Hi, welcome back.

You know, in the last show, I had one of my little friends here, a little fox squirrel, and so many people have called and wrote in because I mentioned we have four of them and they wanted to see the rest of them.

I've asked a friend to come today to help me because it's a son of a gun trying to hang on to four.

This is Dana Jester, and he's one of our instructors that travels all over the country and teaches people the joy of painting, and as you can see, he has an [chuckles] armful.

What do you got going on there, Dana?

- Oh, I don't know.

Your kids are going while here, boy.

- Here, look at here.

You want a little bit to drink?

- I think they're hungry.

- Yeah, it's time for them to have a little nibble.

Look at this.

Aren't they the cutest little devils though?

- I know they're excited, that's for sure.

- Well, this is a big deal for them to be in front of the cameras and, they're a little nervous but they're still hungry.

They still like to eat.

Here you go.

There, isn't [chuckles] that something?

Look at these little devils.

They are absolutely precious and I, I thank Dana very much for coming and helping me today.

Here, turn loose, guy.

Okay.

- [Dana] I know these guys aren't [mumbles].

- Let me get this one here.

I got one in my arm here.

Let's give this one a little bite.

You want a little drink?

There.

Isn't that something?

There we go.

They are so cute.

They are just absolutely precious.

And as I say, these are little fox squirrels and they're very young.

There.

Okay.

Tell you what, let me set those down and let's get a painting started for today.

All right.

We'll just set him right over here.

Okay.

Today, we have our standard old 18 by 24-inch canvas up here and we've covered it with a nice, thin, even coat of the liquid white, and it's nice and wet and it's ready to go so why don't we take off and maybe today we'll do a happy little winter scene, and maybe we'll put a little color in it so it's not quite so cold.

I'm going to take a little touch of the Indian Yellow, just a very, very small amount on the two-inch brush.

Very small amount, and let's come right up in here, and let's just put in a little touch of the yellowish color, something, maybe like so.

Maybe like so, and we're going to run all the colors across the screen for you so you know what we're doing here.

Almost forgot to tell you that, I got involved [chuckles] with the squirrels and son of a gun, almost forgot it there.

All right.

Now then, without cleaning the brush, I'm going to take a little touch of Yellow Ochre, just a little, don't need much.

There we go.

Take that and we'll come right in here.

I'm just using little criss-cross strokes.

There, you can see it, see?

Just little x's.

We'll just bring this right around like so There we are.

Okay, and we just, just blend this.

There.

Okay, and just blend it 'til you can't tell where one color stops and the next color starts.

All right?

Now, then maybe a little color right up in here.

Once again, without cleaning the brush, I'm going to take a little tiny bit of the Bright Red, very little amount, and let's go right up in here.

And we just drop a little of that in.

Now then.

Sometimes winter scenes can be so cold that they're almost unpleasant.

I like to make winter scenes that have a little bit of a bright color in them and it really makes them pretty and makes you feel good in here.

Let's take a little Phthalo Blue and Alizarin Crimson.

I'll just mix these on the brush.

Proportionately though, much more crimson than the blue.

The blue is many, many times stronger.

There we are.

Crimson and phthalo blue, take a little touch of that.

And let's just, let's just put a little bit of that right in like so.

Still using the little criss-cross strokes.

There.

Okay.

And we just fill the sky up, just fill it up.

Now, you can use this lavender color against the yellow without it turning bright green because if you mix lavender with yellow, it just makes a pleasant brown and that's okay.

We can live with that.

We can live with that, but if you was to use pure blue and you touched the yellow [chuckles], as you know, we would have bright, bright green and we don't want that in this particular painting.

Okay.

Now we'll just wipe this down here.

This is going to be a little winter scene.

Oh, maybe we'll have some snow down here and we'll just use this as part of the shadows when we get finished.

It's also a good place to clean the color off your brush.

Now then, speaking of cleaning color off the brush, let's wash our old brush.

Shake off the excess.

[chuckles] And then off you go.

