- If you've ever wanted to paint with your child or grandchild, we have a fantastic little lesson for you today.

- Join us next for moonlit pines.

(soft music) - [Narrator] Support for painting with Wilson Bickford is provided by The J.M.

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

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

Sharing since 1952.

Online at jmmcdonaldfoundation.org.

(house music) In rural New York State, bordered by the St. Lawrence river, and the Adirondack mountains is a sprawling landscape with communities that offer self guided tours for the creatively inclined.

Learn the stories behind the Barnfield traditions, family, agriculture, nature, and beauty.

St. Lawrence County, life undiscovered.

- Hi, thanks for tuning in today.

I have a special guest artist with me today, my granddaughter, Lauren.

- Hi everybody.

- I get so many people asking me about having classes with their children or their grandchildren, so I thought this would be a good lesson today.

Lauren, from the time she could hold a crayon has always been interested in art, and crafts, and any kind of, anything creative.

So, she's painted way back when she was three years old, I'd set her out with some paints, and we'd paint.

And she's just turned 11, she's still new to 11.

She's almost still 10, that's how new she is.

You just had a birthday last week, but she's always had an interest in it.

So she likes to paint with me, so I thought this would be a great lesson to share with you folks, to show you how to paint with your child, or your grandchild.

You don't have to start out with a ton of supplies.

It doesn't take a lot of money.

Few basic brushes, a few basic paints, and we'll show you a nice little lesson you can share with your children.

If you go to the WPBS TV website, you can download a supply list, with all the materials that we have.

This one is called Moonlit Pines, and we're kind of winging it.

We're just going to do some, a moonlight scene with some stars, nice clear night with some pine trees, and some water reflections.

You can download the list of supplies, and I'm going to go through that for you right here.

For paints today, I have ultramarine blue, ivory black, and titanium white.

And we're also using some white basecoat.

For brushes I'm using a two inch scenery brush, a number three fan brush, and a number two liner.

And we've already started some of the prep work here a little bit, and I'm going to talk about that here in just a moment.

We've had to save some time on camera cause we have limited time.

You probably noticed from watching previous episodes that we are in a completely different layout.

My studio is a little cramped for space to lay it out like this with two easels, and two people painting for filming purposes.

So, we're using the Gouverneur Community Center today.

They were gracious enough to let us use it.

It's a beautiful facility and very nice.

We're sitting here right next to the warm fireplace.

It's cold outside today, and it's a nice day to be warm and snugging inside painting.

So, you'll see that we've already started our prep work here a little bit.

I'll tell you how we do that.

I took some of the white base coat, and some of the ultramarine blue, a little bit of the black, I got a color that I liked.

It could be more gray, like a blue gray, you can have it more bluish, more grayish, use your own preference.

And Lauren and I have already started scrubbing this on here just to save ourselves a few minutes.

Well, we're just going to scrub this and cover the whole canvas.

My intent is that the top half of this canvas will be sky, and the bottom will be water.

Whatever color you get make sure you get it dark enough so that it conveys the feeling of nighttime.

You don't want it too blue, too light, it's gonna look like daytime.

Use your own discretion.

And see we're literally using three colors and three brushes for this.

So, it doesn't take a ton of supplies, and you'll see this will fall together pretty easily.

You'll be able to do it.

How are we doing, Lauren?

You got it covered?

- Yeah.

- All right.

That's what Michelangelo said to the Sistine Chapel, you know.

He said, "I got you covered," on the ceiling.

(laughing) Okay.

I'm going to take my fan brush, and I'm going to use the handle.

And right about here I'm thinking I want a horizon line.

So I'm not going to go split it directly through the middle.

I'm a little bit below dead center.

Yeah, right about there, Lauren, that looks pretty good.

I'm just going to put a scratch.

It doesn't have to show up really well as long as I can see it.

It's just a reference mark, it'll be covered later.

Okay.

Then I'm going to take my fan brush with some white, and a little bit of my sky color.

We're going to put a glow in here, an aura for the moon.

We're going to place a moon in here.

