The one-stroke video library series featuring Donna Dewberry is presented by
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Hi, I'm Donna Dewberry. Welcome to my studio. I'm going to teach you today many of the things that I wish I knew when I was at home trying to teach myself how to paint.
I had seven children and as I was learning how to paint, I couldn't take classes and I wanted to have a pretty house.
I wanted to paint on lots of surfaces and what I'm going to show you today is how to do all that and I think you're going to really have a good time.
The first thing I want to show you is what supplies that we're going to use and all through the day we're going to use all sorts of surfaces so that you know how to seal them and prepare them and that's going to be really helpful for you as you're painting your desired surface.
So what we're going to use is our large flat brush a lot because I like things to be painted very quick and easy but I have brushes all the way down to very small brushes.
It's all flat brushes for my strokes. Then we have a script liner. The liner is for lots of nice little detail around eyes and lashes and fun little things like that and then we have a scruffy.
Now this brush, when you get it out of a package, you need to put it in your hand, twist, then take your fingernails and fluff it out.
Now the important thing is to have a palette. Now I'm using a foam palette instead of paper because paper absorbs water.
I'm going to squeeze out a couple of my colors here. Let's use some pink and yellow.
I'm going to show you that you're putting these on the outside edge so that you can load your brush in the center. Then we have floating medium.
Now what's important is as we're loading our brushes that we take and load each brush in a different manner.
This scruffy brush is loaded half and half and it's loaded by pouncing up and down.
One of the important things in my technique is how to load your brush and that we're using a very thick, creamy paint.
See, we want this paint to be real nice and thick, creamy. We want to pounce hard enough and we want two separate colors on this brush.
Now let me tell you a little trick. This absolutely has to be dry when you're using this brush, when you're loading it.
But when you go to clean this brush, it's natural hair so you can pounce this straight up and down in your brush basin.
Let me show you a little trick. You don't want any water in this brush so what you want to do is take and squeeze the ferrule.
I just pinch the ferrule, get that excess water out, fluff up that brush. Looks like I'm damaging it but I'm not.
Fluff it all up and then store that brush so you're ready to paint when you need that brush again.
Now let's double load the 3 quarter inch flat because then you can really see how to load this brush.
Now we get the dampened brush. No water are we using with this brush at all so I want to take and just slightly pat out the water.
Then we want to dip corner, corner, work this in. Now I really like going over and over this as we're painting today so that you don't forget the most important thing.
See how hard I'm pushing? And I want it in the same spot. I don't want you moving all over, okay? Same spot.
Now what I want you to do is work this paint into the brush until it's at least two thirds of the bristles.
Now these bristles are thin and the ferrule, the silver part, isn't too thick so that you keep a really nice chisel edge, alright?
Now what happens immediately, let's put on another color here, what happens immediately is that you get blending, shading, and highlighting with your very first stroke.
But you have to load the brush first. Now this is totally loaded but now you're not ready to paint until you pick up more paint.
So what I'm doing is ever so lightly dipping the corner, say I want another color, dip the light color on the light side, another color, alright?
So very gently dipping those brush, those tips, the corners. Then we go one, two, three, that's your starter stroke, same spot, one, two, three.
Hold the handle of the brush straight up and down, see how my handle is absolutely straight up and down?
Very important because when you're not able to do my strokes it's because you don't have enough paint, you don't have the handle straight up and down, and you don't have pressure.
Pressure, pressure, pressure, remember that. Push, wiggle, and then lift and look what you have.
Look at all that shading. Blending, shading, and highlighting. Of course we probably won't have a pink leaf but that's kind of fun, I can show you.
Now let me tell you what we're going to do next is show you how to use floating medium.
Now if you feel the urge to go into water when I say no, okay, go to this floating medium and this is the fluff that's inside paint with no pigment in it.
So see it right here, it's a gel. I'm going to dip straight into that gel, alright?
And then I'm going to take right on my palette and go one, two, three, and start painting.
Now you can only go into that gel every second to third, third to fourth stroke because if you use too much of it, it'll be like you've used water and it'll muddy up your design so please don't do that.
Now what we're going to paint first is kind of fun. It's stretching a little bit so if you're not sure you're comfortable with it, paint some other things first but I would like to build an angel with you.
So we're kind of doing the shape of a face and then I've kind of traced out an outline you really can't see too well here but I want you to see what I'm thinking in my mind as we're stroking him, let's say her together, alright?
I'm going to pick up white and some light tan colors so I can go around the face. You don't really want it to be pinky, you want to have it a little cream, tanny color, okay?
So I'm going to start at the forehead, come down, let's see I've got a little bit too dark on here, let's make it a little bit lighter, start at the forehead, come down.
Now this is the point you might want to use a little bit of floating medium if you feel like it's dragging, okay?
Then the lips, they're going to be right there, okay? Then we're going to come down around the chin.
Now this happens pretty quickly and I'm always going for the effect. I'm not a fine artist with a beautiful oil canvas that looks like a portrait, I'm just trying to do cute little angels.
Some of my funnest angels, I did little baby angels with pampers on and they were all running around in the garden in the baby nursery so it was just so fun and the little girl just had the most fun and her name was Alexis.