That's the most fun part of this whole technique.

I'm going to take a little bit of the titanium white now, right on, right on the little two-inch brush or the big two-inch brush, whichever, just a little color, that's all we need, and let's go right up in here.

This is going to be our light source.

Let's make this quite bright and quite shiny.

But a clean brush with a little white on it, titanium white.

Use the titanium because it's firm.

You don't want to use the liquid white.

There.

Liquid white is just a base that we put on the canvas so the color blends on the, right on the canvas.

Now then, we can begin blending this right together.

Just like that.

And you can blend it to any degree of softness or you can leave it quite harsh.

It's up to you.

It's totally up to you.

Painting is very individual.

There now, very lightly, we can just begin blending this out 'til it gets as smooth as you want it.

There.

Okay.

But isn't that a wild sky that's very easy?

And when you're doing this at home, I suggest that you stand back and look at your painting.

It's very difficult when you're very close to it to tell if your colors are blended sufficiently.

All right.

Good.

There we go.

Very effective and very soft little sky.

Wash our brush again.

[laughs] I just like to wash the brush.

I look for any excuse.

Tell you what, let's have a nice mountain ridge up through here, and for that, I'll just keep using this lavender color.

I'll put a little black in it, so we have black, alizarin crimson, a little bit of phthalo blue.

Just midnight black and alizarin crimson by itself will make a very nice lavender color.

There we go.

Pull the paint out as flat as you can get it, cut across and get our tiny, little roll of paint right there.

Okay, let's go up here.

Now, you gotta make your first major decision in this painting.

Where does, where does your little ridge of mountains live?

Maybe ours lives right up here.

Wherever you want, and the only thing that we're worried about at this point is the top edge of this.

We could care less what's happening anywhere else, just on the top here.

There we are.

Really hope you enjoyed seeing [chuckles] all those little squirrels.

They are so precious.

And if you've been with me before, you know that I'm sort of a fanatic for all of God's little creatures and...

Especially little squirrels and stuff.

I, I really like those.

Those are loaner squirrels.

I got those from the Bird Lady here in Muncie, Diana Schaffer, but at home, and maybe I'll show you before the series is over.

I have three little gray squirrels that I'm raising, and they came from another bird lady who lives in Orlando, and she's allowing me to raise these other ones at home and, if you think that's not a chore, you try taking care of three little baby [chuckles] squirrels at one time, it's like having three children.

Will certainly, certainly keep you busy.

I'm just using a two-inch brush here, and my mother helps me with the little squirrels sometimes and she gets a kick out of feeding them too.

They're a great deal of fun.

And even if you don't raise animals or touch 'em or play with 'em, it's a great deal of fun just to watch them.

Shoot, just putting some food out in your yard or something, you can attract a multitude of little creatures, squirrels and birds and et cetera, and, personally, I think they're just fantastic to watch.

There we go.

But we need to take care of these little creatures because they're sort of, they're sort of the barometer to tell you how the ecology is doing and how we're taking care of this old world.

The animals disappear, guess who's next?

There.

Enough of my ecology kick.

[chuckles] I'm going to take a little touch of the bright red and go right into some titanium white.

I want very little paint, or very little red in this paint.

Just enough to give it a little flavor.

Then we get a tiny little roll of paint.

Very little paint right out on the edge of the blade.

Okay?

I thought maybe today we'd just do a little ridge of mountains and all you do is just touch and just let it gently flow down.

No pressure.

Can't say that enough.

Absolutely no pressure.

The more delicate the touch, the nicer this will look, and we'll just start working some of these little areas.

I don't want this to look like one of our big mountains that we normally do.

I want it to look like a little ridge.

I want to take a little black and white, a little touch of that lavender into it, just to make a shadow color and we can start here and there.

We'll just start adding a few little shadows in here.

There.

Midnight black, a little white and little bit of the lavender color that we used to make the base of the mountain here.

That's really all we have.

Very light, very gentle.

Don't want, we don't want much color up here.

Very gentle, there.