So I'm going to load the brush like this.

I don't want it too light because I want it, I want it to be lighter than my sky, but not as light as what the moon itself is going to be.

So I can actually hold this up here and check it.

I'll say right about there.

Where do we want to put this, Lauren?

- Like... - Probably about a third of the way over, so not like a bullseye.

So I'm going to come in maybe about a third of the way from the right, and right here I'll lay it down.

And I just lay the brush and I twist it into a circle.

I'm going to put a moon in the middle of this, so make your aura big enough that you can put a dime sized moon in the middle of that.

Lauren has an older brother too, Alexander, who, he's getting older now.

He used to draw a lot when he was younger, but he's kinda getting into that teenage years.

He's 13, 13, he's taller than me.

And he takes like a size 11 or 12 shoe, he's going to be a big kid, but he, more, he's more into sports now.

He's into the track, and he's a mean offensive and defensive tackle on the football team, I'll tell you.

He's a big bruiser and he's going to be a good kid.

But he, he had interest in art somewhat, you know.

But he's kind of leaning more towards sports now just like I did when I was his age.

I used to play hockey and stuff a lot.

You know, you would just want to encourage your children to do something creative, whether it's sports, painting, it could be anything.

- Do you have like a (indistinct).

- Okay, try to get that a little more circular right on that edge right there.

Okay, now we're going to wipe the brush off.

And I'm very lightly going to haze it out of focus like this, very lightly.

You'll see it just kind of take some of that circular brush mark out of it.

It should be just a nice soft glow.

All right, that looks pretty good.

Okay, now I'm going to wash the brush out.

We just have odorless paint thinner here.

And we're using oils here today, but you can use a culex.

You know, you could use watercolor with your children.

Lauren likes to do crafts.

She does sewing, she makes slime, she sews aprons, there's those little scrunchy things that go in your hair.

She's got her own sewing machine.

So, you know, you can teach your children how to sew, draw.

It's as simple as just taking paper and pencils, and just sitting down and draw with them.

I really think it's very important to encourage your children just to get into something other than video games and online activities.

Okay, I'm going to take this clean fan brush, I'm gonna take some of this white base coat.

We're going to spatter in some stars.

And this base coat, it's kind of thin, but it's not quite thin enough.

So I'm going to dip in the corner of the brush, and get three or four drops of thinner on it.

And we can try it right on our palette before we ever go to the canvas.

And we just want to see if it's loose enough to come off the brush.

You've probably seen me spatter in past episodes.

It's good for doing flowers in a meadow or stars in the sky.

Okay, something like that.

Take a little bit of the excess out of the brush.

And I'm just going to randomly spatter stars into my sky.

Put some right in that glow.

That'll make the glow look transparent.

I don't mind if I get them down in the water too, Lauren.

If you get them down there, we can pull them down, and make them look like reflections of the stars.

So, I'm intentionally going to put some right in the water as well.

All right.

Got it?

All right.

Now I'm going to wipe the brush off.

And I'm going to come in very lightly, and I'm going to drag down like this.

Just to elongate and stretch those out a little bit vertically.

See how it kind of stretches them out and blurs them, they look just like reflections of the stars in the water.

That's pretty cool, isn't it?

- [Lauren] Yeah.

- What's your favorite thing to do with painting, Lauren?

What do you think, what do you like best about painting?

- I liked that it like can calm you down, and that it can like relax you if your stressed.

And I like that it's just like... - A lot of people use it for that, you betcha.

- And it's always a different, like it's not... - It's always different.

Yeah.

Every time you do a painting, it comes out differently.

Okay.

We're going to put a moon in here.

You got that done.

All right.

Good job.

I'm going to take some of this same white base coat right here, not the stuff that I thinned down.

This is a little bit thicker.

This doesn't have the thinner in it.

And I'm going to take my liner brush, and I'm going to put a moon right in the middle of that aura, right in the middle of that glowness.

I'm going to really steady my hand here.

This is touchy stuff.

It's probably the touchiest step of this particular painting.

And I'm just going to put a circle in here.