She just loved it, she'd get down there and talk to her angels and just love them. She'd even look behind the door and see if there were more angels back there so I don't want to have a brown cheek there.
Alright now what we have to do at this point is take, I'm going to pick up some of this floating medium here, I've got a little bit too much and look I'm going to slide a little bit of this pink so I can have a little bit of a rosy cheek.
Work it into my brush so it's not too heavy and you need it to be up kind of like right above the nose, right kind of where the bridge of the nose is because the eye is going to sit kind of like right on top of that cheek, okay?
Just kind of rub that in and actually you want that to dry a little bit and you usually don't have to let anything dry with my technique but I would kind of want that.
And while that's drying I'm going to take and let's paint a dress down here on the shoulder area so you can kind of see no matter what design you want to do I'm just going to follow, here's the shoulder for instance and I'm just going to fill it in.
Okay, fill it in with your big flat brush, you can take it even, have some folds in the fabric, whatever you want and listen remember I break all the rules so what I like to do, if there's something I'm not comfortable with I can moss here and put a bunch of roses and cover like, you know what this is a little trick, I wasn't very good with hands and like little feet and so I would always do those cherubs and angels with bowels hanging down.
And all over with mossing and rose buds so you could never have to see the hand or the feet so do whatever you're comfortable with first and mix it real quick and easy.
Now I want to pick up some hair color and I like to use all sorts of colors but remembering you have to use two or three colors to get a nice shading you don't want it to be just all dark browns and then go back and put light colors on it we're putting all the color together on a brush at one time.
So let's put some gold here and I'm even going to bring in a little bit of brown into this angels hair.
Alright so what I'm going to do is I'm going to pick up, working in my colors, now remember I'm going to put my other palette here so I have some floating medium because I'm going to dip into some floating medium and then work that in, pick up a little bit of brown.
And now this is really simple because all we're doing is we're coming down making, I'm giving her big hair but I'm going to put moss around there.
Remember I can cover anything up I don't like with something else. I do lots of tricks like that, you're going to like it too.
Makes it easy especially that marvelous scruffy that covers anything you're not happy with.
Now to see what I'm doing I'm up on the edge of the brush, I'm on the chisel and I'm pushing hard sometimes, not so hard other times, picking up a little bit of brown.
Now look, make some little curls right here, you can just flip the brush or you can bring your script liner and really make some fine little hairs which is kind of fun.
Anyway you continue going down, I'm going to put some wings back here so I'm going to stop because the wings are coming in there.
I'm not wearing too much up here because I'm going to put moss around here.
Then she's looking kind of shabby so far. Let's come in here and alright but her hair looks a little bit shabby as we're going here but as we finish her she's going to look so pretty, you're going to like it.
Alright I've got a little bit of pink in here but that's not too bad, it's kind of looking fun.
See how it won't move? Very easy, just pick up floating medium, it's going to be your best friend.
So we're going to come down, this is the back wing, so the back wing gets all its detail first.
Even though you might not see all of it I still like to come in here, see this I'm scooping down, up, down, up, just laying the brush kind of, the bristles down kind of flat all the way.
Put your detail in here and then what we're going to do, I mean I've even made these look kind of like real feathers with all the little veins in the feather but right here I'm going to come up and make the front wing.
See how I don't have to let anything dry, I'm just painting right over wet paint, that's the beauty of using, this is folk art paint, it's real creamy, I like a paint that doesn't have, that's not thin.
Okay, see I'm going to use real thick, nice paint.
Alright and then we're just going to continue here, putting some highlights, maybe some white in there.
Sometimes I do these, I wouldn't do these wings gold if you're doing all this gold in her hair but sometimes, I mean I usually like to use the gold though because wings are, Angela can have a glow about them, right?
Alright so come back in here and continue as we go on down because I don't want to spend a lot of time on there, I want to make her face really pretty for you.
But you just continue going down and let me show you just one little feather here, if you come up then you get another highlight color, you can pull this way and then stroke it like a feather and just get that illusion of a real feather.
Isn't that kind of nice, you can do those too.
Alright, then I'm going to come in, I saved the face for last so that y'all will enjoy seeing her all finished up, okay.
Just pounce, see I didn't like how high she got there, so I'm just going to pounce, get me a little bit more white, remember pouncing two colors on the edge of one puddle, on the edge of the other puddle.
And you notice I just go right to my project, I don't pounce it off on paper, I go right to my project, do this halo of wreath on her head, and you can also put a halo behind her, an aura behind her, but that would go before the hair remember, alright.
Anything that would be behind, you just put it behind first, okay, and you can fill that with little ribbons and rose buds, and then remember what I said, just come down here and put a bow here of greenery if you want to cover where her hands would go.
I have lots of little tricks to help you cheat.
Alright, now what I want to do is make a little blue eye here, put a little eye here, let's see where our brush is, alright, put a little teeny eye, now this is a side view so actually I should have painted her eye white behind, it will look a little better, so what you would do is base coat the white right in that area and then come back and put the blue.
Okay, I'm kind of creating her as we go, but she's going to be kind of fun, alright, now let me show you, the script liner is very important, but you need to put water in her, see I'm calling my brush a her too, put water in the brush so that we have a nice inky puddle, very important, I didn't show you earlier so I'll show you now, when we're using this script liner, the only brush I use water with, and I use a lot of water with her, okay.
