- As you'll recall on the last episode we developed the background and the clay pot.

Now we'll move forward and develop these geraniums.

Join me next on "Painting With Wilson Bickford."

(pleasant music) - [Narrator] Support for "Painting With Wilson Bickford" is provided by the J.M.

McDonald Foundation, continuing the example modeled by J.M.

McDonald by contributing to education, health, humanities, and human services, sharing since 1952.

Online at jmmcdonaldfoundation.org (upbeat music) In rural New York state bordered by the St. Lawrence River in the Adirondack Mountains is a sprawling landscape with communities that offer self-guided tours for the creatively inclined.

Learn the stories behind the Barn Quilt Traditions, family, agriculture, nature, and beauty.

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- Hi, welcome back.

I hope you were able to catch part one of "Potted Geraniums" last time.

As you recall, we put in the background and the old clay pot and started building up the leaf cluster here in the background.

I wanted to share with you a lot of people always ask me where I get my ideas for paintings and how I work them up.

I don't always do this.

This was maybe one out of every 50 that I do this for but I did happen to do this.

And I just remembered, I had this sketch laying around.

As I was sitting designing projects for this series, I did a little, what people call a thumbnail sketch.

I just took a soft leaded pencil and just kind of laid it out with, in my mind, how I saw it in the composition with the light background up here and then the dark background behind the pot with the lighter pot against it and some of the flowers.

So I just kind of sketch that out, what I saw in my head.

And that's where this idea came from was that original sketch.

So sometimes I fly by the seat of my pants.

I just come in and I started doing it.

Sometimes I do plan it out especially if I'm doing something for you, folks for TV.

I like to plan it out, have more of a more of a plan of attack and a game plan.

So we left off with the leaves.

I've been looking at this since last time.

I softened the reflection here a little bit.

I thought it looked a little harsh.

So I just washed out my number 10 flat and I just brushed it a little more and blended.

I softened it.

And I noticed that these corners here look a little sharp.

Notice how these look really round.

So it really describes the roundness of the pot.

So I wanna around those off a little more.

This brush has nothing on it.

I've washed it out and dried it.

And I should be able to just pull this around like this and shave some of that off just like that.

Now I've picked up a little bit of that sienna pot color.

And this side's gonna be a little trickier.

I'm hoping I can keep my shoulder out of your way.

I've gotta lean across here.

But see the background is that black acrylic and it's dry.

And I can simply just take that and shave that off.

See how that makes it look a little more rounded.

You always wanna be careful when you're doing a circle like that, that your corners are rounded, not pointed on the ends like a football.

It's an ellipse.

So you want it round.

And I'll just tuck that in there.

Okay, good to go.

I'm gonna start working on these leaves.

You wanna pay attention when you're doing leaves for a floral.

Every flower has its own shape of a leaf.

I've drawn this up ahead of time just to give you the idea.

Geranium leaves are kind of big and they're basically a shape like this.

They almost look like a deciduous leaf tree but they have this kind of a shape.

So when I'm painting these in, I'm just gonna be winging 'em and just trying to make these shapes in my head with the brush.

A rose leaf is much smaller.

These aren't to scale, by the way, these are not to scale, but a rose leaf is much smaller, has a totally different shape.

Lilac leaves almost look like a spade for a playing card.

A sunflower leaf is more like this and it's obviously much bigger.

So I see a lot of artists and they'll take a a flat brush like this and just make a generic leaf and no matter what flower they paint, they put the same type of leaf with it.

You really shouldn't do that.

You should do a little studying and just look up online get some photos of a reference for what you're doing and know your subject and put the appropriately with the right flower.

It's just gonna be much better in the end.

Okay so I'm gonna go in with something darker here and start putting in some of these larger leaves.

I can work right on this puddle of green that I had.

And I'm gonna take sap green, maybe a little bit of that cerulean blue.

You know me, I gotta stick some blue in here somewhere again.