When I talk funny it's means I'm holding my breath to hold my hand steady.

We'll put some craters in here, so it doesn't look so just like a white marble.

I want to thank everybody out there for watching.

All the viewers, all the correspondence I get from people who are watching the show.

I appreciate that.

Okay, right in here, Lauren, you've got to come around a little bit wider, see if you can make it more round a little bit.

There you go.

And then wash your brush out.

Make sure it's really good and dry.

And see, I've got a couple of bumps here too, so I have a clean dry brush like this.

And I'm just going to go in and kind of lightly shave off those little bumps.

That's it, it's easy to fix.

And you adults out there, when you're painting with your child, it's not about being perfect, it's about the creative bonding time.

You're building a memory here forever.

So, you know, it's not so much that you have to have something perfect.

Hang onto the painting, make sure you date it, and put the person's name on the back of it who did it, so when you look back on it in 30 years, you know who did it, and when it was done with whom, that's the cool part.

I have all these old photographs from home from my childhood and nothing has a date on it.

And I so wish we'd have written the dates on all those photos.

That was back when we had printed photos.

Now everybody has the digital stuff, so there isn't so many of those floating around, but... How are we doing, Lauren?

Got it?

- Yeah, I'm just going to fill it in now.

- All right.

It's looking pretty good.

Okay.

I've washed the brush out again.

I'm going to take a little bit of this bluish stuff right here.

That was my sky color.

And kind of flattened the brush out like this.

Get enough paint on the brush to hold it, to hold the shape.

And I'm going to flatten that out a little bit.

I'm just going to lightly touch a couple of little spots and imperfections there, they'll look like craters on the moon.

Speaking of the moon, I got a question for you, Lauren.

Why do moon rocks taste different than earth rocks?

- Why?

- They're meteor.

As in meatier.

(laughs) Right?

Tell me I'm wrong.

Okay.

So I'm just going to put these craters in here, and rough that up, and we'll start in on our trees down below.

All right, that's looking pretty good.

Nana is a big influence on you too, isn't she?

Yeah, my wife, Glenda, her grandmother is a big influence too.

She sews with her and does all kinds of crafts and stuff with her, as her mother, Amy, does, my daughter.

So, you know, like I said this whole episode is about working with your kids, and kind of getting them into something creative.

I get so many people asking me all the time, do you do kids classes?

I want to paint on my grandchild, how do I start?

So, that's what made me want to bring this lesson to you.

Okay, wash out a fan brush.

I'm going to take black.

And I'm going right on top of this blue puddle, just to save room on our palette.

I'm going to take straight black, we're going to put some trees in here.

Now remember that scratch that we put on there, Lauren?

For our trees we're going to start right across the bottom like this.

So, cover that scratch up.

Make sure it's level and parallel with the bottom of your canvas pretty much.

It's going to be raggedy on the bottom, but that's okay cause we're going to use some of that paint to pull down for the reflection later.

But I tend to get it established, and I come up a little taller like this.

You'll, you'll probably hear our brushes crunching right there, folks.

We're kind of tapping with a firm pressure.

Make sure you use enough paint.

(tapping) Okay.

Once I get that established, I'm going to load the brush up the same way.

Kind of tap the bristles open and loosen them up.

I'm going to hold the brush vertically this way.

Now, if I tap up and down like this, I get fir trees.

This painting was titled, Moonlit Pines.

So we're putting some pine trees in here, evergreens, So see, we're just going to put these all the way across here, and we'll be right back with you.

(country music) If you want to add something extra to your painting, try putting in The Big Dipper.

All it is is seven dots.

There'll be four dots for each corner, and then the handle comes off like this.

You can get a reference online to get the layout of it, but there it is.

Okay, we're just finishing up our trees here.

I always sit back, and I look, and I kind of compare them, make sure they're not all the same height.

So if I feel like I've got it a little bit too blur, I will maybe make one tree a little taller here or there, maybe I'll extend this one out a little bit.

- Or give it like a edge on top.

- Yeah, give it more of, more of a spindly point on the top like a fir tree.

