- Old barns are a favorite painting subject of mine.

I have some great techniques for achieving realistic results that I wanna share with you.

Join me next on Painting with Wilson Bickford for-- (rhythmic instrumental music) Hi thanks for joining me today on Painting with Wilson Bickford.

I've got a fantastic little barn scene I wanna share with you today.

If you know me at all, if you've seen any of my DVD's or lessons in the past you know I love to paint old barns.

I'm a country boy at heart and in my neck of the woods there are tons of barns and reference material to work with.

So I wanna show you my method for doing those barns today.

I have a whole array of supplies here.

I gotta a lot of stuff here to share with you today.

So, we're gonna get started with this.

This will be a two part lesson because I wanna be able to slow down and actually teach, I don't like to just gloss through and just say look what I can do and crank through a painting.

I like to slow down and break it down into steps so you can do your version at home.

If you go to the WPBSTV you will be able to download a supply list like this that runs through all of the colors that we're using today.

We're doing oil painting, even though we're gonna start with an acrylic underpainting today.

This is oil paints and our acrylics are listed.

The tools and brushes that we're using, there is also a sketch of the project that we're doing today so you can actually download the sketch, print that off.

If you lay that underneath, put some graphite paper, transfer paper underneath, lay it on your canvas.

I like to use a red pen, it's not mandatory, use any pen but the red pen shows up nicely on the dark lines, you would trace your whole design on there and that's how I got the image on there.

Now this one's already been under painted, I'm gonna get to that don't worry, I'm not gonna leave you in the lurch.

But I just wanted to tell you how to get to this point, you would draw that on your canvas.

There will also be at the WPBS website a reference photo like this which is actually just a photo of that image right there, I took a photo of it.

You'll be able to download this and have this physical copy right in hand to hang at your easel just to kinda duplicate it.

And don't be afraid, you can put your doors and windows wherever you want.

You could use your own barn scene, it's all good.

But that is a reference in case you care to use it.

For oil paints today I'm using cobalt blue, sap green, Van Dyke brown, cadmium yellow pale, ivory black, burnt sienna and titanium white.

I also have a little bit of cadmium red deep here which shows on your supply list as an option, that's an optional color if you wanna put a little bit of red in your barn like an old red barn.

I'm using some white base coat, oil base coat today too for the background and some clear glazing medium.

And for brushes I'm using a two inch scenery brush, a one inch scenery brush, a one and a half inch large texture brush, a number 10 large flat brush, a number six small flat brush, a half inch rake brush, a number three fan brush, a number two detailed scriptliner and a number two liner.

I'm also gonna be using some masking tape and a craft utility knife.

Okay, I'm gonna show you in my neck of the woods like I said I have a lot of reference material to pull from.

These are just some photos that I've taken on my travels, these are areas within maybe a three mile or three hour radius.

Some of them are within three miles but within three hour radius of my little nucleus of where I travel out to do classes in my area.

These are actual barns that I take my camera with me when I travel and I'll stop and take photos of barns, this one happens to be just literally down the road, probably two and a half, three miles.

Then I caught this just a couple of months ago after we had a nice snowstorm and it really caught my eye.

I thought, wow, it's beautiful.

I haven't painted that yet but I probably will.

So, it's a good idea to take your camera with you.

Everybody always wants to know where I get my ideas, where I get my inspiration, it's all around me up here in northern New York.

We're right here in God's country so I couldn't have it any better.

We get the change of seasons, we get fall colors, we get snow, we get summer, we get it all, I love it.

So, that's just some inspiration for you, take some photos of your own.

And I'm gonna show you how I got to this point.

Now this one has been done and dried.

This is gonna take awhile, this would be the nuts and bolts of your painting here, this is gonna be the more time consuming part.

So, I wanna show you how I did that.

I used acrylic for that, typically I just use a little disposable plate, you can use anything.

I just used something I can throw away.

I do have a little cup of water here to thin the acrylic down.

And basically at this point I have taken my number six flat brush and I used a mix of white gesso and black gesso, these are acrylics so I'm thinning them with water.

You can see if I make a really light gray, I just painted these areas here, blocked them, they don't have to be perfect, it's an old wooden barn, so if it looks kinda blotchy, it's all the better.

But basically, I just kind of painted those in, I would do the same thing over here on this side.

I'm not gonna do this whole little section but I wanna show you how I got to this point.

But see I under paint the values, I want this side of the barn light and this side in shadow.

So I just kinda paint those areas in.

The roof over here is much lighter so I would add more light and I'd block that in.

And the important part is I used a rake brush, this is a one and a half inch rake brush.