Now we roll the brush in that paint, pull out of it so that we don't have a big drip, it's inky, not watery, not pasty, but inky, alright, so you can do lots of pretty painting, you're going to touch at the top and pull down, and you want to outline where the eye is going to go, and then you can come up here, make little teeny eyebrows, little teeny hairs, just don't over do it, just make a nice little line, okay.
Now we're going to do a little arch there in her eyebrow, and then I like to come across here with a second line, oops, I'm shaking a little bit there, alright, then we're going to make little lashes, and I touch and pull from that line downward, alright, now when we're coming up here, see my little finger supporting me, I'm going to do little hairs right there, little lashes there, and then come across the front, and that's what makes her look so pretty, or the teeny little lashes.
Now to clean this up, you want to go right along this line again, if I stop shaking, there we go, she looks like she has a little bit of liner, alright, now what's really fun is we put her little highlight in her eye here, let me show you, because I want to show you right over here real quick, what's really fun is that you can put a line here and just have her kind of at rest with her eyes closed,
and do little teeny lashes over here, clean up the line again, and then have it a little eyebrow here, so see even if you don't want to attempt the eye, you could do something like that, okay, now put a little highlight in her eye, and I don't want to forget her lips, and she's done, and then just make a real sweet little look,
now the better you get, the more detail you can get, you can sit and look at a face, and just say wow, this face, oops, I got her, she's pouting, her lips hanging out there a little bit more, okay, but you can go back in here and shade with your floating medium, what you're going to like, and get lots of detail on her, now isn't that fun, I want you to play with this, work on all kinds of faces, take a look at pictures of angels, and find an angel that you would like, and just follow her outline.
Now we're going to paint some canvases that are scenery canvases, and what I want you to think about is how you're going to apply this on the wall, because it's the same steps, the same sponges, everything that I'm using, you would just paint larger, but I wanted to show you so you could see it on a smaller scale,
now I'm using my one stroke paint sponges, and I've cut them so that they're a good shape for what I'm doing, I dip it in water, squeeze out the water, and then we're ready, and this will just make it faster, when you might see painters that use heavy paint brushes, big large house brushes to get the shading in the background, I always like to use a sponge, because I like to cover a large area fast, remember I like things quick and easy, and I don't want anything that takes a long time,
now this is the sky, now I'm going to have it like it's real sunny, we're going to do an ocean scene, and I'm going to come in here with some soft yellow, which I don't know if you can even really see much of that yet, but then as we're coming down, the thing I like about the yellow, what I like about the yellow is that we're going to come back in here and put some little blue clouds, so it's going to be kind of nice, but we're going to have an ocean scene, so I want blue water, and I don't want all that heavy blue, so instead of just leaving it white, I'm going to put a little
yellow, now I'm not going to even worry really about cleaning my sponge out, I'm just going to go in and pick up some, this is a midnight and a wicker white, see how I get both colors on the sponge, alright, so then I'm going to find a horizon line, somewhere in here where, see across here, hopefully this is not too crooked, alright when you're at a side view here it's hard to get a line that's not crooked, okay, so then just kind of make a nice
slow wiggle as you go across, and it kind of looks a little bit like water, doesn't it, now I can come in here, right when I'm doing this part, because I don't like to have to come back and do much more with that, but I like to come in here and just get a little bit of darker blues,
and see, just kind of shade that water, or you can just do heavier blues along that horizon line either way, and then right here with the sponge, come get some white, and have some little waves in there, little teeny waves, but before I get carried away with that, I want to wash this out and come back in here and bring some of the sand area where you might paint seashells or sea oats, we're going to paint palm trees and sea oats, okay, so I'm going to pick up
and pad out my color out here, pick up my browns and a little bit of white, don't ever go with one color, it's nicer when you pick up a few other colors, now see the water line should not be straight here, because it's not when you're looking at the ocean, the waves are coming up, right, let me pick this up so I can get the edge better, okay, and you just quickly sponge this on down,
now isn't that quick and easy, now what I like to do at this point is go back, remember what I was saying, and pick up a little bit of the blue and white, and we can come out here with some little, little bit of water coming onto your sand here, okay, just where you think it might show, and then put a little, just pat, watch me, I'm going to just pat a little bit of frost that's on the water as it comes in, little bubbles, put a little bit of white,
now isn't that fun, it's amazing, it looks like something, now just use the sponge, do you believe that, all right, I even like to come in here and do a little bit of closer land, see how we're doing this, a little bit of closer land here, with my little paint sponge, look at this, okay, and then maybe over here just a little bit where the palm tree is going to go, okay, now I'm going to do a palm tree that you're going to think is really fun, because he's so simple, let me pop him back so he doesn't fall on me,
all right, I'm going to pick up some brown, some maple syrup, and burn umber, and this is really easy, let's see, we're going to push, lift, push, lift, see at an angle coming up, lots of paint, see I didn't work it in, it needs to be two-thirds full, don't forget, push, lift, push, lift, and I get smaller as I go, up, this one's going to be kind of tilting over,
okay, and not too bad, let's see, let's put a little bit more up here, and then we have some palm fronds, okay, so we're going to come in with these fronds, put a little bit of green out here, real thick paint, you like that, because it makes it where it works really well for you, all right, now I don't even clean the brush, I'm bad, remember, I just like to have all that color in my brush, then, now to do the fronds, we're going to take,
and we're going to place where we want those to go, all right, I'm going to have one out here, back like this, and then very quickly, you're just going to go back and forth, back and forth, see my little finger, my little finger's holding that at the level I want it to be, back and forth, come all along there,
