- One of my fondest childhood memories is the annual trek with my father to go get the family Christmas tree.

Join me next on "Painting with Wilson Bickford" and we'll go fetching the tree.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Support for "Painting with Wilson Bickford" is provided by the J.M.

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Continuing the example modeled by J.M.

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

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Online at jmmcdonaldfoundation.org.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] In rural New York State, bordered by the Saint 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 barn quilt traditions, family, agriculture, nature, and beauty.

St. Lawrence County, Life Undiscovered.

- Ho, ho, ho!

Thanks for joining me today.

It might not be Christmas time right now where you are, but I can guarantee it's coming back around.

I'm gonna do a holiday-themed project today for you.

This is called, Fetching the Tree.

It kind of reminds me and takes me back to the days when I used to go get our own family tree with my father.

We didn't have a pickup truck at that time, but we had an old station wagon car and we would strap that old tree right to the top of the car.

So I'm sure everybody has some memories that they can relive for that.

So I thought this would be a fun project to show you.

If you go to the WPBS-TV website, you'll be able to download a supply list, and I'm gonna go through all the supplies for you here in just a second.

And there's a sketch that I've provided, so you don't have to draw your own truck if you don't want to.

I would take graphite transfer paper, lay it under the sketch.

Use a red pen on top to trace your design on.

From there, I have taken black acrylic gesso with my number six flat brush and a liner.

I used a liner for some of that, obviously for the little man in there.

And this was all painted black as well as the fellow driving.

And then, when that was dry, I took masking tape.

I put a couple layers, one here, one above it.

Overlapped them just enough to not get any bleed.

And then, I have trimmed away everything that wasn't the truck.

So the truck itself is completely covered with tape, and then I can freely paint the background.

I did take out these two window spaces, so they are exposed.

So when we put our background in, that film will cause, just enough film to where it looks like the fellow is inside the cab and almost looks like the windows are steamed up a little bit.

So that works out really well.

So for oil paints today, I'm using cobalt blue, dioxazine purple, ivory black, cadmium red deep, sap green, and titanium white.

I also have some white basecoat and a little bit of clear glazing medium that I'm gonna wet down the truck with to get the red paint to flow onto that because it'll be dry canvas below that tape.

For brushes, I'm using a one-inch scenery brush, a number three fan brush, a number six small flat brush, a number two detailed script liner, and a number two liner.

So let's get on with this.

I'm gonna take my one-inch scenery brush and some of this white basecoat.

I'm gonna put a coat over the whole canvas.

Look at that.

Looks like it's snowing already, doesn't it?

I want a nice thin coat, which will allow me to get nice soft edges in that background and in the snow on the ground.

Who doesn't love Christmas?

It's especially fun if you have children and grandchildren.

Make a lot of memories.

Going after the tree, decorating the tree, and doing the holiday baking.

Not that I do the baking, but I watch my wife and my granddaughter do the baking, and my daughter.

Okay, so I want a nice thin coat of that.

I'm gonna come in and put a sky in here.

I want it kind of blustery, and cold, and overcast because I want it to look like it's snowing later.

So I'm gonna start with a little bit of cobalt blue, a little speck of this dioxazine purple, which is really, really strong, so you don't need much of it.

I'm might even put a speck of black with all this.

Get a color that you like.

You can have it leaning more of a blue gray, more of a purpley gray.

This one, I can tell I've got some purple in it.

I'm not trying to match that one exactly.

I'm just going with what I feel.

And I'll probably add a darker tone into this.

But see I'm not painting it smooth.

I want it to look blustery.

I want to bring this down maybe to about the level of the front fender here or close to it, enough that I know that my trees will overlap it and take care of this edge.

Go right through the window of the guy sitting there.

You can see right out through the back side of the window behind him, see that?

Leave it kind of open.

Don't plug it up too tightly.

I'm going to alter that color a little bit just for the sake of making it more interesting.

I'm gonna take a little bit of purple, a little more black.

I'm gonna add some darker accents in there.

See the sky falls together very quickly.

There's not much to it for a sky like this.

It works out pretty well.

I'll leave a couple of little light patches in there too.

Opens it up a little bit.

All right, now I'm gonna come back and blend that.

Right now, it looks pretty bad I realize.

Be careful what you say.

Santa's watching.

So down in here, I want some shadows.

I'm gonna use this same color.

Rather than make a totally foreign different color, I can use the same color, which is known as color harmony.

It's gonna be kind of the same flavor as what's in my sky.

This one's got some more blue in it too.

So I don't have to put that in, but I know somebody's gonna ask.

You can bleed a little more blue in there.

Okay, so far so good I think.

Leave some white in there.