They're not all perfect, they're not all Christmas trees, but yeah, they tend to taper.

All right.

I think we're doing pretty good, don't you?

- Yep.

- Yeah, I think that looks good.

Very nice.

Okay, I'm going to take the same color.

I'm going to mat the brush together this way a little bit.

Don't need quite as much paint, and right from that shoreline down I'm going to pull straight down like this, and lay it flat on the backside of the brush you get more paint off the brush.

This is going to suggest reflections of those trees.

And I'm just going to go across kind of in the same length to start, just to get it locked in and based in.

Now use just a little more paint, Lauren.

It's not quite as dark as what you're going to want.

Just take a little more of this right in here, puddle there, there you go.

Now you're cooking.

There.

See how much different different that makes it look?

And then I'm gonna turn the brush vertically again like I did when I was tapping the trees in.

And some of the taller ones in particular I just kind of do this and pull down.

So I'm suggesting the longer reflection, the taller trees obviously are going to reflect longer, and lower in the water.

Lauren also likes to help out.

She's an animal lover, just like all of us, my wife, Glenda, myself, Alex, my daughter, Amy, my son-in-law, Brennan, every, all of us in our family are animal lovers.

My sisters, my brother.

(laughs) We're a long line of animal lovers.

So... Lauren likes to help out at the local animals' shelter.

And they go and walk the dogs, and feed the cats, and she makes up little videos a lot of times to put on Facebook and YouTube to find homes for all the pets that are looking for homes.

That's how we ended up with our two kitties.

- They just recently got like these yellow lab puppies in, and they're all gone now because everyone loves them.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, if we didn't have the two cats, Nana wants a dog again someday, but we got the two cats now.

So I don't know.

We'll have to wait it out and see.

Sometimes they get along nicely, and sometimes they don't.

With our luck we'd have, as they say, they'd fight like cats and dogs.

So I don't know.

- And we got a (indistinct).

- Okay, now right here, see where this is still very straight through here, I would just fuzz that up a little bit, just to take that square edge out of it.

And then we're going to blend that eventually.

There we go.

Now, if I take the handle of the brush, the same fan brush, I'm just going to wipe it off.

I'm not even going to use that end, but I just don't want to get too much paint on me with throwing that loaded end around.

I'm gonna use the handle.

And if I do this, remember how we do these sometimes in the other paintings?

We scratch up, put some tree trunks in here.

Let them lean to and fro, don't space them all evenly, don't make them the same height.

Mother nature doesn't play that way, does she?

- [Lauren] No.

- [Wilson] No.

See that just gives you a little sense of a skeleton in there, something holding up all this foliage back in here.

Very simple.

Now I know you adults out there are looking, and thinking, "I can do that."

I know you can.

I know you can.

And your child would love it.

Like I said, it doesn't take a ton of supplies.

You don't need to be the world's best artist.

It's all about just bonding and spending some quality time.

Okay.

How are we doing?

- Good.

- Yeah.

Very nice.

Okay.

I'm going to go back to this big brush.

I'm going to wipe it off a little bit.

I've got a lot of paint on there from when we did our sky and our water.

We're going to wipe it off a little bit, and lightly, lightly, lightly.

I'm going to come up here to my shoreline, and just pull down just to smear this watery reflection in a little bit.

Just want to blur it out of focus a little bit.

It'll make it look more watery.

And then wipe it one more time and very lightly.

You'll notice I'm using the back side of the brush to get a really light touch.

I'm just barely grazing it.

Blend across it little bit.

Waterizes it.

All right.

See how it kind of puts a surface on it like water?

- Yeah.

- Now here's a couple of paintings that Lauren has done in the past.

This is one she did in a class that I taught for her girl scout group.

I guess it was the Brownies, wasn't it?

Yeah, a couple of years ago, two or three years ago.

So you were probably seven or eight when you did this one.

But I taught a class for all of her young friends, and she did that one.

This is one that we did just a couple of weeks ago.

Her and I just painted for fun.

And here's one that she did.