This is great for duplicating barn texture.

Notice how it's kinda spiky.

I'm gonna take something a little darker.

The important part is to add a little bit of water to that and let the bristles kind of splay out wide.

And then if I use a light touch, just with the tips of those bristles see it gives you that nice wood grain look.

That's a little dry, notice it's not coming off my brush, I need a little more water with it.

See, it doesn't take much to rough that up and really make it start looking like old barn wood.

This rake brush works great for that.

There we go, I got it wet enough now where it's working for me.

See it doesn't take much.

Let the brush do the work for you, that's what it's designed for.

So I put some of that texture on, I went back with my detailed scriptliner, painted in the dark windows and doors.

Down here, this has been under painted with a lighter tone like the mortar within the stone.

For the stones themselves, I just take a detailed scriptliner, something a little darker than what the mortar is and I just randomly paint in some little rock indications.

Vary it, make them a little darker here, a little lighter there.

Don't try to make it perfect.

It actually falls together pretty easily.

It's just more time consuming and you wanna do a good job on your underpainting.

The type of underpainting we are doing today is called the grisaille, it's a French word spelled like this, so if you ever see it in an art book, grisaille is just a French word for gray, so I've been told.

It's pronounced gree-sigh, some people pronounce it gree-zigh but it means the same thing, it just means shades of gray.

So, we're just actually painting this in with shades of gray, we're gonna put oil transparent glazes of color on top of that which gives it the color.

So, see then you can take your detail scriptliner, roll it to a point where you want the bigger gaps and openings here, like boards missing, it's pretty simple.

I'm just trying to paint some of those spots out.

The roof over here, this would be the same, you just under paint it with your base tone first but you come back with something a little darker like this and put the ribs if you want, metal roofing, put the ribs on like that and that's what brought me to this point.

I just kept tinkering with it, I was concerned with my lights and darks making sure I had a light direction so it looks like the light is coming from the front so the sides of the shadow.

Notice this roof is darker, this one's lighter, so it's all just the same ol', same ol' use common sense as far as your lighting and you should be good to go.

When you are done with that you would want to take all of your brushes that were in the acrylic, I have a pitcher here with water in it.

Can you tell I've used that with acrylic before.

It's been through the war and back.

But I put these in here and I'm gonna let them soak and I will clean them in midstream here before I come back with the oils, I'll wash these out thoroughly with soap and water.

So that brings you to this point, make sure it's dry.

You can use a hair dryer on it if you choose to or you can just let it dry on it's own.

It'll be dry probably within 15 to 20 minutes on it's own, just left to it's own devices.

From there I'm going to take masking tape, this is just good old regular masking tape from the hardware store.

I'm gonna tape this out, overlap the strips just enough to where you're not gonna get bleed between them and I then I use a nice, sharp utility craft knife that you'll find at a craft store.

This is what's called a number 11 blade, the style of it, the shape of it and then you've probably seen me do this on other shows, this is one of my common methods, I'm always taping stuff out.

I just carefully trim around the barn and remove the tape that doesn't need to be there and the barn will be totally protected.

So we can move on with the oil phase.

I'm gonna jump off here and finish that and I'm gonna wash those acrylic brushes and I'll be right back.

(guitar music) It's always fun to experiment with different themes and different techniques.

This is a winter scene of an old barn that I did and I used nothing but a painting knife, I do a lot of knife paintings.

This is actually just put off and just spread around, it's very impressionistic and loose and it's a lot of fun, give it a shot.

There I've taken off the excess tape so just the barn itself is protected that way I can freely paint my background in right over the top.

I'm also gonna take a wide strip of tape and tape off my land line.

This will make my life easier later on.

You know me my approach is paint smart not hard, this will make my life easier.

So I'm just going to tape this off, I'm going right underneath that barn tape pretty much for the most part.

Over here I have two options, I could just put it like this and I could take my little sharp knife and I could trim out to a gully shape or a hill, whatever I want or I could just simply if I pull it tight this way, I can actually burnish it down as I'm pulling so I can put a curve on it just by doing it like that so.

Notice I tabbed it over on the ends, don't wrap it around, hook it tight on the back, it just makes it harder to get off when the time comes.

It's not going to be on there that long.

This is like putting a bib on at a fancy Italian restaurant.

Keeps the sauce off your shirt.

When I go to put on all my background stuff here, I don't want it all getting down here in my meadow, necessarily.

I could cover it up later but it's better yet if it's not even in there, not in the equation.

Okay, I'm gonna take the two inch scenery brush and as per usual what you guys seen, I know you've seen me do a thousand times, I'm going to put a thin, thin coat of this white base coat.