It is snow after all.

You don't want to cover it all up.

Although being an overcast like it is, you probably won't have a lot of pure white snow.

It's not like the sun is shining on it.

I'm gonna wipe this brush off.

No need to wash it.

I'm gonna come back and blend this.

There's a lot of grain, and brush marks, and coarseness in it.

So I'm just gonna do little circles or ovals like this.

Just lightly with the tips of the bristles.

Just enough to soften everything out.

I still wanna leave it blotchy.

Won't take much.

Just soften it out.

I squint at it and I half close my eyes because it's easier to see if there's any little textures in there.

All right, that's looking pretty good.

Notice this one, the window looks a little lighter.

So I'm just gonna take a dry paper towel and wipe some of that film off.

I want some on there so the guy looks a little obscured and looks like he's inside.

Perfect.

Okay, now I'm gonna switch over to a fan brush.

And I have to do the trees, and I have to put the shadow under the truck.

It doesn't matter which one I do first.

Since we're working with this blue and purpley-blue gray, I'll stick with that, then I'll come back and do the trees.

Doesn't matter which order we do it in.

As long as I'm on this color, I'll use it.

Paint smart, not hard.

Keep the same train of thought.

Okay, so I'm gonna take a little bit more blue, little black, a little bit of purple.

Don't need much paint on the brush.

I want a sense of a road here, a little rut where traffic has been going through.

And obviously they're coming out the other side.

Notice I skipped underneath because that needs to be darker.

It's a cast shadow from the truck.

So notice this value is darker than what's in front of the truck and what's behind it.

So I'll do both these edges first and just soften the edges out a little bit so they're not hard and linear.

Underneath, I need to go a little darker.

So I'm gonna take blue, black, and purple.

Same colors, just a little bit darker ratio.

This one's leaning quite purplish, but I'm thinking I'm gonna like it.

Yeah, that works.

See, this one's got a little more blue in it.

It's all good.

This'll work too.

I could put more blue in it if I was trying to match that color exactly, but I'm not.

So this is gonna come down to about the bottom level of the tires, and this'll be the shadow underneath the truck.

Always gotta consider your shadows.

All right, that looks pretty good.

All right, now I'm gonna skip up and start putting in the background trees.

I'm gonna put them in with a medium green.

I don't wanna get too dark, as dark as the tree up front, 'cause then this green on green will compete with each other later.

So I'm gonna be careful as how I choose that value, what value I actually use.

I wipe the brush out.

No need to wash it.

'Cause I wanna mute the green down anyway.

So if I take some sap green, a little bit of white.

Maybe I'll bleed a little bit of this snow color right into that, snow and sky color.

I wanna kinda drab it down a little bit.

The best thing to do is just come right up here and just check it.

Put some on.

See what you think.

This is a little darker than that.

That's fine.

It's gonna show the snow on the trees a little better.

So I'm gonna establish my line across.

Try to leave some white in between here so you're not bringing the green right down to your blue.

♪ Chestnuts roasting on an open fire ♪ I'm getting in the mood.

Okay, I'm gonna establish the line.

And now, I'm gonna turn the brush vertically.

I'm gonna tap the bristles open.

If I turn the brush vertically this way, I'm just gonna create the impression of trees back here.

All these trees back here are looking at the one in the truck and they're saying, "Oh my goodness, did you see what happened to Fred?

"They cut him down.

He's in the back of that truck."

Do you know what the beaver said to the Christmas tree?

It's been nice gnawing you.

(laughs) So see, I'm just creating the impression and suggestion of a few trees back here.

You don't have to get too crazy.

I don't want a lot of green on green here, so I'm gonna avoid the box of the truck for the most part.

We'll pull on up a little higher there.

You just want it to look like it makes sense and looks natural.

Okay, I'm gonna swish this brush out.

And notice there's a raggedy line at the bottom of the trees.

I don't particularly care for that so much.

I could leave it like that.

Maybe it looks like undergrowth coming out across the road or whatever.

But notice this one's a little smoother.

If I take a clean brush, I can just kind of smooth this off a little bit.

If it gets too murky, starts picking up green, I can put a little bit of white back in there, just like this, just to clean it up.

Easy fix.

Don't sweat the small details.

If I do that, I have to blend it in like it was there from the beginning though.

There we go.

That'll look pretty sharp against those dark black tires when they get those painted in.

Okay, I'm gonna put some snow on the trees.

I don't wanna put on pure white because it's overcast.

So I'm gonna take white and blue.

You could put a little purple in it if you choose to.

That'd be a good color too.

I want it to look like snow that's in shadow.

You know me and my blue.

I'm gonna lean on the blue side of things here a little bit.

