out to the ocean and die but that's the cycle of life. It's a harsh life up there. A lot of people are... I would say that they probably do live below the poverty line but they're hearty though. They're hearty people, very hearty and hard working. They live hard. Everything they do it seems to me they do with great gusto, great love of life. Nice people. You would like them. I don't know if you've ever had the chance to go to Washington State but I think you would really like it there. It's gorgeous. You don't know where to put your eyes next. It's so pretty. I'm fortunate because my sister lives in a little tiny town called Kathlamet and a few years ago we had a family reunion. My brother and my sister from Denver and my husband and I we all met there at my sister's house that lives in Kathlamet, Washington and that's really something. Kathlamet is a great area. It's a little tiny island off the mainland that was settled by the Norwegians and they have built like a dike that goes around the island and they're in a little bit on the Columbia River away from the mouth of the Columbia River. They sit back a little bit, not too far from Longview. Anyway, the Norwegian people built this dike and so when the water actually rises up from the ocean when the tide comes in on the ocean the mouth of the Columbia River there will actually rise and then lower as the tide comes in and out. So they built a dike around this little tiny island in this settlement and it's really quite enterprising. They don't ever have to worry about a flood. Thank goodness because I understand they get a lot of rain once in a while. Well, the whole eastern side of Washington State and Oregon gets a lot of rain. It's just one of those things. I'm working hard and fast. I want to get this kind of like blocked in because then I want to try to come back with my knife and see about making some details. Okay, I hope you like green. We certainly have a lot of it on our canvas today. Green is good. There we go. I don't want to do anything right here yet until I make up my mind what I'm going to do. Sometimes you're just going to have to stop and wait for the inspiration or whatever you want to call it. Wait for God to let you know just where to go and what to do next so that you can accomplish what you hope to do here. What you're setting out to do. We've got rocks and things like that in there. I'm going to put those in. But for right now, I just want to make sure that I have it kind of covered and I want that feeling of that water, rushing water. Talking about the river, the Columbia River when the tide comes in, that's really something to watch. Cross from my sister's house, she lives right on the river. There is a houseboat and people live there, actually live on the houseboat. They have a little garden and mostly they have hanging gardens. But when the river comes in, their boat lifts way up high and when the river goes back out, then the boat sinks way down low, the houseboat. And this is almost like a daily occurrence. Part of the day they're up, we're all high and then the other part of the day they're down real low and you can tell by their peer where they enter their porch to go into their houseboat. It's really, I can't imagine that. Constant motion, could you imagine living in a house where there was constant, where the house was constantly moving? I mean it's kind of a neat idea really. Let's see here. We've got some dark in here and I'm not making the paint as thin now. I'm going to start going with a little bit of a thicker paint because I'm going more for finish now to put what I want on top of the... I do see some rocks right in here that are coming down and we're in here now and then this is dark right in here. There's going to be some light in there too. We're going to take and put greens on top here. That's not the right color. There's going to be some light on those greens there going down and those rocks are coming down in the water here and the greens are going to go up in there. I think I'll just take my knife and see if I can suggest some trees back here. Okay. I'm sorry I'm not talking to you. I'm really focusing really hard to show you what I wanted, what I have in mind here and I think oftentimes you'd think that an artist would know exactly what they're going to do but you don't because sometimes things work and then other times it doesn't work and so you have to change direction and approach it from another angle because in your mind's eye you have something very definite that you want but it's not coming out the way you want it to on the canvas so you have to try something different to make it come out. I don't want to be real fussy over here. I just want this area in here to represent a tree and I think that does it. Okay and that's enough. Now then over here I notice that we have another another tree and it's a little bit lighter and this knife is pretty nice for making trees. It has the right shape to it, the head. If you can see what I mean it has the nice shape to it to form the trees there. Fishing. I don't know if you like to fish or not but fishing is very when you lake fish it's very peaceful but when you fish in a river like this you better be prepared for action because I'm telling you when they strike they fight and it is difficult to bring them in. My husband and I just believe in a catch and release type situation and so that's what we do but we don't fish that much anymore. I don't know, you kind of start wondering about how that must feel to be caught but okay. I'm going to go back over that now and with a little darker green and there we go and see so that just set that little bit back and now we're going to come over here and we have another tree right in here but it's a little different