and look how it starts looking like a palm tree, now see, you're going one way, want it nice, you can do single ones like that sometime, and not go back and forth, if you're trying to make individual ones really stand out, but then, see how I lost my center vein there, I might come back, and just pull a little center vein there,
now I'm going to finish him up a little bit later and come back and show you him, but let's do a little sun, we're going to come up here, before I do the sun, I'm going to come here and do a little bit of clouding, don't want that too blue, let's get some more white on there,
see, you can come in here, oh, he's a little dark, but look, easy, just wipe some of it off, okay, little bit of blue sky, now I need to pat some white over that, see how nice, you can just, anything you do, you don't have to worry about if you don't like it, just pick up some more work on it, okay,
now, I'm going to come up here and do a little bit of a sun, sun ray here, just a little bit, maybe some floating medium, so I don't have to worry about it being too heavy, you can just make that really light, maybe I want more than that there,
yeah, that sun over there, remember your frame is going to go around this, and you can even do some light rays from that, okay, now let's do a couple little sea oats, a couple little birds even are fun, alright,
right here, right from that area, you're going to pull up with your number two script liner, see that, you grab, pull, grab, pull, grab, pull, all from there, and each little oat, sea oat here, has little teeny, little teeny, like we were doing with the palm,
the little oats that come off of here, and they just kind of hang over, see the little detail you get, and then remember always clean it back up by pulling back down, and then, isn't that fun how that is so simple, and then we'll put a little bird, I'm going to do this one kind of blue, but you can do it white like a seagull,
and he looks really good, so I'm going to wipe that off, can you all see that, let's do it one more time, you slide over, up, and then you can put a little body right there, alright, and he looks fun, now what I want you to do is come back later, and we're going to look at him all finished up, and right now what I want to do is flip this down, show you a quick little garden scene, now I want you to imagine this on the wall and how simple, we've got blue, some greens, and a little bit of black,
and a little bit of brown down here where we're going to put a path, now when I'm starting out first thing on here, I'm going to take, and let's pull in some greens here, and decide that I want, I'm going to do a hedge here with a gate, so the first thing I'm going to do is pick up some white, a little bit of brown for shading, and I'm going to decide my garden gate is going to be right here, now remember how we were doing those clouds, you just go back in and fill in your clouds,
but I'm going to pick out what I want the main focus to be is this garden gate, and see now I'm just making the balls for the top of the gate, see how I've got the brown on one side, the brown shading, lots of paint, make sure you use floating medium of this dragon like it is here, alright, come back in,
now we start doing these little pickets here, and as I'm doing the picket, I'm going to get higher and higher, see how the brown kind of just automatically does the shading, so you don't have to come back and do that later, quick and easy, now when I do this on a large wall, I'm going to use my stencil,
my picket fence stencil, when I'm using a picket fence stencil, I'm going to take my sponge, and I'm going to do the sponge, the little paint sponge I was using right on the picket fence stencil, so that I don't have to sit here and draw it out, when you get bigger it makes it very difficult for me, because I hate measuring things out, I want it quick, alright now see how I lost my shading there really quick, just come back and shade it on, and this gate looks like it's opening up a little bit, and I bet you all think I did that on purpose didn't you,
well listen, we're going to just pull right here, make a little hinge for the gate, whatever we want, a little handle, and then really quickly I can come in here, with a little effort, and put a fun little hedge here, that's a quick way to save time, so you don't have to do fence all the way across do you think,
okay, now the key is, is we're putting this across, is that right down here on the bottom, we want it to look darker again, so I can do a couple things, I think I'm going to turn this sponge around, use this end, and then come right down here, clean this up, and look how I have the ground, see how quick that happens, very simple, and then I would do the same thing over here,
and then see I'm going to have a little path where I did this brown, so you just fill in a little bit there, you don't want to get carried away, but see I can wipe it right off, or I can come in with my brush, and my floating medium, and put a little brown down here to get us some shading,
now I'm going to put some little vines, really quick little vines, and maybe even a little tree in here later, but let me show you how quick this vine, now when you're on a piece small like this, you would bring the vine up, up and around your pole, and you can have that vine kind of coming down in here,
and then we take our brush and we just paint some little teeny leaves,
little one stroke leaves all along here, now watch how these are done, you're just pushing, lifting, push, turn, lift, push, turn, lift, don't get carried away, just like little teeny ones, alright,
all along here, we can put a tree in here by taking our brush, picking up some brown and tan, we're going to have the trunk down here,
see how it let anything dry, just start going for it, right, now I'm going to finish him up too later like we just did, I should put my clouds in first, but the tree is going to be kind of full, so you really won't see many clouds behind him,
okay, see how amazing it starts looking like, you work hard and you know I don't work hard for anything, I just like to do it quick, with seven kids you don't have time for all that, alright, so then you can just stipple just lightly,
usually I like you to pounce hard like we did on the hedge here, but see I'm just going to put some really light pouncing in here, fun, fun, fun, going to come in, put some little flowers on that little vine,
okay, put our little stems into our little leaves, put a few little curlicues, and let's put some pretty little color here, I'm going to put a blue vine on here,
a little blue flower, a little blue blossom, and it can just be as little as just little dabs that are trailing off of here, now I didn't make anything difficult, these are quick easy steps, and when you get through it's amazing that if you look at the back and then build it forward it starts looking like something,
see how you can just start getting the depth and the shading, now I'm not an expert on depth and shading and where the light is supposed to shine from and all the effects that you want to go for, but I just keep looking at really good pictures, cards, like really nice greeting cards that show a painted illustration, and just start copying that, remember start in the back, working forward, you go practice that some.