This will make it blendable and slick, I can get nice, soft edges in my sky where I want them.

The important part is to put is to put it on very thinly.

Now I'm not sure you can see that, maybe from where you're looking at it on camera but I can tell by the glare I can kind of see the shine.

Make sure you have an even shine, you distribute it across you whole surface.

I'm gonna pick up some of the cobalt blue now, this will be my sky color.

And even though I'm gonna put clouds in this I don't wanna do it in a solid manner, I don't wanna paint the sky solidly, you'll see that I'm gonna do it in blotches.

I'm going to paint it blotchily.

You like blotchily, that green vegetable?

I do, I actually like blotchily.

But blotchily just means that I'm gonna do it in blotches.

I'm not gonna paint it solid like a wall, watch.

I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna roll, scrub, twist, turn the brush, I'm pressing a little harder here, a little softer over here.

You get variations in it of light and dark.

It leaves it a little more open.

Overall, I'm gonna use a lighter touch the lower I go, so it gets a little fainter.

I'm losing blue off the brush, it's picking up more of the white base coat and it'll get a little lighter, a little lighter, a little lighter as it goes off on the lower horizon which adheres to our principle of law.

You've heard me say it before, aerial perspective you bet.

Somebody in St. Paul Minnesota just said that I heard you.

Thanks for watching I heard you.

Okay, see how, it already looks like a sky, even fluff more clouds on top of that.

I'm gonna take the brush now, no need to wash it, I can just wipe it off and do what I need to do.

A lot of people are fanatical about washing their brush every time they look at it, you really don't need to.

I typically just wash them mostly just once at the end for the most part, especially this big brush but a lot of times I'll have to wash the smaller brushes in between.

You see to blend I just do a little circle or an oval like this, not a lot of pressure.

You'll notice all that harshness and graininess melts right out.

And see as far as the sky goes I can leave that, that's a dandy looking sky don't you think?

Yeah, I think so too, you could do that, that's easy, that's a very easy convincing way to do a sky.

I'm just gonna take the brush and wipe it off, I don't need to wash it.

Typically you can just wipe this one and keep going for what we're going to do with it.

Wipe it off and to blend this I just use circular strokes or ovals like this, lightly just enough to soften it out, you'll see it takes all the courseness and the graininess out.

That's a pretty dandy looking sky right there on it's own, don't you think?

Yeah, very easy convincing way to do a sky.

You could do that, I know you can.

Although I did put some clouds in this one and I'll show you how to do that as well.

I'm gonna take my number three fan brush and some titanium white.

Since I got this base coat here, I'm gonna put a little touch of that with it just to thin it down a little bit.

It'll stick to the canvas a little easier if it's a little thinner consistency.

I'm not trying to match that one by any stretch but I'm just gonna take the corner of the brush and I'm stirring little circles.

I'm seeing a shape in my mind's eye that looks like this, like the billow rounded billow of a cloud.

I'm hoping you could see that scratch right there.

I see that in my mind's eye and then I just run with it.

Don't run with scissors but you can run with your ideas.

This is just my idea, it's how I see it in my head and I go with it.

I want a nice billowy loose top, I'm gonna fade the bottom away to infinity so I use more of the end of the brush like this with a much lighter touch.

And if you blend the bottoms away they look like they're melting right into the sky and they belong there just like they should.

If you don't like a lot of the texture of the brush marks you wipe your brush and if you use the backside like this it really softens, you get a much lighter touch with the backside of the brush.

I just kinda pat it and comb it down a little bit.

And it's your painting so put however many of these you want.

Maybe I'll put a little section over here maybe coming right in behind the barn which will be a nice contrast because the barn will be a little darker there eventually.

And work with what you have.

Notice I wanna put it against the dark area so the white will show up.

I put white on top pf white down here you're not gonna have much pop, it's not gonna show very well.

Think of your contrast.

So I'm gonna comb that down a little bit.

That was pretty easy.

We're gonna move onto that mountain in the background.

I'm gonna set that fan brush to the side and I'm using the number 10 flat.

I'm just gonna put in a basic shape, notice it even carries through here a little bit line of trees.

I'm gonna take some of this blue that I just used.

Apparently I didn't wash that brush very well last time, it's a little stiff.

Probably got some dried paint in it.

That's a good lesson for you right there, make sure you clean your tools guys.

I'm gonna take some of the blue sky color I had with a little bit of this green, maybe a speck of the burnt sienna.

What I'm trying to do is basically gray down a green that I'm happy with.