kind of tree so I'm going to make my strokes be a little different. I'm going to make them not so Christmas tree like and then there's some different color in here too that we're seeing. There's some little bit of reds and there's little reds in there and the red is the complement of the green so that makes it really nice too. I appreciate it so much that you're with me today and watching me. I'm struggling. I'm having a difficult time but that's okay because it's good for you to see me struggle. It truly is. Making, creating art isn't always as easy as it looks. Sometimes the artist has to accept something that perhaps isn't what they had originally envisioned and yet if that's the best that you can do at that particular moment in time then you have to accept that and you go on from there because you're only as good as your next painting not as good as your last one. It's good for you to see me struggle a little bit I think it's like anything that's really worthwhile. You have to work for it. It's not worth it if you're not working for it. I think so anyway. I'm just going to put this back there. I love working with a palette knife. I love to make things look like it. It's just like frosting on a cake here and I want the lights and it's just such a jumble here. If I try to give you how the photograph is if I try to give that to you to view it won't be a painting. I might as well just leave the photograph. I'm just trying to find the colors and values that I think will represent or suggest what we have here. Now I do see some trees, dead trees and there are a lot of dead trees in the forest and they have to keep those trimmed out because if they don't that's what really causes the forest fires. You talk about a wildfire they go like wild when they don't keep that underbrush and the dead fallen trees cleaned out. This particular spot is kind of like sort of deserted so there's not much forest management that's been going on here. Let's see if we can get some nice dead looking things coming up there to kind of give it a little bit of a something besides just green here. There is a little bit of light on those so I'll probably come back with a small, I think I'll come back with a small brush and come in there and put just a little bit of light that is hitting on those and kind of brighten that up. Give a little different look there and mix a little bit of red with white to do that so we can see that there is just a little oops, too much paint. Wow. Paint doesn't want to leave the brush because I have so much on the canvas already. There we go. Just the right little touch there just here and there. Some little light things that are hitting and want it too much. That's definitely not where my my focal area is going to be. So, but I think while I'm working with a brush I will come down and put some stones in the water because I want to get those in so that I can come over it with the water. We've got quite a few stones there and of course I'm not going to put everyone in that would be kind of silly but these stones are a little darker on the bottom and here's a nice big one right here that's quite dark and we'll come around here and set him in there. He's got a little shadow and I'm just doing the bottom parts of them now and then I'll come across them again with the lighter on the top where the light is reflecting. This is one of those rare, really beautiful days in Washington on the eastern side of Washington where the sun was shining and it was warm so much of the time it is raining but then that's really lovely for your complexion because you don't get all dried out there like you do the desert so that's a good thing think positive just make it make whatever you can out of it if it's lemons, make lemonade right? there we go now I'm going to come back and I'm going to take a little bit of light and a little tiny bit of yellow, really pale yellow and I'm going to put a little top to these rocks and then the very last thing I'm going to try to do today is make these look like they're under water by bringing the water back over them so that you get the feel that you're seeing the rocks through the water and it's going to be tricky but we'll give her a try nothing ventured, nothing gained okay and then I do see a nice big white that's one thing some of the stone in Washington is very very white, very pale and like this guy down here he is very very pale so we're going to put a little dark and a little brown on the side here where he's coming up and he's actually up out of the water there and there's another one right in here okay and then coming across the top is just a little and then we do have some pretty flowers there this area right in here needs to have some rocks in there too and it needs to be a little darker the shadow coming out here and let me see here okay I think what I'm going to do is I think I'm just going to come behind here there's a lot of light green back in here and I think I'm just going to come back there and I'll put the dark underneath and it's kind of a blueish green and then this lovely this is a different type of tree I'm not sure what type of tree that is as I've told you before I don't pay attention to what things are so much as what color they are and what value they are I don't know it doesn't matter to me what it is I don't think in things in naming things I think in shapes and everything now with that dark back there I'll be able to come and put my my light on top of that okay alright now and then we do see a little bit of this over in here too and it's coming in here now I want my shadow here this is very dark right underneath there and that shadow is coming like so and I'm going to bring my brush down to show that reflection in the water there over here is quite dark