So I'm gonna take blue and green maybe a little bit of black.

I said a little bit of black Willie.

Whoo I got a lot there now.

I'll just put a little touch of white with it.

I want it quite dark anyway.

There we go.

That's not too bad.

I'm gonna chisel this brush right up nice and sharp.

And I'm just seeing these in my mind's eye.

And like I said, I'm kind of thinking this shape of leaf but I'm gonna turn them different angles.

So laying every which way.

I've got some coming this way so it's kind of over the edge of the rim of the pot now and then.

So here we go and see, you can literally just take the brush like this and just carve it out.

I'm working into that wet green paint that I had from before.

But if I use enough paint and enough pressure, I can paint right over the top, just like that.

See and it'll cover it, no problem.

Get these little scallopy edges on it.

Sometimes I will draw a flower right out with a pencil on my canvas, like the rose, the red rose, a single red rose that I showed you.

That was more of a photo realistic interpretation.

Something like that, sometimes I will draw it right out and then paint it in.

Something like this, a lot of times I just wing it.

Like I said, you have to decide how literal you wanna be with it.

I'm gonna let this just kind of fade out a little bit.

Actually I can take my fan brush.

I'm gonna let this fade out a little bit down into here.

There's gonna be a lot of stuff going on in this pot, leaves and stuff all crammed together.

I'm gonna soften that in a little bit like that.

I'm gonna have one, maybe like this over here.

It's kind of leaning out on the side a little more.

See, I'm kind of laying the brush flat and taking the paint off the flat backside.

You can't go and just use the point, the edge of the brush all the time.

I lay it flat and they wiggle it and I work it right into that under paint that's in there.

There were two flowers that started dating.

It was a budding romance.

Oh yes, it was.

So I'd like to soften them into the cluster.

So they kind of meld in with all the other lighter green leaves.

So everything looks like it's just compressed and kinda, I hate to use the word wadded, but it's kind of wadded in there.

So I just put these wherever I feel I've got room and wherever it's gonna fill it up for balance.

I'm gonna show you a trick.

I just happened to think about.

I hope I got room on here to do it.

I think I do, but I'll show you another way to do it, to approach it.

'Cause you know, I've been painting a long time.

So if I, if something's not going right I can grab the reins and steer it in another direction and I can pretty much salvage.

A lot of people have trouble.

They get off the deep end, they can't get back.

So here's another way to approach this.

You could take your brush handle and let's say this one right here.

If you, right in that mass of light green that we had in there, you could always do this and you can actually just scratch out a shape like this for your leaf before you're ever committed.

If you don't like it, you come back and you just take a brush, fan brush, or wash this one out, whatever.

You can scratch it out and get of it.

But it'll give you a guideline to follow.

That's probably gonna be easier for some of you.

If you're not used to this, haven't done it too much.

I do that myself, sometimes in my classes, I'll tell my students take it, not necessarily for leaves like this, but yes we could do it for that.

A lot of times it could be anything.

I'll just say, scratch that right into the paint and give yourself a guideline.

It's like drawing, but we're not really drawing, but we are in a sense in that you're creating a line to follow.

Okay let's see.

It doesn't have to be too perfect, too precise.

Basically, the only leaves I'm worried about are these larger ones in front.

The ones in the background that are initial green that we put on there is just filler.

Okay I'm running out of paint.

I don't need much more.

I need a little bit.

So I'm gonna mix up a little more of the green, the blue, the black.

Maybe I'll have something sticking up here a little bit, just a piece of one that, you know they don't even have to see the whole thing.

It's sitting in the background there somewhere.

And again, I mentioned earlier in part one that I sit back and I squint at stuff and I take a good hard look at it and I analyze it.

And I look for anything that looks like a big open gaping area with nothing in it and if it needs more filler, I give it more filler.

See, sometimes I just come in and put little dabs and dashes like this.

It looks like a little bent over edges of leaves and whatnot in there.

Okay it's not too bad.