Get enough paint on your brush that you're getting a texture like this, and your brush is really open and frazzled.

If I use a light touch up here to deposit this, it just looks like snow on those trees.

It's in the distance, so we don't have to get too carried away.

I'm not drawing individual branches and all that.

Less is more, especially in the background.

All right, I think that looks pretty good.

If you wanted, you could brighten up a couple of them here and there.

I'm not going pure white, but if I add a little more white and lighten that value just ever so slightly, some of these taller ones in particular, give them a little extra punch.

They're standing up head and shoulders above some of the other ones, so they're getting a little more light on them maybe.

I just think it helps break it up a little more.

That's a judgment call.

You don't have to do it.

If you don't like it, leave it out.

I just wanna show you what's possible and what you can do.

All right.

I think that's gonna bring me up to the level of the truck.

So I'm gonna take this tape off, and I'll use my painting knife here.

This wasn't on your list.

You could use your little sharp knife.

Just be careful.

Just anything to get under here to take this tape off.

I'm gonna remove all this tape, and my little truck should be right under there.

Black, just like I told you it was.

And I'm going to take my number six flat brush and probably the detailed script liner, combination of both brushes to get into all the little nooks and crannies.

And I'm gonna put a thin coat of clear glazing medium on the whole truck.

Not the window in here 'cause that's wet oil paint, but all the black and the white areas.

Don't do the inner window.

So I'm gonna skip off and do that, so it's gonna take me a couple of minutes.

I'll be right back.

I'm just finishing up putting on a thin coat of clear glazing medium.

Now, obviously around these areas of the window, I had to scale down to my detailed script liner, smaller brush, but I did all of it.

Where the hubcaps are white right now, a little headlight, I did everything with a thin coat except the little guy in the middle because that's wet paint, like I said before.

Okay, we're gonna start putting some red on this truck.

Now, I want you to look at this really closely.

Notice that there are divisions on here where the trunk lid, the hood, where the hood closes and where the door opens, there are cracks there.

I can carefully paint around and leave those, or I can simply scratch them in later with my brush handle.

And I'll show you.

I want to put this running board along the front.

So there's just certain areas that we have to really scrutinize.

You probably wanna take a printout of this and look at that, or look at your sketch that you transferred.

All the lines are on there.

So I'm gonna start with some red.

This is cad red deep on my detailed script liner.

It takes very much less of this paint than you think it does.

Everybody wants to just paint the whole truck red.

Notice how I let the black show through.

It's almost like a dry brush technique.

And I let the black show through it, so it looks kind of worn, and tired, and old.

I don't want it to look like it came out of the body shop and had a paint job yesterday.

So I'm carefully going to do around the top of the cab and down through here.

Now, I have my detailed script liner that I'm using, but I also have this liner, the number two liner, which is much skinnier.

So if you get into a bind, don't be afraid to take this smaller brush to get in here in these small areas.

And see, I kinda put a little paint on, then I push it around, and then it thins the paint layer down so some of the black shows through, which is exactly what I was talking about a moment ago.

Okay, so I'm gonna take the detailed script liner again, the bigger one.

I want to put a line across the top of the box like this.

And see, I laid the brush flat.

I'm hoping the camera's getting a good tight shot on that.

See how the little black part marks the weave of the canvas shows right through it.

That's a good thing.

I'm gonna do the door.

And the door comes down like this a little bit.

What I like to do, watch this.

Here's the important part.

I like to put a little bit of paint on at the top areas of the truck.

Now, I'm not gonna do the cab and the lip of the box that I've already done, but I'm talking now from below that lip on the box and the door itself.

I like to put a little bit on like that, and then I go back with this brush, and I just kind of pat it, and I stretch that paint out and bring it down.

See, then I'm not using as much paint and I'm letting that black acrylic show through and do its job.

See how that looks really old and rough.

And if it's not enough, you can always go back and put a little more paint on like this.

And bring it down.

The running board is gonna crop off the bottom of the door and the box here anyway.

See how good that looks and it doesn't take much at all.

People tend to want to overwork it.

I am gonna put the hood on like this.

And there's a division right there, where the trunk.

I keep wanting to say trunk.

There's the division right there where the hood closes, so I can leave that and just come right below it, and leave a little sliver of black, just like that.

Voila!

It's magic guys.

It's magic.

So I put a little bit near the top and then I drag it down.

When I say drag, I'm not using a heavy hand.

I'm just tapping and just lightly pulling that paint down a little bit.

Oh, it's coming.

It's coming.

Okay, now I'm gonna do a tire.

I'm gonna do one tire.

I'm gonna end up doing both obviously, but they're both kind of redundant.