so I'm going to bring that down and I'm going to go across it like so and then we have a little bits of that coming out and we have little traces now of the sunlight showing there in the water especially right in here it's not a real warm yellow it's a cooler that's another thing too well maybe not I didn't hit that mark right it is a warmer yellow yeah okay you see yellows some yellows and greens they have different temperatures and if you want to get it so that it looks right you have to get it so that the color is the right temperature or that won't look right to you okay I'm trying to make it look like there's movement in the water now can you see that yeah see I think it's coming yeah I think it's coming and let me see here I know I'm going to have some real pretty right here there's some real pretty wild flowers and they're very violet colored and I know I'm going to have those in there and I'm going to make but I'm going to make them larger but before I go to that I want to come and try to capture the white foam the froth that the fast moving water is making now back in here the water is has a bluish tinge to it so I better get a clean brush and maybe I'll just take my knife and do that yeah let's see if we can make some water with our knife and nice water and we'll need a lot of paint you know that's one thing I love to paint I love to paint with thick paint because it has this wonderful impasto immediate feel that is so fresh and vibrant and I love that yeah okay now I have this maybe not blue enough just a second here there we go you know anytime that you have a question about any of my paintings or my techniques why just go to my website and contact me and let me know and be sure and follow me on my blog now that cut up a little too high so I'm going to take that off see how easy that is love it there we go now we want to put something dark in there because we want that to go back that's got to be dark in there that area's got to be dark back in there maybe we'll put a little bit of red in there maybe that'll work better yeah it does ooh I like that see how that just pops that area yeah okay and the water is coming over here and I think I didn't get the shape of my water right so I'm going to have to go back in there with my rock and coming in from the outside try to grab a little bit of water and then come over my rock and come down so it looks like the water is actually coming over the rock and that may not be exactly what's happening but I like it and since it's my painting I get to do that make those little things that make it a little more interesting ooh you hear my knife kind of scraping that's not a nice sound probably kind of scratchy okay now right over here we have some nice warm white so we'll take a little bit of a translucent yellow and I'm going to put that over here on this water because I want this water to really show that it is in the sunlight maybe that's too much okay we'll just wipe it off so if it doesn't work you know when in doubt wipe it out that's what my teacher always told me alright we'll try that again only we won't go quite so yellow here we go we'll take a little bit of the green kind of come up into that and so that it does whoops there's some yellow that's good yeah so that it doesn't look quite so around a little bit so that it doesn't look quite so now we know that that is really in the water now there's areas here that I want to take off because I think there's just a little bit too much white on it so I'm going to take and bring that down cut that down just a little bit I mean it's all well and good to pile the paint on but you have to be somewhat careful or you don't really have something that's more authentic alright there we go that looks better okay now then let me see here let's see here let's try to get some I think that tree right there I'm going to try to do this tree right in here I'm going to just try to do that with a brush I think because I don't think that it will work out nice if I do it with my knife you know we always have that time constraint that we're working under and I wish of course you probably wouldn't want to watch that long but I wish that I could just be here with you a lot longer than the show is an hour is not very long to to be together and try to show you what I'm trying to I think I'll put the I'm going to try to put the branches in first there we have these nice reddish brown branches let's get those on first so we know where we're at here okay there we go that's it that's it alright and then there's one here they're coming up here there's one coming way down there and that little bit of red just makes so much difference on the on the against the green because it's the compliment that's what makes it exciting and this one is way out here and then over in here we have just a little bit more where there's a couple that are coming from the side there okay now off of those let's see if with this little green if we can just just make a few little I guess that doesn't show very good where do we need it to be a little lighter maybe I didn't have the back dark enough on it some of these are kind of a reddish color I'm going to have to come back in and clean that up I can tell that now too many branches this is going to take more I'll just try to get one or two of them just the way I want it to be and then the next time you see the painting on the next episode of the show why it'll be completed and you'll be able to get the full feeling of what I was trying to do here I don't want to get too carried away on that let's see here a little bit down in here such a nice beautiful green right in here we can show that one and that one alright now before I can do the flowers here in the foreground my cameraman just gave me the 15 