I think that's coming along.

Don't you?

I can always come back and add more.

I don't like the fact that this is too smooth and straight across here.

So I'm gonna come in, even though this is the darker color then what I used in the background, I'm just gonna fluff this up.

These are leaves and whatnot way back in the backside of the pot.

I just wanna throw that so it wasn't so straight on the top.

And then I'm gonna take my brush handle.

This is called sgraffito.

I'm gonna take the brush handle, and I'm actually just gonna scratch out the veins in these.

Notice how I got the veins running through.

There's a central vein and then these little offshoots.

It's almost like a tree trunk and branches, kinda.

You just have to look at it and decide where the central vein is gonna be.

And this one's hanging over the edge like this.

Notice I'm wiping the tip of the brush off because I'm picking up quite a little gob of paint on the end of it.

But see, that's an easy way to put the veins in and get some detail in it.

All right, we're gonna move on to those geranium blossoms.

I'm gonna put something a little dark right there.

Just to mask the edge of that pot a little more.

All right, that's not too bad.

Enough to give you the idea.

So I'm just trying to show you the nuts and bolts of how to do something like this.

It'll take a little bit of practice, but maybe not as much as what you think.

Don't be afraid to give it a shot.

I've swished my brush out and I'm gonna put these three geraniums in.

I'm gonna start with maybe something similar to what I just had.

I'm gonna take sap green and yellow.

I'm gonna put the stems in first, maybe just a tad of white.

So it's a little more opaque and I'm gonna take this.

I just don't want 'em three like this.

So make sure they're, they're different heights, every one of them.

They're leaning different ways.

There's different spacing in between 'em.

I've got a lean one arm on the other here.

I'm gonna go for the big one here first.

It's gonna go right in front of some of my leaves here, that's fine.

I'm gonna say right there.

Let, and as I come down, I just loosen the pressure on the brush and let it fade in.

If it doesn't fade in enough, I can come in with this and just let it get lost in the shuffle with all the other greenery and stuff in there.

I'm gonna chisel that brush again and I'm gonna say there's one like this, leaning out this way a little more.

I can let it stop right behind that one big leaf right there, if I do this and then repair the leaf in front of it.

I'm gonna come back and highlight these stems a little bit anyway.

And maybe one coming in, something like this.

I know that's the scary part.

Don't let it throw yeah.

Okay this one's got some little buds on it.

I'm gonna chisel this up.

Now you could use a liner for this.

I'm gonna make this a little taller.

You could use a liner for this if you chose to.

I'm gonna bring it around like this and connect it.

I gotta go just a tad darker with that.

It's not showing up the way I want it to.

That is nothing but an adjustment.

I always tell you guys a painting is nothing but A series of adjustments.

So if something's not working, you have to redo it there.

See I made it darker so it's showing up against the background.

It's all good.

Okay I'll swish this out.

On the left-hand sides.

Now see these look a little lighter.

It's because my color was a little lighter.

That's fine.

They're showing up.

So that's really all I care.

I could make them darker like this and put 'em in but I kind of like them a little lighter like that just for something different, just to show you.

You don't have to be quite so fanatical about it.

If it's working, take it.

I'm gonna take some white and yellow and just a spec a sap green and on the right hand sides of the stems a little bit, I'm just gonna put a little bit of a lighter, brighter highlight here and there.

Don't do it everywhere.

See this one's kinda getting lost back here.

Watch I can bring that out just by putting a little bit of highlight on it.

So it comes forward and shows up a little bit easier.

Same thing here.

Don't outline the whole stem, that gets very repetitious and predictable and boring.

That's the word you don't want people to use when they're describing your painting is predictable and boring.

You want it to be eye catching and fresh and vivid.

(laughs) Those are the words you want.

Okay I'm gonna switch over to my Filbert brush.

This is sometimes referred to as a cat's tongue because it literally looks like a cat's tongue.

It's the shape of a cat's tongue, but it's a Filbert brush.