Now you're going to like how quick and easy it is to paint an urn and a ficus tree, and I want to show you the simple steps of how to build it, I've taken, I've kind of traced one out here so that you can see the shape, and I can show you some quick ways to do that too as we're going here, then I have my sponge, my one-stroke sponge, and what I'm doing is I'm painting right here first, I'm taking this hard edge of the sponge coming down along the outline,
then, then you paint this line on top, wait a minute, we fill it in first, getting ahead of myself, then I come here, put this outline here for this, and you're building it down, okay, that's the first part, alright, just fill it in, and I'm going on my baseboard, if I get on my baseboard I just take a wet wash rag or a wet sponge and wipe that off, alright, now when I'm drawing this I take a pencil in my hand and I just take and go like this, kind of drop it down like this, alright,
across, and it will make this arch right here, and usually this is down on the floor, so it's a little high for me to stand here and try to do it, and what I want to do here is I want to start with this edge, and we're going to come right around, see we're going to follow the line, see this rough edge here, it's stiff enough that it will help you come along this line,
I can't see it very well here, there we go, follow that line around this way, then come over here, this one's going to be easier for me to see, follow this line around here, and meet, now all you do in the middle, very quickly fill in the middle, now you can see I had some other lines if I decided I wanted some indentions like it was a clay pot with grooves in it,
you can then come back with your sponge, look how easy this is, and then accent more this way, or sometimes I paint a rose design across here, or an angel or whatever that looks like it's sculptured into this area, very quick and easy, now what we're going to do at this point,
see how I did what would be behind than this, and we're going to come here and you want to do this background here, all along here, this is the back part, and I'm going to put mossing on here so you don't even see that, but I still like to put it so I get the dimension, this I should turn my sponge around, see the round part, makes it really easy to get around this edge, which I probably should have used that down there, huh?
Alright, now around this edge, and then we fill in, make sure we have this nice hard edge here, picking up lots of Butter Beacon right on this edge, and then we fill it in, now right here we have a little accent that comes across here, and you know what, we probably won't even see that when we're done, but that helps you do your placement so that you know where your mossing and all is going to be, now I take my large brush, I'm going to slide down and do little handles,
now I have Worker White, Butter Beacon, slide down, come back up, and then you can come with this brush and do some accents, if you want some highlighting in there, that's fine, pick up over here, come down, do your little loop here like, you know, like it's on the container, you don't have to do those, but those are kind of fun, I put more grooves in there, but let me show you how simple it is now to do our Ficus tree,
what we're going to do is pick up Butter Beacon and the Maple Syrup, or Burn Umber, you can just use a darker brown if you wish, come down into the container, and we're up on the chisel edge, look at this, right here on this edge of the brush, right here, handle straight up, and now we're leading with a lighter color, dragging the brown bristles, alright, we're starting down here, now Ficus trees are kind of woven in and out like a grapevine,
they start down here and then they weave, start down here, and don't do them exact, please be loose, hold the brush as light as you can hold it without dropping it, alright, now what we're going to do is up here, we're going to start branching off,
branching off, and this is where we're going to put all of our leaves, alright, continue to do that, and you're going to fill in a whole Ficus tree, which I'll bring you back later and let you see how pretty that looks all done, but I want to start putting some leaves and moss on here to show you, there's simple steps and anybody can do this unbelievably quick, quick, quick, quick, we're going to pass in here, all on here with our mossing, now what's fun about this is we're going
to do this as I like to make it, I put some brown, some white, some green, I like it looked aged, remember how I said you cover up something you don't like, you can just pounce down if you don't like something you've got, make it look like it's hanging over here, even come way down here, look way down here, and I always like to put some little moss down here,
that kind of cute like it's growing, along here, back up here, it will come, have some hanging over the side, I don't like how that attached there very well so we put that there, I even like to put a little teeny bit coming up here, alright and sometimes I have some greenery falling out of that, but I fill in that container,
now isn't it amazing how quick this starts becoming something, we're picking up, now this is what we're going to do, we're going to go push turn left, pull a stem in, push turn left, pull your stem in immediately, alright now every once in a while I'm going to take and do this, see that really light and airy with the green and that kind of makes it full, you can also, remember I said put the V, wiggle, slide, fill in,
now we're going to put some green and some browns and get that beautiful shading, now I'm telling you by the time you fill this in, it's happened very quick, you've enjoyed doing it because it's kind of fun you're creating, remember your fingers, put your fingers out and away along your branches so that's the way you want your leaves to point,
and so quick and easy you have an entire ficus tree and I'll show you that in a minute when it's all done so that you can see how nice it can put, you can put this in the end of a hallway or in a bathroom powder room, it's so much fun and what I'm going to do now is I'm going to show you how to make a big tree that disappears into the ceiling in your child's room or something, you're going to like it.