This is where we test to see if you have a delicate touch.

There.

When I was in British Columbia, there's a lot of mountain ridges that look like this.

A lot of them, and they're so striking.

Some of the most beautiful country.

There we go.

Now maybe, over in here, we got little, little doers here and there, wherever you want.

Just make some decisions, drop 'em in.

You may also find that it's a little easier to get into some of these places using the small knife.

There we are.

Whichever is comfortable for you.

That's the reason we designed a couple of different knives is so you can, you can try it until you find the one that works the best for you.

Some people like the large knife only.

Some people like the small knife.

It's really an individual thing.

There we go.

And here and there, maybe there's something little, might even be a little peak here and there, a little bump.

Let your imagination take you wherever, wherever.

Big thing here is I don't want much paint.

We're going to blend most of this out.

All we're looking for here is just some little indications.

And we just sort of vary it back and forth between the shadow and the highlight color and even sometimes to show something really deep, we'll take a little dark, make a deep shadow in there.

This is just the base color, a little bit of the base color and you can play it here and there.

There, see?

Just, but not much of it.

It's very strong and very quickly, it'll, it'll take over your whole world, so just a small, small amount.

And you can play with these for hours if you want to.

You don't have to paint this fast at home.

You don't, use your old VCR and record it and do it at your own leisure.

There.

Hope you enjoyed seeing Dana again.

Dana's been on quite a few of the shows.

He's really an outstanding young artist.

And he lives here in Muncie, so a lot of times when I'm here filming, he comes over and keeps me company in the studio and so today we decided to put him to work.

Enough of that sitting around, taking life easy.

There.

Okay.

Now then, let's blend this out a little.

And when you're doing this, you don't have to be real careful because we're going to blend the whole thing.

I'm going to tap the bottom because I want the bottom to be very soft and very misty, very diffused and then very lightly, almost all the way to the top, begin blending.

See?

That's the reason we didn't have to be very careful because you're going to blend it and soften it and that will bring it all together.

There.

Mmm.

I like these little paintings that are very soft, but you could do this so it's very sharp.

It's an individual thing.

Do it any way that you want.

All we want to do is show you how to do it and to give you a couple ideas.

There.

Okay, maybe back in here we'll have some little trees and stuff.

For that... Tell you what, let's have some fun.

Let's take a some van dyke brown, a little dark sienna, we'll just mix them together, and I want to take a little white and throw it in there too just to lighten it up, maybe a little more.

There we are.

I'm looking for sort of a medium brown color.

Whoo, I hit a little of that lavender too.

That's all right.

Okay, let me wipe my knife.

That's all right.

'Cause you know, we don't make mistakes.

We have happy accidents and that's, that's when you really experience the joy of painting.

All right, now then, load the old fan brush full of color, a lot of color.

Lot of color.

Let's go up in here.

Now, maybe back here in our world, there lives some little distant trees and they're back in here.

All you have to do is take the fan brush and sort of tap it downward and begin thinking about basic shapes and where you want them to live and just begin tapping.

That's really all there is to it.

There they go.

Now, sometimes, let me show you something here.

Sometimes I get letters and people say, "My background trees look like fence posts," like that.

The only thing wrong right there is you don't have enough.

And if you just go back, if that happens, just add in a few more.

These are a lot of trees that are far, far away in the distance.

Far away in the distance.

There we go.

Maybe they come over, shoot, maybe it goes up here.

It's up to you.

Anywhere you want it.

Anywhere that you want it.

There we are.

Okay.

Maybe right on up there.

I don't know, wherever you want it.

As I say, this is such an individual thing.

It's the reason we don't, we don't really want to have you just use patterns and trace and et cetera.

We really would like to see people learn to be creative on their own.

And this is the freest style of painting I have ever seen.

Maybe there's one here that you can see a little more detail.

See?

That easy.

'Cause it just looks like you ought to be there.

Now then, I want to create the illusion of mist down at the base of these.

Very firmly, using the top corner only of the two inch brush, I'm just tapping, but very firmly.