This is number four Filbert and this is what I'm gonna use for these petals.

It's works really well for doing the petals.

Speaking of the petals, geranium petals, and most of these cluster type flowers have petals that look like this.

A lilac, I think has four petals rather than five.

But any of these cluster flowers that I mentioned where they're just individual little florets, they usually have little florets that look like this.

Geraniums tend to have five petals on each little floret.

So most of this is just filled in 'cause they're all going different angles and they're all really tight and clustered together.

And then over the top, I'll just put one or two of these.

So they look like they're facing right front at you.

So they're more distinct and you can actually see the shape.

Most of it is just a mishmash of petals all stuck in there and wadded together.

So I'm gonna start with red rose deep.

This is a really nice fuchsia color.

Look into the fuchsia.

I'm a psychic.

(laughs) I don't know.

I don't know where this stuff comes from, folks.

I really don't.

Okay I'm gonna take a red rose deep and a little bit of white.

Where do we start?

It doesn't matter.

Let's start with this guy over here.

I'm just gonna take, well, I better show you on here.

I better show you on here.

When I do this flower, obviously I'm just doing this and I'm just pulling in towards the center and I'm putting five little petals on.

When I'm doing around the outside edge and just the ones that don't matter so much, I'm literally just doing something like this.

I'm just dabbing.

Sometimes I use the wide part of the brush, sometime use the skinny part of the brush and it's just all these little dabs and strokes will melt together and make the blossom.

So up here, I'm gonna start in right towards the middle.

It's better to start in the middle and work your way out and then when you get the flower the size you want it stop.

A lot of times people will start way out here on the outside edge and they start way out too far and all of a sudden, you've got a flower this big that you didn't want.

Start in the middle and work your way out and see there's really no rhyme or reason to this.

Like I showed you on that paper, I'm just kind of dabbing.

As they come off the stem, they're all gonna kinda branch out this way so I am thinking of that as I'm doing it.

See this one's going this way.

This one's gonna come in this way.

This one's going that way.

So they're all kinda branched out from that stem.

Right through the middle, they're pretty dense and more solid.

You'll see some daylight through them once in a while.

So I try not to block it in a 100% and see where my stem was.

I just buried that in and cut it off.

My stem was taller than that, but it didn't matter.

I'll come back and add some highlight on that.

I'm running out of paint.

So I'm just mixing up more of the red rose deep and the white and maybe right up in here somewhere.

See it doesn't take much to get the feeling of a flower.

Even without the individual florets on there, it just, it starts looking like a geranium.

They're really not that tough to do.

I just heard somebody say, "Boy, that's a good thing."

That is a good thing 'cause you wanna try this, right?

You don't wanna know that it's hard.

Yeah.

These really aren't, these really aren't too bad.

Just don't make it perfectly round like a snow cone.

I'm trying to leave it kind of irregular around the edges and irregular shape and contour.

And this one here is a little smaller.

I'm gonna let them overlap and touch right here.

They almost did.

They almost wanna be friends, but not quite.

I'm gonna let these two touch a little bit and I will separate them by how I highlight.

It's all good.

That's an overlap.

An overlap always gives you more depth.

So I overlap that leaf too.

One thing in front of another, always gives you more depth.

So that's not a bad thing.

Just like the leaves over the edge of the pot.

Okay, now I'm going to wipe this brush off and I'm gonna pick up a little bit of green 'cause I need to put some green on where those buds are gonna be.

So I'm kind of backtracking.

I probably should have done that first when I was doing the green to begin with and I thought about it at the time, but I didn't do it.

So right off this little stem, there's just gonna be these little, I don't know what to call 'em.

I'm sure there's a botanical name for 'em that I don't know.

But there's these little nodules that the buds hang on to.

On a typical flower, it ends up, I think being the calyx.

I don't know if that would be a calyx on these or if that's what it's called.

I'm sure some of you out there that know will inform me.

