 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 we're in the studios and we're going to be painting for you and taking you on a journey today. We're still in Ireland, we're still traveling around Ireland, but first of all I'd like to remind you of what we did in our last episode and that was a painting of a boat along the Grand Canal and if you remember the Grand Canal is very, very narrow and it flows from the Shannon River all the way to Dublin, it's a method of transportation. So anyway and this is what the painting looked like when I had completed it at our show. And I had brought it this far along, I was pretty pleased with it, but it still was kind of rough, it needed a little more work and so I took it to my home studio and I have enhanced it and of course now it's framed and it has a little more color. I mean I like the roof to be a little brighter red over here and I did a little work in on the fence here and I did quite a bit of work on the boat, I noticed I had a little small before and so I elongated a little and highlighted it and I added some red flowers over here just to bring the flow of the eye over because now you see how your eye stays right in the picture because it just goes up and around and so anyway that's the boating on the Grand Canal and now today as I was telling you last week or excuse me as I was telling you in our last episode I was talking about the Shannon River and the Shannon River is the main water source that divides East Ireland from West Ireland. We one day took a trip to the city of Athlone and we painted alongside the Shannon River and this is the scene that we painted and I am going to recreate it for you, make a new painting for you and you know it just it really spoke to me and I have some funny stories to tell you about it but anyway so this is Kitty Linclish and this is Painting Journeys and let's let's go on a journey. All right I have my palette as usual it's warm colors and cool colors not too large of a color selection I like to mix most of my paints and I have this blocked in because I for the shapes because I wanted to not be worried about you know getting that the canvas covered for you I wanted to really have the canvas covered and then go in and try for more of I'll be repainting the whole canvas but I wanted to try for more of a finish today we'll see we'll see how I do who knows 50 50 chance mess or a masterpiece so let's get to work here when we went to Ireland it was I believe it was April and might have even been the very beginning of May but I think it was April anyway the the I was told that it could be cold and it could be quite rainy and but it as it turned out the 14 days that we were there the weather was absolutely delightful really very very pretty weather I mean it was like in the 60s and the sun shone almost every day of which gave us a wonderful opportunity to see the beautiful landscape and the colors of the many many various great shades of green in the landscape it's you know the day that we went to Athlone we were riding in the bus on the way over we had this darling little mini bus that held about 16 people very comfortable we were riding along and and as you're passing by the the homes it was such a a combination of of different types of places some of the places were very old all made of stone with thatched roofs and then you would every once in a while you would come on to a place that was very quite modern looking I was talking to a young man on the bus and he was telling me how Ireland at that time was in the midst of an economic boom and because of of technology and he said that that a lot of the places were you know a lot of new businesses and new new homes were being built and and things like that and I was quite impressed by that I was also a little surprised I didn't know that you know that Ireland would be in that technological race that the world seems to be in now anyway I like the older places I like the places that had character the old stone fences everywhere all the fences the the fields sometimes you go buy a farmer's place in his whole field would be cut off into little sections you know maybe like a quarter of an acre and there would be these little stone fences around it and I guess this was for the sheep because I don't think that the sheep climb over those small fences or because I think they were only like maybe two or three feet high I guess the sheep wouldn't go over them so we saw all kinds of different sheep the sheep over there they look different than the ones here they're larger a little larger and they look a little wilder kind of their hair is in their faces are a little more pointy looking and kind of different looking but then like every place you know it each place has animals that adapt to the areas that they're in just laying the sky in I want I want the clouds in there they're important because they kind of go with the story that I have to tell about our painting trip along the Shannon River in Athlon we got there and painted all morning and the weather was absolutely gorgeous sunny beautiful just like this picture and then as we're we take a look we took a lunch break and there was this marvelous Thai restaurant and everyone wanted to go to that can you imagine Thai food in Ireland I was kind of surprised but it was delicious anyway so someone we all had all of our painting supplies so someone had to stay outside and watch the same the painting supplies so I thought well I'm the teacher I'll do that and so I sat outside alongside the river and I they brought me out the food the waiter brought it out on a tray and I swear you to thought I was the queen of England there I am sitting out there on this bench along the river with this gorgeous view and here's the waiter bringing me these ornate this ornate pot of tea and and everything that I had ordered and it was just I felt very special it was very very nice very very nice people in Ireland are they're kind of I don't know they're really special people they're very they're very kind very outgoing warm friendly almost to a fault but I enjoyed myself later in the day as we were after lunch we had gone back to our paintings and it clouded over and I had one little gal in my group that was painting in watercolor and the wind had come up I've got this building right here so I have to be careful with this line right in here and I do want to put more of those clouds in