Wilson: Last time we under painted the eagle and masked him out and dropped in the sky in the background.

This week we're going to finish it off with trees and add the details to this soaring eagle.

So join me next on Painting with Wilson Bickford.

[Music] [Music] As you recall last time, we had started the eagle project.

We've got the sky, the clouds in.

We need to come in now and put in some of the background trees and start developing the eagle.

Remember we under painted him with some of the acrylic.

He's taped out so we can paint readily freely over the top of him.

However, I'll remove that tape when the time comes.

So we'll start in with the fir trees here in the distance.

I want these kind of vague and far away so there's not going to be a lot of crisp detail in them, not lot of vivid color.

I'm going to use a fan brush and I can go into some of this bluish color that I had for my sky previously.

If you don't have any of that, just put a little bit of blue with it.

Now see this green is very vivid, too bright, so I need to tone that down.

I'm going to take green, little bit of the dioxazine purple believe it or not, will gray it quite well.

Now I'll show you a little test swatch here on my canvas.

See how that's grayed that down?

Almost maybe too much.

I'll put a little more green with it, get a flavor that you're happy with.

Overall I think that's a little dark, so I want to put a little more white with it.

I want these to look distant.

And usually with greens, I like to put a little blue in my green.

So I'm going to put a little touch of the ultramarine blue, I'm going to see what we get.

It's like cooking.

You have to dip your ladle in and taste your soup once in a while and see if it needs a dash of this or that.

Now this is a little darker than this one but that's fine.

I'm going to go with it.

If I wanted it a little bit lighter, yeah I could put white with it but I think that's going to be fine by the time I work it into my canvas.

Now if you started up to this point, your canvas is probably dry if you started last week.

Mine is still wet because we're filming these in secession but that's fine.

Nothing is going to affect anything else at this point really too severely.

I'm going to just kind of blocken down here at the bottom of the canvas first.

Now that I'm getting that up there, it's looks a little vivid to me.

I'm going to tone that down just a tad more.

That's not a mistake, it's an adjustment.

I want to knock that down a little more.

Put a little more blue, a touch more purple, there we go and gray it just a little bit.

Sometimes you don't know until you get it right on your canvas what it's going to look like.

It looks totally different on that white pallet than it does against these colors up here.

So I'm basically...I'm just trying to get it solid down to the bottom of the canvas.

Now I'll start making trees out of that.

So I'm going to tap the brush open like this.

I'm going to hold it vertically and just tap.

Now to do the trees, I start with a center line like that and then I just go a little bit either side, left and right to widen it out like a tree.

And again, I don't want a lot of detail in these, I want them to look like they're a long ways away.

So they don't have to be quite as detailed and as refined as you think they do.

And I'll probably ultimately come back and just kind of soften the edges to blur them into the background a little bit because I want them to look far away as compared to that eagle.

I want him to look much closer.

Vary the heights of them, make sure you get different distances between them.

Now see if you compare the two, this is a much more vivid green than this one.

This one is more gray, I just grayed it down more.

And in this instance, I used the little purple to cut the color back but you could us a little bit of your ivory black that we have on the pallet, that'd work fine.

Believe it or not the Cadmium Red Light would also work because red is the complimentary color to green.

So as always, you just want to get colors that you like.

And see I'm just kind of going for a loose profile distance trees.

I'm going to put a little bit of highlighting on some of these.

Gets a little repetitious going across here but we've got to fill this area in.

If you haven't tried painting don't be afraid to give it a shot.

Most people are ...have a fear of the unknown.

A lot of people tell me, I really love to paint but I just don't think I can do it.

And never tried it.

Don't be afraid to try it, you'll probably going to surprise yourself.

A lot of these techniques that I show you in the series are just common techniques that can be applied to a lot of different subjects.

And once you know them, the cat is out of the bag.

It's like a magician with all his tricks.

Once you know how he does them, they don't seem so complicated.

They're much easier than you expected.

It's the same with this.

Okay now, I'm just filling that in a little more solidly like that.

I'm going to wipe the brush off.

Notice how these are a little more vague and a little less defined.

I'm going to come back with the same brush and wipe it off thoroughly.

Open it up on the pallette like just so that the bristles are really spread out, fuzzy.