I'd be interested to know.

So then I'm gonna take a little bit of this same red and I'll put these buds on.

See, the buds are very simple.

I'm gonna do it like this.

For the buds, I'm laying the brush the skinny way instead of the wide way and I'm just gonna pull back like this.

There's a bud.

There's a bud.

Nothing to it, but the buds will grow in little clusters like this.

You'll see 'em.

My wife Glenda loves flowers.

So we have a lot of flowers in our yard in the summertime.

She's always buying flowers and setting them around the yard and planting 'em.

So I get to see a lot of different ones.

Okay I've swished that out.

I'm gonna do some highlighting now.

So I'm gonna take more white and just a little bit of this red and the paint is very dry so I'm gonna thin this down, just a little bit with a speck of that medium, just enough so I know it'll come off my brush and on these ones, I already have, I'm gonna put a few little touches here and there.

Now this one looks like I may have added some yellow to it.

See how it's not so pinky.

I probably took cad, I really don't remember.

I was painting what I felt at that moment, but I can tell that this isn't just red rose, deep and white.

So if you prefer that flavor, you can add a little bit of yellow in it.

It turns it slightly orange-ish.

So I'm gonna highlight some of these ones I've already got.

And then we'll put in a few of those individual florets.

See, I love this red rose deep.

It's one of my favorite colors, not my all time favorite color.

You know that's blue, but it's coming together, don't you think?

I know you can do this.

♪ 'Cause she's a rose where roses never grow ♪ Although in this case, she's a geranium.

Okay I'm gonna wipe the brush.

I got just a couple of minutes left here.

I got just enough time to pull this off.

I'm gonna take more of the same color.

And like I mentioned before, the individual flowers, I'm gonna try to squeeze some in with the five petals in the front, you only need one or two, really, you don't need much.

So on this one, I'm going to do this, where it looks like you got a flora facing you.

And maybe a portion of one down here a little bit.

You might not be able to really distinguish it all that cleanly, but you know what, if you look at a geranium, you have to really look at it close, 'cause like I said, these are in there so tightly together and just clustered in there.

And see, I'll put some lighter accents right here to pull that, this one out from the one, the taller one next to it.

By George, I think I did it.

That didn't come out too bad, did it?

I think it looks pretty good.

Watch this.

I'm gonna do a finishing touch.

I'm gonna darken this down a little bit.

I don't want that real bright highlight color.

I'm gonna darken it down just a trifle.

Chisel this together.

I'm gonna, leaves shed their petals like crazy.

So down here on the bottom, I'm just gonna say maybe a couple petals fell off.

Put one right in that reflection that tends to tie the reflection down.

You can overdo it and it looks just completely crazy and overdone.

Try not to overdo it.

Until next time.

Stay creative and keep painting.

Give this a try.

I'd love to see your version of it.

(pleasant music) - [Narrator] Support for painting with Wilson.

Bickford is provided by the J.M.

McDonald Foundation.

Continuing the example modeled by J.M.

McDonald by contributing to education, health, humanities and human services.

Sharing since 1952.

Online at jmcdonaldfoundation.org.

(upbeat music) In rural New York state bordered by the St. Lawrence River in the Adirondack mountains is a sprawling landscape with communities that offer self guided tours for the creatively inclined.

Learn the stories behind the Barn Quilt Traditions, family, agriculture, nature, and beauty, St. Lawrence County Life Undiscovered - [Woman Narrator] All 13 episodes of painting with Wilson Bickford season seven are now available on DVD or Blu-ray in one box set for $35 plus 4.95 shipping and handling.

Or learn the techniques used to paint "Sunset Lake" with the in-depth "Paint Smart, Not Hard" series of Wilson Bickford instructional DVDs, includes the bonus episode, "Don't Be So Coy".

Additional titles available.

Order online or watch or download directly to your computer or mobile device.

More information@wpbstv.org, PBS tv.org.

(pleasant music) (bright music)