there anyway she's painting with watercolor and sitting very close she made me kind of nervous because she was so close to the edge of the river and she all of a sudden she we hear this scream and we look and there's her painting it had blown off of her easel and into the water and you know we didn't have anything to fish it out with and she'd been working all day on it and she's crying and and oh help help help and the painting is just like floating on the top of the water and you know because the water was really rough and moving and the painting is just kind of floating around and so here comes this marvelous Irish fellow and he's got he's got this thing I don't know where he came from but he's got this thing that's kind of got like a hook on it and he comes running over I will get it I will get it you know he's fishing in the river well it when he went to to reach down to pull it up it kind of made it sink a little bit further and I thought oh boy it's gone it's it's got to be gone now but he was able to lean over and I mean he was really leaning over he was leaning over the water and a couple of the guys in our group were holding his legs as he was trying to fish down and pull this painting back up well do you want to hear the most marvelous thing though when he did pull the painting back up it wasn't torn and the painting was still there even though it had been you know tousled around in the water it was quite amazing to all of us you know so then the skies opened up and it started to pour and here we all are were dressed rather lightly you know and the rain was cold oh god it was cold so we had to run and there was no place to put our our supplies the bus our painting supplies the bus was nowhere to be seen and so we ran down the street and there was a the pubs in Ireland some of them are very very tiny very tiny I mean like we're talking about maybe a room that is maybe eight by ten okay and everyone is all crowded in there okay well we ran into this pub and they had a back room and they let us go in their back room and there was a little fireplace there oh it was so neat there was a fireplace and they served us drinks warm drinks we all had I think we had Irish coffee to kind of warm up and everything and we stood around the fire and it was lovely it was really really something it was quite an exciting day let me see here I'm seeing a little more pink on this bridge pink in the gray and a little gray in there let's see now we do have this building behind there's a little dark spot right in there a little shadow area and this is coming like this the the church's cathedrals just gorgeous absolutely gorgeous I put a little bit of my sky in there try to get this to have like a little more of a of a texture to feeling I probably think that's kind of funny I just sort of stop and remit sentence and I have to think though to think as I'm working I want that to be a little there we go that's not looking too terribly bad not to say that it's looking good but it's not looking too bad a little realm thing there big thing I'm I can't wait to get to is the water that's going to be nice and fun show you how I make my my water my moving water that bridge has just got a little bit of all these different colors in it so and this right here this is a little darker you know when it comes to places to travel to I think probably Ireland is what was one of my favorites I can't say more than Italy or any of the other places I've been but Ireland was very very special special time special group of people and this is going to be quite a bit darker underneath here just show that bridge and this right in here let me see here I'm picking up the color underneath it I need it darker there we go and then here that's coming up like that I might have to go back in there a little bit a little later on and I don't want to get stuck in this one spot here I do want to darken I'm going to take a little bit of my alizarin and put in the in this reflection I don't want it to be so cool that shadow underneath the bridge I want to warm that up a little bit by using just a little bit of my alizarin you see how that much more alive that makes that look there we go it's good I don't know what I would do without my alizarin crimson is one of my favorite colors to paint with you can tell I'm getting really getting into this now I'm thinking hard I want this to out nice you know until the 1800s when they built those canals from the Shannon river that connected the Shannon river to the eastern side of Ireland to Dublin and everything everything had to go by land that must have really been something but the canals they built they see here pretty straight not too bad and we'll soften that in just a little bit there I just want that to look like a little bit of a shadow up above there there we go and I'm going to take my wipeout tool and wipe this out I want this to be much much darker in there and then I'll come back in with my red and the black and fix that guy up there we go all right right coming right here now I see we have a this was this was kind of a circle that would that came around in the water and it jutted out and there was grass and as you can see there was grass and things growing in there and um so we'll have to be sure and get that in but then here on the bottom whoops not dark enough kitty here on the bottom you know I gotta lighten that up um is casting a little darker shadow oh there we go there's another little one right there too and then if we just take whoops if we just take our wipeout tool and wipe out a little bit right in here see how nicely that removes the paint we'll take a smaller brush and we'll put a little bit of green in there greens of Ireland here needs to be a little bit brighter a little bit of light up it just a little bit and over here I think there's a little bit too I don't know we have a that building that we've got to kind of get blocked in there in the water the reflection of this is coming down into the water and the reflection over here is coming into the water and back in here okay the building okay I need a little smaller brush for that let's see that's that same kind of gray it's funny how when you look at scenes things just keep repeating themselves it seems like so we're putting this roof on I'm not going to worry about a lot of detail the roof comes down like this it's a little bit lighter warmer light striking it is