So, you know, you can vary the theme.

This one's similar to the one we're doing today with the fir trees and whatnot.

You can vary the themes, and just change the layout, come up with your own designs.

Doesn't have to be rocket science.

It should be more about fun.

Okay.

Let me see.

I'm going to take my fan brush, Lauren, and I'm going to wash it out.

Then dry it off.

And I'm going to take some white like this.

Boarded up on both sides so it doesn't flatten it out.

And right underneath that moon where it's going to be shining on the water.

I'm not going to do it in the reflection area.

I'm going to start just below the reflections a little bit right here.

You see the moon would be kind of right down in here somewhere.

I'm going to pull straight down like this.

Yeah, all right.

And then I'm going to wipe the brush off, and I want to soften the edges on the left and the right.

So I kind of blend this edge a little bit.

Vertical strokes only like this.

Wipe it off cause you're gonna pick up a lot of blue.

See how it kind of softens the edge, and doesn't look so linear.

And then I do a little bit on this side.

That looks pretty sweet, doesn't it?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

I think we're doing okay.

All right.

I'm going to go back.

I've rinsed the brush out, I'm going to go back with just a little more white.

I really want to make it shine bright right here, so I'm just doing, just repeating the same step.

I'm not going to drag it down as far.

Watch how I do this.

I'm just going to do this, and give it a little extra brightness right there.

Ooh, I think that was a nice touch.

Now I can come back and soften the edge.

Wipe your brush off to do that.

Come back and soften the edge of a little more.

See it gives it a lot of impact right there, like the moon really shining on the water right there.

I think we're doing okay, don't you?

- Yeah.

- All right.

All right.

Very good.

All right.

We got a couple of minutes left.

Let's take our liner brush.

I'm going to add thinner on it with some black.

Thinner right down.

Roll your brush... - [Lauren] It's a blue... - Yeah, that's all right, you're going to need more paint.

Just put some more paint there with it.

I'm going to put some rocks in here.

They can be any shape on the top, but you want them flat on the bottom, and parallel with the bottom of your canvas, so that they look like they're sitting in the water at our eye level.

See there's one little rock.

And I'm going to put some right in this light area, cause it's going to make a nice contrast.

You're going to have dark against light which really makes it show up.

Now, we'll put some reflections under those rocks too.

Just make sure, as always you want to make sure they're unevenly spaced, and they're not all the same size.

How are we doing?

- [Lauren] Good.

- Yup.

Okay.

You don't need too many.

Just something to take up a little space down here.

I'm going to make one like this.

It's a little bit different shape.

Flatten it off on the bottom.

There's four, you should do odd numbers.

Three, five, seven.

So I'm going to maybe put another little one right here somewhere.

And then underneath, I'm going to flatten the brush like this on two sides.

Now you try to put one more, you got four there.

- Okay.

- I'm going to flatten the brush out like this on two sides.

And that way I can get a nice skinny little lines.

So underneath each rock I'm just going to draw a little lines like this, that look like the rock color riding on the little ripples and waves of the water.

And I think we did all right, don't you?

- Yes.

- For you at home, don't be afraid to work with your kids on these.

It's a great bonding experience.

You're going to love it, your kids are going to love it, you're always going to remember it.

You'll always have this painting to look back on and say, "remember when."

So I hope you enjoyed this lesson.

I hope you give it a try, and make sure you send me some photos of it when you do, I'd love to see them.

Until next time.

- Stay creative and keep painting.

(soft music) - [Narrator] Support for painting with Wilson Bickford is provided by The J.M.

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

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

Sharing since 1952.

Online at jmmcdonaldfoundation.org.

(house music) In rural New York State bordered by the St. Lawrence river, and the Adirondack mountains is a sprawling landscape, with communities that offer self guided tours for the creatively inclined.

Learn the stories behind the Barnfield traditions, family, agriculture, nature, and beauty.

St. Lawrence County, life undiscovered.

- [Narrator 2] 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 Koi'.

Additional titles available.

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

More information at wpbstv.org/painting.

(soft music)