A little more blue with that, you know me I gotta put some blue in that.

I'm gonna test this color and see what I think.

That's just the base color of the mountain.

I'm gonna dull that just a tad more with a spec of burnt sienna.

All right, I'm gonna, now this one comes above the shed roof, I'm gonna come out this side, it doesn't matter.

Do it the way you feel and what you see.

I'm just gonna put this profile on like this, I'll put a couple bumps, I will separate these, by the way I highlight them.

I picked up a little more blue there but I kinda like that, all right.

Blue's a good thing.

Down here I'm gonna fade it out.

There's a little misty quality, like there's a little valley there behind the trees, it might show if I don't crowd it out with my trees.

At this point I don't know.

Nothing here is scripted, I'm just flying by the seat of my pants and doing it.

So nothing was measured out, I'm just painting it the way I feel and see it right now.

Okay I want that to look off in the distance anyway so I don't get too crazy with it.

I'm gonna sit that brush to the side, I'm gonna go back to my fan brush which still has some white, if I don't throw it on the floor.

And it still has a little bit of the white left in it from my clouds.

I'm gonna take some of the cadmium yellow pale and a little bit of white onto that green and I'm just thinking sunlight on the hill with green trees.

I'm gonna use the backside of the brush like this.

It's not showing up which tells me it needs to be a little lighter and brighter.

I'll start on this one.

Just think the light's coming from this direction, where is it gonna hit on the edge of those hills.

It's a pretty easy process, these are a long ways away so I don't wanna get a lot of detail on them anyway.

It's gonna be very subtle, just enough to say so.

These aren't the important part of the painting, the barn is but you still want it to look good.

You'll have a lot of time at home to tinker with it.

I think that's gonna work.

I'm gonna go just a trifle lighter right here, just to bring that one forward a little more.

There we go, that looks pretty good.

I can live with that, all right.

So that's how I accomplished it anyway.

I'm gonna use the one inch scenery brush.

This is cut at an angle, nice for doing this foliage.

I want a really dark green, so I'm gonna take sap green, some cobalt blue, a little bit of sienna, I can put even just a speck of black with that I want a really, really good dark, dark green to start.

This will be the shading and the shadows within the trees.

Now here's the important part, notice how I'm loading, I'm tapping the bristles so they're spread open.

So they're not mat, look at that, as I mixed my color, every color I put in there I tapped it to mix it, I didn't stir it or do this that will mat your brush together to a club, you don't want it matted.

And if I come up here and I just touch lightly, turn the brush to and fro, that'll give me my leafy trees.

I want it very solid right down there where the tape is gonna be but I want them nice and airy near the tops.

So see I'm using a little bit ore of gingerly touch near the top and then I pounce a little more at the base down by that tape.

If I can leave a little bit of that fog in there, it's all the better, that mist.

Like I said before I might crowd some of it out of there, if it goes, it goes but if I can save some I will, it's all good.

I wanna come over on this side, do the same thing.

When we come back on the next episode, we're gonna start tweaking those colors on that barn, that's barn, that's gonna be pretty exciting.

The barn is already 90% done, we're just gonna add color to it, which is the cool part.

Okay, from there I'm gonna take my liner brush, anything with a small handle and I'm just gonna scroll in like this, scratch in a few little indications of tree trunks within some of that, we need some sort of a skeleton holding up some of that foliage.

Then I'm gonna take my one inch scenery brush and I'm gonna wipe it off.

Wipe it as best I can, get all of the paint out of it.

I'm gonna start with yellow and titanium white, a little bit of the sap green I'm thinking sunlit leaves.

Notice on my palette I'm getting that raised texture, you want that much paint on your brush.

And go light enough, see I'm comparing it to my dark value, go light enough to make a difference.

I'm gonna go a little bit lighter than that 'cause it's kinda mingling in with my mountain in behind, so I have to adjust my value a little lighter.

See if I can get that to stand out a little more, there we go.

And just think in terms if the light is coming from the right, so you're kind of favoring the right hand side to those.

All right, we're getting down to the wire, we gotta sign off for this episode but come back next week and we'll finish this up.

I'm gonna remove this and when we come back I will remove the barn tape and we'll develop that.

Until next time stay creative and keep painting.

- [Narrator] All 13 episodes of Painting with Wilson Bickford series 6 are now available on DVD or Blu-ray in one box set for $35 plus $495 shipping and handling.

Or learn the techniques used to paint Stand of Birches with the indepth Paint Smart Not Hard series of Wilson Bickford instructional DVD's, additional titles available.

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

More information at wpbs.org/painting.

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