Okay, now I'm ready to do my big tree and what I do first is I come to the wall, hold a pencil and decide when I'm up close and I'm drawing the line where the tree's going to go, you want to angle out as you come to the ground and say I'm right here, then I stand back away from it and it might look too small for the size of the wall and it's real fun to do this in a corner of a wall too, okay, and the beauty of this pencil mark is that the sponge with the paint will take all the pencil mark off and you don't have to worry about that,
you don't have to worry about if your lines are extra lines there or whatever, then you can come up here and do a little branch and let's start with our sponge, putting our finger on this rough edge here which gives you a hard line, okay, so we're taking our sponge and we go along the line, the pencil line, okay,
and what you're going to love is that you just make circles, look at this, even on flat paint this works, on the wall what you want to make sure is that it's nice if they do egg, you know, if you have it painted an egg shell or
a satin finish because it's easier to move the paint, but sometimes it's flat walls, it's just a regular acrylic paint
and this is acrylic paint that we're using, so it works really good and you don't seal it afterwards because what happens is that this is acrylic paint just like your house paint is and when you start scrubbing the wall, this will rub off just like your paint will rub off down to the dry wall, so you just don't scrub too hard.
All righty, now see how quickly that happens, now this is a dampened sponge when you start, just dampen, but see how that looks like a really soft, gentle transition instead of that harsh, heavy painted look that you would get if you were doing it with a paint brush, real heavy paint on a paint brush just looks thick and solid.
Now what I like about the sponge is that you can also come around here, look, and get some more accents to the tree branch, look at this, we can do a little knot, maybe not a little knot, I'm getting a little big there, see how you can start getting all that into the tree, and it's amazing how it can look like something very fast.
I've done an entire tree trunk all the way to the ceiling, have the branches disappear into the ceiling area and then come down with some other branches, then the entire tree trunk and ready with all the leaves in like 30 minutes, which is amazing because it usually takes so much longer.
I then, really quick to finish this up, I will take my three quarter inch flat brush and then go back and then you can just add a few little details like up here, then come up here, you can get some smaller branches, all right, and then you're done.
Now that you know how to paint, let me show you how to prepare and get your surfaces ready for painting. The first thing that we want to do is teach you how to base coat and get your piece ready so you can base coat it.
Now we're going to talk about wood first. Now this wood is something that needs to be sanded along the grain of the wood, and I'm using a fine sandpaper, I'm going around the edges, getting all the rough fuzzies off, and then the most important thing when you get through with that is that you need to take some type of a damp cloth, not really damp but some kind of dry cloth that you can knock off all your dust.
Then we're going to take our painting sponge and we're going to take our paint, we're going to pick it up and we're going to take and stroke along with a grain of wood, which is really important, you don't want to just move all over your piece, you want to go straight long strokes.
Then we're putting our first nice coat of paint on all around the edges to finish it up. You probably would start on the edges and then go on the top.
Now I'm going to finish with this piece and bring another piece up here to show you that this one's been all painted, and the most important thing is that you let it dry. And after it's dry, then you have to lightly sand it again.
And let me tell you why, because the water-based paint brings up the little fuzzies and the little knots in the wood, it brings up all that little fuzzy. So you want to lightly sand your whole piece again.
Now it has to be totally dry, wipe it all off again, and then we're going to take and put a second coat. Same thing, this coat will be very nice and polished looking, very finished and pretty.
Okay, and then your piece, when that totally dries, is ready for you to paint. So let me show you next, after your paint, your piece is dry, or while you're waiting for it to dry, let me show you what you need to do.
We have, in most of our painting books, we have patterns in the center. Now I tell you to freehand paint a lot, but if you're a little nervous at first, you can do this by taking your pattern out of your book, you take tracing paper or tissue paper that you can see through, and you just lay it right on here and trace this out.
All right, now let me show you, this is the fruit that we were doing earlier. Let me show you, I like to paint fruit a lot, so I've got a piece here that I've painted from before, let me show you.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to lay this here so you can see really well. Now, this is your pattern. I lay the pattern first on a piece of wood and make sure it fits really nice on the shape that I'm using.
Then I take this paper, which is transfer paper. You leave the tissue side looking up and the grayer dark side going down. Now this comes in a white also. Now remember, see how I was holding it in place so that when I lay it back down, I'm still covering my design.
And then you take a pencil. Now when you trace this, don't do all the detail inside that some artists put in there to show you how pretty it's going to look. You just want to do the outside edges, and you trace this pattern on, lift it up, and you're ready to paint.
Now this is how it looks when it's all totally painted. Now what happens here, I want to show you that you can have this piece totally finished like that after you seal it.