You can probably hear how much we're tapping here.

[chuckles] Did you see our new opening on the show?

[chuckles] Isn't that fantastic?

That's the Little Painter Man.

The Little Painter Man.

And, that was done by a fantastic engineer right here at the station where we film.

He put all that together and designed it and figured out how to do it and his name is Jerry Morton and I'd like to give him credit for doing a super job.

He put a lot of work into making that.

I hope you like it.

I'd love to hear from you and know what you think of it, but we're going to call that little character the Little Painter Man, and maybe we'll show him again sometime.

There.

Now then, maybe we want to have several layers in here, so we'll take that same color and I want to add a little bit more of the van dyke brown to it.

As you know, in a landscape, as things get closer to you, they should get darker in value, so all you need to do is add a little more of the brown, so let's go back up in here and maybe, right here.

Right here, I know.

But see how that dark color stands out now against that misty area?

If you didn't have that little misty area, we'd probably be in agony city right now because it would just blend together and you would lose it.

But because you have that little misty area, then you're in business and they'll separate.

Misty areas, I've said over and over, is your good friend.

And painting, sometimes softness or little misty areas do more good for you than anything else.

Tell you what?

Tell you what, let's get crazy.

Maybe there's a nice tree.

Yep, there is now.

Lives right there.

Just use a corner of the fan brush.

And there we go, back and forth.

There.

Happy little evergreen lives right there.

And he needs a friend.

Maybe this guy, maybe a squirrel chewed off all his limbs when he was little, them little devils do that sometimes, so we'll just put a few on him.

So he's sort of naked.

There we go.

There, see?

But you can see part of the trunk through there.

And sometimes that's very nice.

Clean, dry brush and once again, once again, our little misty effect, and we'll just let it come right on out and just blend off into nothing there at the end, and...

There.

But you can create layer after layer after layer of little foothills and little soft areas in between that gives your painting tremendous depth.

Tremendous depth, and of course, I know none of us are interested in that happy buck, but if you're out selling your paintings, this is what makes your painting special over everybody else's - is the fact that it has all this depth and distance in it.

And when somebody comes along to buy a painting, they'll look at yours and hmm, guess who sells the painting?

This pays great dividends.

Tell you what.

All right.

Now, we said it's gonna have snow down here.

Let's put one more layer of foothills.

Shoot, I want to take...

I like those little foothills.

I'm going to take that ol' big brush that I've got going here.

I'll use a little lavender.

This is just the alizarin crimson and a touch of phthalo blue.

Once again, proportionately, much more crimson than blue, just tap.

Okay, let's go back up here.

Maybe these foothills live right here, and all we're doing right now is putting in a base color.

Maybe we'll, these are getting close enough, maybe they'll get a little highlight on them.

What the heck?

Just make big decisions and drop 'em in.

Let 'em go.

There it goes.

There it goes.

See?

There.

Wherever you think they should live.

It's exactly where they should live.

Now then.

That's our base color.

And that's really all it is.

This could be put on, shoot, you could put this on with your shoe, it doesn't matter, [chuckles] doesn't matter.

There we go.

Let's take another brush here.

I have several of each brush going so I don't have to spend all my time washing brushes.

I'm gonna dip it into a touch of the liquid white, just a touch, very small amount.

That's right above a smidgen.

Little, teeny bit, and let me reach right down here, be right back though.

I won't go away.

A little bright red in there.

Whew, takes very little, very little.

Now then.

Just tap.

Push.

You can see that little ridge of paint.

Let's pull it out very flat so you can see it good.

See that little ridge?

There's a ridge just like that on the end of the brush and that's what we paint with.

Let's go up here.

Now then, we'll use just a corner of the brush and we go in here and we can begin putting in some nice, little highlights on these.

In my mind, these are getting closer now.

They're close enough that you can begin seeing all these little things that are happening.

Now, the little touch of liquid white that I put in there was put in there only to thin this a little bit because as you know, one of our golden rules: a thin paint will stick to a thick paint.