And if I come in just lightly, tap around the perimeter of these trees, you'll see it just kind of blurs them a little bit which makes them look a little more out of focus which makes them look a little farther away.

You're going to pick up paint as you do that, so you'll notice that I keep wiping the brush off.

The whole point is, we want to show distance on this flat canvas.

The eagle is going to be very pronounced and stand out much closer to us, so I want these trees to be kind of vague and lost in the distance.

Soft edges will always recede and hard edges come forward so that's what I'm trying to achieve here.

See how if I just blend those into the background a little bit, how much farther away they look.

They become more vague.

Okay, I'm going to put a little bit of highlight on some of these, especially closer towards the middle of the canvas, not dead center in the middle.

You'll notice right in here, some of these are a little warmer that kind of helps draw your eye in.

Even if the eagle weren't there, your eye tends to gravitate towards this lighter area.

It's kind of helping step up, er uh, suggest the focal point.

It's kind of helped ...helping suggest the focal point.

Okay from there I'm going to take white and a little yellow.

I can take a little bit of this green that I have left, something that's warmer, more sunshiny on needles, I can take a little bit of the straight sap green that even.

I got a fair amount of paint on the brush now and I've got it opened up.

I'm going to use a light touch and I'll have to check this value to see if it's going to show up.

It's relative to how dark my background trees are.

If this isn't showing up I can lighten it a little bit.

I'm going to touch a little bit of highlight on some of those trees.

Like I said, not everywhere, kind of towards the center.

Notice how it's making you look there, it's kind of drawing the viewer's eye in and that's what I want.

I use a lighter touch the lower I go.

So they just kind of fade into the shadows a little more.

I wipe off the paint as I pick up some of the darker green.

Now see it just gives some of those trees a nice little glow...which draws the viewer's eye towards the center of that canvas and into the paining rather than out of it.

Alright, that's looking pretty good.

I think we're going to take the tape off the eagle here and start a little work on him because that will take us a few minutes.

I'm going to use my sharp knife that I had before.

Be careful guys, these are very sharp.

If you had your painting knife there handy, you could use that to dig under the tape too.

Sometimes you just have to get the tape started to get it off there.

I'm going to remove this tape.

Remember we had him painted in with the acrylic, so he's still inthere patiently waiting for us.

Be careful you don't scratch the acrylic and score through the paint and scrape the paint away.

There's his little white beak showing, remember we didn't paint that.

We're going to paint that yellow know with the oil, we didn't under paint that area.

And there he is, I got a little smudge there from my finger.

But we'll take care of that, that's not a big deal.

I'm going to take my number six flat brush and some of this clear glazing medium that I had laid out earlier on my plate and I need to put a thin coat over all of the eagle.

Now if you got little discrepancies here where maybe the paint bled underneath on the brown or on the blue, just put this medium on close to those areas.

We can touch those edges up around the perimeter with the oil paint.

Put this on first then you won't be dragging the color in.

You don't want to put the...touch up the edges first then you're going to get into with this clear and be stretching that color all over.

And I want less color him right now, it won't affect my highlights as much that's why I put this on with acrylic and let it dry, it won't lift.

But if we put wet oil paint on here, that's going to spread around it and it will lift.

So I just want to put a thin coat of the clear glazing medium on there.

I do need to kind of refine the edges a little bit.

I'm going to take my detail liner.

Remember earlier when we were trimming, I said we could redefine some of the little serrated edges on the wings if we needed to?

I'm going to take my detailed script liner with a little bit of this Vandyke brown, which is very dark down, very copper, a little of what I used in the acrylic with the brown and black mixture that I had.

And I'm just going to sharpen up some of these edges where they need it.

Everybody's going to have some of these.

Depends on how neatly you trimmed it and whether paint seeped underneath or not but in most cases it doesn't take much, it'll be minimal but I just go around and kind of touch these edges up a little bit.

Likewise for the blue if it happened on the blue which I really don't have any there but if it did, you could use some of the ultramarine blue and white.

Just try to match the value of what the acrylic paint was underneath.

You see it don't take much to refine that and get it back to square one where it needs to be.

Okay now don't forget, you had a sketch that you can transfer or not transfer...one to transfer but one to look at for the guidelines on your eagle that showed the feather markings.

This is going to be important, you're going to want to look at that as you do this.