why so that will be right there then we have another little building right there that has a little roof on it that's coming this way and let me see here I've got a couple little windows like I said I don't want to do too much here I just want to sort of suggest when I take this back to the studio then I'll to my home studio then I'll do a little bit more of the detail on it really doesn't need much detail it's just it's back there it's not really all that important we just want to show that it's there maybe a little bit of white on this one here in the front of this one lighten that up just a bit and the roof is coming out here and then we'll have to take our sky and bring it down right in there there and put the roof back on there on the corner there we go okay now so down here then we have this pinkish of the building again and so we'll carry that through right there so that we can see that the building is on the on the backside there over here and in here there's a lot there's a lot of detail you know I don't even want to go there I don't want I don't want to get bogged down with all that detail I see that there's a nice dark tree here on the shore and there's another one that's a little bit lighter I mean that that detail is so far back if I made it too pronounced it it really wouldn't make for a good painting so I'll just put these back here and I'll just and maybe we'll do the same right here maybe we'll have a instead of putting all those buildings and and bushes and stairwells everything that I'm seeing here in my picture maybe we'll just have a little green right in there too like there was a little tree and some light over here the same thing nothing like greening it up now that isn't what I see but I don't want detail so that's why I do it I want to just suggest that there's something back there so that we can see that there's something back there all right now the water on the other side I want to show that as being quite a bit lighter on the other side of the shadow so that we can see that we have the shadow and then we also have the water so that we feel we have more of a feeling like we're seeing through we'll take that dark brush again and punch back up our our shadows in the water and then let that soften together there to I don't want the hard line there we go okay looking pretty good now I want to take some the water has some beautiful cues of blues and greens and reflections and everything in it so I'm going to start by making my downward strokes in this fashion I'm going to take some dark and put in there you see what I'm doing here just making kind of a downward stroke where I see light I have to get a clean brush and I'll put light and there is light right in here and there's lots of light from this building or the bridge or something right there so we definitely want that in there and there's more light there's light going right across here too and some light over in here I'm not going to worry about the swans I don't know if you can see them you see them here I have three swans because there was one that was quite a bit larger he was very close and he was very friendly in fact he was a real beggar he was always there looking for a handout especially when I had lunch now then we'll put more dark on this river has so many beautiful colors of blue in it it's just unbelievable and some gray too this is kind of a tedious application but you'll see what I'm going to do here in a few minutes and I think you'll like it this is my preparation I need some even darker one thing about my trip to Ireland with all the painters stayed at a place in county Claire and it was had belonged to it was an estate that had been converted to a bed and breakfast it was absolutely gorgeous the grounds everything I mean just little streams running through it and the pasture lands around it a little church Catholic church that belonged to the little town village it was more of a village it wasn't really a town but anyway the I went to the mass there on that Sunday to the church it was just lovely inside and for all of you Catholics out there you'd be amazed at how fast and Irish masses I thought we did a first a fast mass in this in the states my goodness theirs was like all of about 25 minutes I guess there's a lot of us that would prefer that but I was kind of surprised I thought it would be longer anyway when we would get back in the evening there was this gorgeous huge sitting room with all these chairs and we would all sit around and have cocktails and while we were waiting for dinner to be served you know and it was in a way you know I mean you didn't have to dress for dinner if you didn't want to but you could it was one of those wonderful kind of places that kind of left it to you what you wanted to do there was a couple nights that I got kind of gussied up and then there were quite a few nights that I was just too tired to mess with it but anyway so then we'd go into this lovely dining room and have marvelous service talk about our day and everybody that's the point time when everyone would come together and we would share our adventures because the painters husbands or friends that had traveled with them on this trip on this journey sometimes they would go and do something else during the day while we were out painting racing horse racing is really big over there and so a lot of the guys would go to the horse races so kind of exciting I don't know if anybody bet or if they won if they did they didn't brag to me if they lost they didn't cry to me that was kind of nice I guess okay you're probably thinking what in the world is she doing trust me you have to trust me I think like I told you in the beginning 50 50 chance a master a masterpiece a little bit of light down here kind of bring it up okay it's a rather I think I want to highlight that rock just a little bit there you know to be able to travel and go to these different places and then to be able to come into your living room and share these journeys with you and as I'm painting and showing you you know somewhat what the place looked like it is such I feel so truly blessed this is just a real highlight for me of my day or my week or since it's a monthly show my month but I really like it it I like to have this opportunity and I always have to you know I think about all the guys here that it takes to make this show you know the cameramen and the guy in the booth I appreciate