Now I've got a sealer here that I could spray on here, or base coat it, or coat it with a water-based varnish. But what I'm going to show you here is how to antique this, and you're going to like this.
Because if I've decided I want an old-world look on here, now your spray sealer is on there, it's totally dry. Spray sealer is quick. Remember, I like everything quick and easy, so it doesn't take a lot of time.
Now this is a water-based antiquing medium, which is really fun. This one is, I don't see a name on here, this is a medium brown color. Now what I like to do is I have my dampened sponge.
See how I'm just putting a little bit? Go around my edges, and then right over the top of my painting, which is kind of scary at first because you're thinking, oh, I am going to just mess this piece up.
Now make it as dark as you want it. You can streak it like this, or you can rub some of it off. You can also keep one of those soft cloths next to you so that you can wipe some of that excess off.
But look how pretty. See how that starts making it look like old-world? Heavier on the edges if you want, and then just really light in the middle.
And I've noticed the more that I do that circular motion, the nicer, more finished that piece looks. Isn't that fun?
Now that's one method. That's antiquing, and I like to do that in a lot of things. I paint on old antique pieces that have problems, and then antique over my painting, and it looks like my painting has been there forever.
It is so fun. Now let me show you another little trick, and this is how I faux when I'm fauxing walls, or I faux a wood piece that I want to take and paint on top of.
And now the fauxing takes a little bit longer to dry. I want you to see that this is a piece of vinyl. I love this. Look at this.
This is vinyl floor covering, and you turn it over and on the back of it. Now don't listen to any hardware story, anybody who works there, because they always say, oh, this won't work.
I promise you it does. All you do is take this vinyl and base coat it just like with regular house paint, and I like satin eggshell just like I was telling you.
Those are the finishes I like if I'm painting on something like this. It's going to have a lot of wear and tear. I'm going to put it indoors with varnish on it when I'm all done, a water-based varnish, but I'm picking up two colors.
Can you see that? Both colors. Then what I'm going to do, I tape down my design, my little border here, and I'm just going to, look, you can go like this to make it go quick.
Remember, I like everything quick. I don't want to get it on my counter here, and then I go back and pounce over it so it looks like I did this intense foeing, right?
Okay, now look how fun this is. All you do is pull up the masking tape, and you have this beautiful straight edge. Isn't that great?
Now let me show you how nice this looks when it's all done. Right here, we've got a placemat. See that? A nice little placemat, and we have this rug.
And see right here, I put a little teeny little border right around to divide the inside from the outside. Isn't that fun? Really quick and easy.
And then I painted some of the vines that, as you're learning how to paint, they're easy to paint on, and you like it.
Now, this is to be walked on. You want to wash it and all. All you have to do, same thing with your placemat, you want to be able to scrub off this.
If you use a water-based varnish, and water-based varnish is really good because you don't get that yellowing.
Don't use just plain varnish, because what happens with that is it gets yellowing. Even if it doesn't yellow right now, it will yellow.
So what we want to do is put two to three coats. I did the top of my dining room table with fruits all over it, and I take, and every once in a while I'll add another coat because we scrub it and clean it.
And so you need two to three good coats of water-based varnish, letting it dry totally in between.
Now, let me go to the next project, which I think you're going to really like. I've always loved to paint on t-shirts.
Now, the most important thing is on t-shirts or any fabric that you're using is that you pre-wash it, and then you press and get it all ready or stretch it on a board.
These are pillowcases. I want you to see how fun these pillowcases are.
Now, I love to get a set of pillowcases out for a wedding gift and maybe even personalize it with their name.
But I want to show you how fun and easy it is to paint on fabric because there's no trick to it besides we're using your pre-washing it, same paint, same brushes.
And then what we're going to do is we're going to, it's a little bit different than if I'm painting like I would normally paint my leaves or roses.
I'm going to take and pick up all one color, and right here on my shirt, I'm going to spot in the place that I'm going to put a rosebud.
Now, I take and go back and pick up some wicker white with that berry wine.
So then I'm going, see I have a nice smooth spot that all I have to do is come right back over it.
And that top edge on that raw fabric is going to be the hardest to get.
But then all these strokes in here are real smooth because it's on that base coated paint I put there.
Now, on the leaves, I don't really base coat anything.
I just pick up my paint on my brush and work it in.
I'll put a little bit of pink.
That's OK to have a little bit of water on this fabric because it doesn't hurt as far as the, I don't like you to use water usually because you lose your shading and highlighting.
But you can't see as much blending on the fabric as you do on a smooth surface.
But I still think it's fun because this turns out to be so great.
Let me tell you, the thing you need to do to set this is that you need to take a thin cloth.
I use a hand towel, a dish towel sometimes, lay it or hanky, lay it on top.
And the best thing that happens is that when you lay that on top and press it after it's totally dry, of course, then it fuses the paint to the fabric.
And then you can just wash it and dry it as much as you want.
Now, I want you to see that you can even make little tentacles, little curlicues.
Let's see, we pick up, we're going to take with this inky paint and look, those even look pretty.
You can even sign it.
And it's amazing that you can do that on fabric.
And it turns out like that.
Look at this.
I love to do a little night shirts for my daughters and all.
And you personalize a nice little gift.
All right.