Now I've got them laid out on here, so I use that as my guide but you'll see where these lines go over the ends of those feather layers are.

Those are going to be important for you to download that sketch as a reference.

[Music] If you want to add another layer of depth in your painting, you can do it when the canvas is wet or dry.

This is my dry sample, but if you take the long script liner and make a mixture of say, Vandyke brown, black and a little white, you can actually come in and add some tree trunks sticking up that are a little closer.

That adds a lot of character and gives you a little more detail, it gives you more depth as something being closer in the painting and you can embellish that accordingly.

So I'm going to make., uh, mix up something a little bit lighter.

I'm going to take white with a little bit of Vandyke brown and I'm not going to build it all up light at once.

I'm going to highlight it and then I will re-highlight.

So I'm going to roll this brush to a point and I'm going to find some of these edges here.

I'm actually going to start on the outside edge first and work my way in.

I'm going to have to come in and lean in like this and hoping my shoulders isn't blocking your view too badly.

I'm going to pull in like this.

Notice the direction, they change direction and go...everything kind of goes almost towards the head...the front of the birds body at least.

Let's see, as I put these on, I'm working from the back outside edge inward.

And then I can take my number six round brush and just lightly pull inward like this just to meld away the edge that leaves a little bit of dark space there to put the next leading edge.

So it's important that you put these on and kind of blend them in.

Since we have that clear on there, it gives us something to blend into it and it disappears quite easily.

I'm going to come in with the next layer which is about here.

Make sure it's going against something of the darker value there.

So you get a distinction, if not, you can lighten it back a little bit.

And see I'm just looking at that one as a reference, so I remember where I put that.

And each layer that you put on here you need to just repeat the process.

It's not difficult, really it's just a more tedious and a little more time consuming.

I promise you in the end it'll be worth it.

You'll have a nice looking eagle here.

I will come back eventually and probably re-highlight some of these and brighten some of them up a little bit.

I'm blending this edge away back to something darker, acrylic under painting shows through it.

I've got one more layer there, one more row.

So I'm going to come in and put this one on here.

It's not quite showing so I'm going to add just a touch of white, try to lighten that back just a whisker.

It's not a mistake, it's an adjustment.

You're constantly adjusting your values when you're painting, one color against another.

And then I come in and just lightly kind of blend that away, let some of the dark acrylic still read through it a little bit.

There, there's one wing on until we re-highlight at least.

Right on the top of it, his body.

I want to give him a little extra light like the light's coming from above.

It's the same idea.

My outline is back.

I come back with this brush.

Now it's important to wipe that off every so often because as you're blending you're probably picking up some of your paint.

See then, I just kind of blend that edge away.

It goes from light to dark, so his back looks rounded which is exactly what we want.

Now we're going to start on the other wing.

So I roll this brush to a point and I start at the outside edge, pulling inward, get those nice little serrations on there.

If you roll your brush to a point...it makes it easier to get those nice little scalloped edges on there.

Be careful of the direction, notice that it goes from vertical almost diagonal this way to going more frontwards.

So you want to drag your strokes accordingly.

And then we need to pull these in and you'll see that by blending them in, it just thins down the veil and the thickness of the oil paint so the darker color shows through it.

I'm going to restate these last couple feathers here on the end just to really bring those out.

Okay, I got a couple more rows on there.

So again, I'm just looking at what I've got going here.

It looks like it's about here somewhere.

They change direction as they wrap around.

Now see this isn't as difficult as you probably thought it was, is it?

No.

You can do this.

It's not really as hard as it seems.

Just a matter of knowing how to do it.

Anybody can learn anything if they're shown how to do it.

One more row...somewhere right about here.

See, I'm leaving just enough dark separation between them so they are separated and they're different layers.

If you just keep putting the same color on top of the same color, you're not going to get any distinction there.

And notice I'm letting some of that darker brown from the undercoat show through it.

The darkness looks like its underneath and it's the shadows within the feathers.

So you won't need to really be concerned with that.

I'm going to brighten some of this up.

Notice there's a little extra light on the wing, so it looks like that wing is turned skyward and you're getting a little bit of sun on it.

That one is not as yellowy.

I'm going to add a little yellow today just for the heck of it.

I'm going to take the white and a little bit of that light brown I just had and add just a touch of yellow.