them all okay now I think it's time for us to make a little magic all right so let's make the river Shannon come to life just a second I do see a little pink here and there let's see here what happens smaller brush this one might be good we can use a little bigger one so we'll keep with the smaller one back here like this one it's done now we'll take a little bigger brush I think this one would be good that water is moving very fast so what I'm trying to do is create that feeling of the moving water we still have our our bridge coming down into the into the reflection reflecting excuse me reflecting into the water all the colors of blues and the and the reflections and shadows will all be in there I hope this looks like water to you just to me maybe a little bit of light here because we're going to have our our swan coming down right in here so there would be just a little bit of a light in that area a little bit of the swan's neck coming down in the water all right that looks nice and soft like lots of water with action in it maybe we'll put just a few few little darker places in it to kind of give it a little bit of a of a lilt there's a good irish word for you at night they would have like a little cab array for us at the place where we were staying and they had this gentleman that was a storyteller I have never heard anything like this in my life you know over here we have rapping and it's you know kind of like a story well to hear it done in an irish brogue and everything is rhyming and the fellow is making it up as he as he's going I mean he's looking at you and he's making up a poem about you while you're while you're sitting there I mean it was just amazing this gentleman was just the cutest fellow and so talented that he could just make these little verses up and he addressed each one in the in the room he had his little sayings it was it was really something and they're called a storyteller and they'll they'll tell stories about old you know olden times in Ireland and and the past and it's really something there we go okay now I think we need to get those swans in there and I think I have this one I'm looking at my placement here and I'm not real happy with that he seems to me like he's not quite in the right place I'm going to bring him down just a little bit here make him be just a little bit lower getting rid of his neck and head where I have it marked in there okay and he should really be more down here I think because he is closer to the he is closer to the viewer and I might change them around when I get them back to the studio I can't believe how fast the time goes by when we get together I really can't just seems like it flies and I know I'm running out of time here so I don't really have the time to make the adjustments that I might make when I get back but I don't want I they're looking to me like they're a little bit like one two three and so I think what I'm going to do and I'm just going to go ahead and do that now I'm just going to block this swan out block him out and I'm going to make him overlap his buddy over here okay so now we'll just have to get the water action going again okay and I want him to be like he's further away and this this guy here he's he's going away from us so we're seeing his tail right there and then I want this guy here I think I'll have him overlap his friend here and then he'll come down here and he'll come up and there there we go so we'll have those two overlapping I think that'll be nice and I'm just going to take without too much I'll do here and see if I can make a swan for you okay now this one's smaller so we have to be a little more careful we'll take some blue cross here and make him a little bring him down in the water just a little bit I want to bring this guy down in the water his reflection down in the water too a little here we go and now this one here on him and the nice part of this is that I can always come in with the blue to get my shape right if I want this one's neck to be a little narrower or I want him to be a little smaller I can do that with by coming in from the outside in that always helps a little bit but there we go all right now yeah that that doesn't look too bad okay we get the idea that there's a couple of swans there except his head isn't quite right there we go um yeah I like the swans in there a lot I think they add a lot to the picture um to the painting and the swans are journeying down the Shannon river in Athlone they are all part of the experience the wonderful marvelous experience of going to Ireland I hope I get back there someday I truly do it was just a wonderful trip and see if I kind of beat my brush on the canvas I can kind of get this guy's little bit of this guy's texture and feel and maybe the water's even yeah his little neck is coming down here there we go and we just need a little bit of orange on the bill is that what a swan's mouth is called I'm not sure that's the trouble see I always I never pay attention to what things the names of things are I don't know just as long as I can paint them that's all that's important to me it's just a shape or a color of value a temperature it's not I don't know about the thing there we go they're pretty big pretty big snouts on these guys see let's take that in just a tad there there we go don't want him to look like Donald duck okay and then they do have just that little tiny bit of black on them that's right up in here okay well that doesn't look too bad maybe just a little more of a highlight on the rock to kind of liven that up a little bit over here whoops I don't want that don't want that there we go more life up in here okay there they are the three swans on the Shannon river and like I said I'll take that back to the studio and work on it a little bit but I think that it is pretty close to being done I'm pretty happy with it I really enjoy this time with you today it's it's such a treat to be able to be here and have you watching me as I create make my journey across the canvas thank you so much for joining me once again this is Kitty Lynn Klisch and you've been watching painting journeys be sure and catch the next episode where we'll see the the Shannon river completed and I will be taking us to a new place in Ireland and I know you're going to really like it I'm going to take you inside of a true Irishman's house so until then bye bye for now thank you so much for joining me