They're the same thing.

So I'm gonna do one tire, and then I'll stop, and jump off here just for a second.

It's gonna save me a couple minutes 'cause I'm gonna need a couple of minutes towards the end.

So I'm gonna do one tire.

I'll do the rear tire.

The front one's gonna be exactly like it.

I'm gonna take white.

I've swished my brush out.

I'm taking white with a little bit of black.

I want a value lighter than what the black is that's up there.

I'm gonna flatten the brush out like this on two sides.

And if I come in and just go around like this.

When I'm not talking, I'm holding my breath 'cause I'm in a tight spot here.

Same deal.

See, I'm kinda dry brushing it a little bit.

Notice I left some black against where the hubcap is going to be.

For the hubcap itself, I'm gonna swish that brush out.

And obviously, I would just do both tires at the same time.

When you're doing it, you don't have to bounce back and forth.

I'm trying to save myself a couple of minutes here.

For the hubcap itself, I'm gonna take some white.

You can use this white basecoat right here is fine too.

A little bit of that sky bluish stuff I had.

I want it to look like a metal color.

Maybe a speck of black in there too.

So it's kind of a blue gray.

And on the inside, I'm just gonna put this blue gray.

That looks a little bit too bluish, so I'm gonna add a little more gray to it.

I don't want it the same color as the tire.

And I'm just carefully gonna paint that hubcap like that.

I'm gonna wipe the brush off and pick up a little gob of this white basecoat, right on the point of the brush.

At about 10 o'clock here on this hubcap, I'm gonna put a dot, so it looks like you got a highlight.

So now, I'm gonna go off camera for just a second.

I'm gonna do that other tire and I'll be right back.

("Jingle Bells") Okay, I finished the other tire just like I said, and I'm gonna take some of that hubcap color, and I'm gonna put a little bit of it on this chrome headlight right here.

I like to put some near the bottom of the headlight, and then wipe the brush off and put white at the top, and then I blend them together in the middle, so it looks like it's rounded.

Looks like a metal headlight frame that's round.

And I mentioned earlier on when we were doing the red, that if you lose your divisions on the door, see I can take my brush handle like this, and I can actually just scratch through the red, and the black shows through again.

If that doesn't end up being dominant enough for you, you could actually take black.

I'll thin down a little bit of black just to show you.

That's working for me.

But just in case you run into issues, you can take a little more black, and you can define that a little more if it needs it.

Okay, I'm also gonna take some of that headlight color and I'm gonna put a door handle on here.

This guy needs to be able to get into that truck.

That's nothing more than just a little horizontal line.

I'm going to take my fan brush with a little bit of white and at the base of the tires, I just wanna bury those in a little bit and make it look like the tires are kicking up a little snow.

I need to put the running board along the top of this, so I'm gonna take my detailed script liner with thinned down cadmium red deep, and I'm gonna roll this brush right full.

This is gonna go right along as the fender.

And the running board goes across the bottom like that, and up around the front.

And again, look at your sketch that you transferred for this just as a guide.

Okay, I've gotta get busy and put that tree in there.

So I'm gonna lay some snow on the cab, some right on the edge of the box like this, a little bit on the cab.

Have your paint thin.

That's why I'm using basecoat, so it won't pick up the red so much.

And maybe a little bit along here.

And then, I've got to make a tree.

I'm gonna use a darker green, so I'm gonna swish this out with sap green, a little bit of blue, little bit of black.

You could actually do this painting and photograph it, and use it for your greeting card for this season.

So I'm gonna have the tree sticking out like this.

Put it at a reasonable angle, so it makes sense that it's laying in the truck.

And I put the trunk line in, and then I just dab on either side.

It's like making a tree sideways, but it's not too bad.

If it helps, you can actually reorient your canvas and turn it up the other way.

Let it just disappear down into the bed of the truck.

I'm gonna swish that out and take some white basecoat.

I'm gonna lay a little bit of snow on the top of the tree here and there.

And I've got 30 seconds left.

Can I do it?

I think I can.

I'm gonna take some white basecoat on a fan brush with a couple drops of thinner, and I'm gonna make it snow.

Now, if you like it without the snow, you wouldn't have to do it.

But I'm gonna put a little bit of a snowfall in here just to kinda give it a little more mood.

So give this a shot and Merry Christmas to you.

And until next time, stay creative and keep painting.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] 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) - [Narrator] In rural New York State, bordered by the Saint 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 barn quilt traditions, family, agriculture, nature, and beauty.

St. Lawrence County, Life Undiscovered.

- [Announcer] 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 or download directly to your computer or mobile device.

More information at wpbstv.org/painting.

(gentle music)