Now, this is one of my favorite things to paint on.
And this is metal.
All right.
We're going to take these two pieces and show you the difference.
This is an enamel piece.
Now, enamel pieces are what I've mostly painted on because I have a mailbox business where we paint all kinds of mailboxes.
Now, what I like to do on my enamel pieces, I like to take it's real shiny, clean it in case it has oils on it with vinegar and water.
Then you take and you paint your design.
This is just our regular paint painted on there.
Then we use our spray sealer.
And now I usually use clear lacquer when I'm using enameled.
All right.
If it's already pre enamel like a car finish and the clear lacquer, I take one light mist across it.
By the time I turn it around and do a light mist on this side, you want to set the paint so that this paint doesn't run.
And if you put too much on there, it will run.
So then what I want to do is do a light spray again like this about that far away and let it and spray it two to three times so that it's really nice and set.
And with this lacquer, the finish won't scrape off.
And you can also we have lots of nice sprays like with a high shine.
You want to make sure this is a matte finish.
So whatever like this is shiny.
So I want to use shiny.
Now, remember, when you're using a finish that is not porous like glass, what's going to happen is that you do need to seal it.
Now, wood, you could go without sealing, but it looks more finished with pride.
Now, this piece is galvanized.
Now, galvanized is a little bit different type of metal.
What you have to do, see, this is nice and paint and everybody thinks it's wonderful, but it will scratch off.
And so what you need to do is use a spray varnish and a spray varnish is yellow.
It will yellow.
So the problem is with this metal, that's the only thing that will work.
But let me tell you that you really don't notice the yellowing when you're on galvanized as just a very light tent.
But you really notice it when you're using a white finish.
So let me show you another fun project is one of those mailboxes I told you that I paint.
Now, I want to paint on this because I want you to see right here today the difference of how it looks when you paint on metal
compared to a base coated piece because it's a little bit thinner.
And so you can see through to the metal sometime, but it still looks really good.
And the same thing if you were painting on glass with a glass paint,
you need to take and see that you're going to hold your brush up just like I did before.
And as you're pushing, see, it's a little grainy, just a little bit, but not too bad and really kind of lay the paint on there.
Lots of paint. And as you can see, I might not push so hard.
Usually I tell you to push really hard, just ever so lightly.
Don't push quite as hard and paint your Ivy.
But it's such a nice finish.
And you know what you're going to love most about painting on metal is that what happens is that if you don't like it, guess what?
You wipe it all off.
You just keep wiping it off because it's not permanent until you spray your sealer.
See how I'm holding the brush, putting all this fun Ivy on here?
You could take and do with my flat brushes.
You'll love how easy it is to personalize and put the letters and the names on here for a nice gift.
And the mailboxes are very inexpensive.
So I started my mailbox business and it's very quick and easy.
And what you're going to love about painting one stroke painting on metal is that the metal,
you can't put a water based paint on metal.
But because our paint so thick and creamy, you don't have to use water.
See, if you use water, it'll beat all up.
So that's why I started.
My technique is because I started painting on metal and metal.
Like I said, I love it.
I love teaching people new on metal because they become so good so fast.
All righty.
Now what we're going to do is we're going to pick up and show you the canvases that I painted before.
Now remember, we painted on canvas.
We painted on walls.
And when I was painting on walls, I told you satin, eggshell.
You can paint on flat too.
But the one I prefer is satin or eggshell if you get the opportunity to base coat it first.
So let's look at these canvases and then we'll finish up over there on our ficus tree.
Now here's the canvas after I was all done.
I put a second palm tree in for you.
I worked on the clouds with a little bit more white.
And then look over here with my sea oats and a little bit more ground.
And be sure to always sign your piece.
Now isn't that fun?
You all saw how quick I did that.
Now let's look over here at our pretty little garden scene.
And all I did was moss the other side, put some of the same mossing down here,
did some of the little grass from the sea oats, and put some little wildflowers.
Then I had our little tree.
We had already finished that, but I sponged in.
First of all I streaked in some pinks and some darker blues.
And then I took my scruffy and sponged in a little bit of white.
Put me a few little birds.
And look isn't that a fun little scene?
And just think you can embellish and embellish this little path out to your garden.
Now I want to finish up over here showing you how I finished this piece.
Now this ficus tree, you can make those branches just stretch out as far as you want.
And I love putting it at the end of a hallway
and have the branches even trail out to the second wall.
And it makes it so fun.
Now you see how I've spaced them all out, have different colored leaves.
Don't make everything the exact same color.
Just space it all out so it looks really pretty.
And be sure that you put these little trailers in here because it kind of fills in the space.
Love that. You can add those branches all to your large tree that we painted.
And it makes it so pretty.
Now what I feel like this is going to help you with is that you can pick any place you want to paint,
on any surface you want to paint,
and just have so much painting that you won't believe yourself when you're through.
You will impress yourself the minute you sit down and try.
And I love painting.
It's the thing that's touched my life,
given me something to keep going for,
has given me something to lift my spirits when I've been down,
and also just makes me feel so good about myself because I'm creating.
And I want you to enjoy this and share it with somebody.
Share it with your kids and your neighbor.
Have fun painting, and I love being here with you. Thank you.
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