The paint that we use is very, very thick, very dry.

It's much thicker than traditional oil paints.

There, and then we can paint layer after layer on top without just becoming a mud mixer.

If all your paints are the same consistency, it's just going to make mud.

That's all that's going to happen and then you're going to be unhappy with me.

Watch.

Here's a little trick.

Maybe, let's do this.

Maybe right here, there's another little, another little plane, whole 'nother plane.

See?

Just let them separate.

And that little dark area in between is all you need to create the illusion of a little separation.

That's all you need.

Okay, now then, we said this was winter, so let's have some snow.

We need some snow in here.

Just use the titanium white.

And we've got a little touch of that pinkish color left on the brush.

Touch and pull.

Decide, decide in your world where this is going to live and drop it in.

There.

See?

And with a big brush, you can do this very rapidly.

It doesn't take but a second.

Just let that blend right on back.

But see the depth that creates?

Just because you left that in there.

Now then.

We need some big trees, you know me.

[chuckles] I like them big trees.

But now, in yours, if you don't want a big tree, don't put it in.

I'm going to use some of that lavender and some brown mixed together.

Just load it up on this old two-inch brush.

Make some big decisions.

Where does our little trees live in our world?

I think they live right about here.

There they go.

There they go.

And all we're doing here is just putting in a little color so we'll have something for a highlight to stick to, just a base color, that's all we're looking for.

There.

Maybe a little something right in there.

Wherever, wherever.

Now then.

Let's take, we'll go back to the old two-inch brush that we were using, has a little bright red on it and a little of titanium white and let's go back in here and just put the indication of some nice little snow-covered things that live up here on this tree.

It's just like if we were putting green leaves up here.

Think about form and shape.

Don't just throw this on at random.

It's most important that it gives shape and form to your tree.

Most important.

Mm, in some parts of the country, when winter comes and Jack Frost plays through the trees, you get all of these beautiful things just hanging around.

There we are.

So, here's another one.

Maybe it lives right here.

And it just goes right on out to about there.

There, wherever.

Another one right there.

And you put just as many or as few as you want in your world.

Now then.

We want to pull a little of this out into the snow to create the illusion of a shadow and it shows another plane, just the fact that it moves there.

A whole 'nother plane in your painting.

But snow is one of the easiest things to paint when you have a big old brush like this.

Take a little touch of the liquid white.

Now, we can put the indication here and there of just a little trunk.

Wherever we want it.

There we are.

We just want to show some indications.

Just a few.

Alright, we can take the knife and just scrape in some sticks and twigs.

There.

There and there, a little bush that lives right down like that.

So it's not just a straight line and pull that out too.

All right.

Let's have some fun over here.

On the other side, we'll go into a little brown.

Let me get a little paint thinner on the liner brush.

And, maybe in our world, there lives [Bob makes "tchoooom" sound] this is your [chuckles] bravery test.

Maybe, there it is, a happy little tree, and maybe this one, maybe this one's naked out here.

There, yeah.

Okay.

Let's give him some arms.

I got a letter from a man one time, saying he didn't believe me, I'd even given the trees arms and legs and foots and names, but that's all right.

In your world, if you want the trees to have foots, you can do that.

If you want them to have arms, if you want to give them names.

There we go.

There we are.

Okay, maybe, maybe there's a few little sticks and twigs, some baby trees growing around here.

Right down like so.

And let's take a fan brush.

Take an old fan brush.

We're about out of time for today so I'll just show you, take a little lavender color, a little bit more into the reddish hue, there.

A little alizarin crimson and phthalo blue, put a little hill right there.

A little touch of our white, grab it and let that just move right off into the snow.

But see how easy that is?

It's also an excellent way to make little sand dunes if you're doing little seascapes.

That easy.

Shoot, I think we about have a finished painting.

Try this.

I think it's a very warm winter scene that you'll enjoy doing.

From all of us here, I'd like to wish you happy painting and God bless, my friend.

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