minute signal so that means I don't really have a lot of time left so let's see what we can get done in that amount of time let me see here some of this is kind of a yellow green in here put that in there to kind of pop it a little bit I think that helps a little bit alright now the one thing I do see is that my shadow in here isn't nearly dark enough I'm going to come back in with my shadow color and I'm going to put it in a downward stroke like so and that's going to show depth and it's going to come across here and then we're going to I could have movement just by feathering that out just a little bit now I'm going to clean this brush really good and I'm going to take the hum I'm going to take yellow and the white I'm going to thin it just ever so slightly now I'm going to say a little prayer and I hope like crazy that this works but we're going to very gently and very softly come across the rocks try to make them look like they are under the water there we go, rocks are under the water now we can all breathe because I didn't ruin it I wanted it to do now we have a nice movement of if you see me always looking over with one eye to my over my left shoulder there it's because I'm watching that cameraman because he's just looking at me like he just can't wait to show me this sign that I'm almost done just to see what I'm going to do about it there we go so that's what I'm looking at I'm always checking the tongue pressure pressure I'm under pressure okay can you feel it there we go oh yeah that really looks like it's like the rocks are under the water good job good job kitty okay ten minutes ten minutes left oh I say we put in the flowers oh yes yes yes and I say we make them kind of let's make them kind of I don't think I want them coming over here because I have a lot of action here I think I'll bring them over here and have them come up and I want them up higher you know I mean what's the sense of putting flowers in it if you're not going to put flowers in it right you know I mean you're going to have purple flowers in it against the yellow green water have them don't just be skimpy make some flowers that's what it's all about here and the reason I'm kind of like wiping out a little bit underneath here is because I want to make sure that my flowers don't turn to gray because there again the violet is the complement of the gray I mean of the green and we don't want gray so now we'll take a little brush and these stems are quite light so I'm going to come up with a lighter white and I'll thin this down just a wee tiny bit and be just a little bit whiter here and there I'm thinking about where should we I think we're going to stay in the state of Washington for our next show or two I have more that I want to show you you know and I and I didn't tell you that the reason that this is called Mill Creek is because there's a big mill right on it up a ways where the river is much wilder and wider and everything okay now we're going to take some of and make a really beautiful kind of a magenta color here and we're going to put that on there oh maybe that's a little too pink let's see here okay let's see here this is fun I hope you're having fun let me see little more over here and we're going to come back on those and oh my goodness I'm really getting it now I just got the seven minute sign okay this means that we're right down to the nitty gritty here we go aches I didn't want that to look like a tree oh well we'll just sprinkle some more down over in here put a few over there put a few in here maybe some come in here there we go and we'll come in right here and take some of that away alright and then we'll come on top with a little bit of white I'm always looking for the perfect brush you know truth be known truth be known that it's not the perfect brush it's who's handling the brush perfect or not okay let's make these guys pop a little bit more they have to be more pinker kitty come on have to be prettier more violet that's not good at all I'll probably end up taking a few of these out when I get it back to my home studio I don't know that's probably too much that's what happens when you brush and I wonder I really wonder if I really like that color probably the flowers would have been better if they would have been like a little have a little red to them you know red is my favorite color and I guess somehow or another I just don't feel satisfied with the painting unless I put a little red on it someplace so there we go now don't ask me what type of flowers those are because they certainly don't look like what's up above but we have them on there and there we go okay now for finish I think I'll just make a few more strokes in this area here to kind of try to make this look more like that type of tree that it is there and it looks to me like we need a little bit of orange in there I think that kind of a little bit of orange really kind of helps it a little bit to describe it those are dead needles of course and okay and right over here I think we'll put a little something in there to kind of there we go and let me see here I see that this rock right here on this side right here needs just a little more gray on the side and this one here does too and then they need a little light on top okay well I'm really glad you join me today once again my name is Kitty Lynn Klisch and you've been watching Painting Journeys we have been in Washington State and we're doing a little transition of Mill Creek and until next time when we go further north in Washington State and once again my name is Kitty Lynn Klisch you've been watching Painting Journeys and I hope to see you next time bye bye for now Funding for Painting Journeys is provided by Syratas Financial 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