You can use the red too, the red would work.

I've got to thin this down just a tad.

I've got some odorless thinner here I'm using.

Now this doesn't look really yellow.

I don't want it yellow, yellow but I want it lighter and brighter.

And you'll see it gives him ....different angles ...both of those wings are kind of...slightly different angles to the light.

So it looks more natural if we have different influences of the light on there rather than have them all just exactly the same.

So I'm just restating some of those edges that I've already created.

And you do want to make sure they soften in a little bit.

So if they need a little TLC, just fade them out a little bit on the inside.

And while I've got this going I can put just maybe a touch on his back even.

See how that extra light just make it looks like he got a stronger sunlight coming in?

Just feather that away, no pun intended.

Those little extra touches of the light really set him off, maybe right on this shoulder.

I'll put a little in there too.

See, I just tap it very gently just enough to fade that in.

This bird has a lot of detail on him so we have to take our time with him.

Okay, that's starting to look pretty good.

We need to put some definition on his tail and his head.

Now I did notice as far as the value goes, this blue is kind of melding in with my background.

So I might have to darken the blue.

The tail's looking pretty good here.

It just has to do with the color of my sky behind it.

The edges kind of lost, so I need to darken that a tad probably.

And again, that's not a mistake, it's an adjustment.

It's just the way it worked out with the colors, you have to match colors against colors to make sure you get a contrast.

So I'll adjust that accordingly.

I'm just taking straight titanium white, I thinned it down a little bit.

And the white against the cloud here is going to really on painting, right on the same blue top of his head that I had following the same outline.

See how that brings that out against the cloud because the cloud is darker and grayer than that white is.

And then I just kind of feather that down and let it just kind of disappear.

Same thing on the tail.

I'm going to take a little bit of thinner, little bit of white and these are going to go in, in layers.

Notice how you can see individual feathers.

And I'm going to start here at the top and let it diminish as I come lower and I'm leaving a little strip of that blue in between so you get that shadow between the feather layers.

Now see I let the brush run out of paint, needs a lighter touch and it'll just happen automatically, you'll get those layer feathers.

Pretty easy, huh?

It is easy if you under paint him first.

We got most of the work done in the under painting so we're just doing the embellishing now.

Now see at the bottom of his throat doesn't really show up as cleanly as it does here just because the blue on his head and neck area is too close to the same value of the purple gray I used in the cloud behind it.

So I'm going to deepen that, darken it just a tad.

I'm going to take white, little bit of ultra-marine blue, maybe a speck of black just to gray it.

It won't take much.

I just need to darken that down a little bit and bring that out.

It's a matter of contrast.

Contrast is the most important thing you ever have to worry about if you're going to paint.

It is the most critical.

See how that brings that out just by putting that on there, if you needed it.

I don't necessarily need it here so much but if you needed it, you could put a little bit on the tail just to make that stand out a little bit if you're losing the contrast.

Everything should be sharp and defined, that's the whole point.

So if it's not, you have to make an adjustment so that it is.

He needs an eye.

We're not going to see an eye at this distance is just too far away.

So I'm not going to get crazy and put an actual eye but if I take some of this blue-gray I just mixed up, I can put a little bit of a dark spot there which looks like an indentation where you know his eye is.

You can wipe this brush off and hold it kind of flat and just pounce it very lightly just to soften the edge so it's not so hard.

For his beak, I'm going to take some yellow...cad yellow and a little touch of the cad red-light, more yellowy than the orange but kind of yellowish-orange, orangish-yellow however, you want to say it.

I'm carefully going to paint on his little beak.

And likewise, if that's not showing up, change the value.

And I can see the yellow of that very easily.

I think it needs a little dark underneath, so I'm going to take a little touch of the Vandyke brown with some of the red, just make a little bit darker value.

I'm rolling that right to a pinpoint, very, very thin.

And just on the underside of that beak, I'm going to outline it with a little bit of deeper, darker shadow just to make it show up.

There he's on the move.

He's soaring.

What do you think of this project?

I hope you liked it.

I surely had a good time bringing it to you.

Like I said before, I love to paint birds.

Don't be afraid to try your version, I love to see what you do with it.

Send me an email or contact me through Facebook or my website, send me your version of this painting.

I'd love to see it.

Until next time, stay creative and keep painting.

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