Paint Along With Nancy Kominsky; 105; Nasturtiums

Hello, I'm Nancy Kaminsky, and today we're going to paint the sturtions. There are two new features I'm going to introduce. One is how to paint glass, which is always such a mysterious process, but really isn't. And we're going to paint the flowers, which are nosturtions in this case, by using two or three colors on the knife at one time. There again we're pulling away from the system a little bit. This is a little more daring, but I think it's also a good experience, and it's another technique. We will stain the canvas as usual, and may I explain at this point, that when we stain the canvas, we use umber, which is a rather dark brown paint, with a thinner, caracene or whatever. It's best not to use

turpentine because it stays in your house, mostly when we be painting in your homes. And you may be allergic to it, so it's best to use a solvent that's like caracene or a thinner. You wipe it off as usual, like this. We do this as I have explained, and I will explain again, so that we can draw with the paint into the damp canvas. Also, you don't work on a pure white canvas. Use a beige tone underneath. Incidentally, this is called under painting, and it's used by, it was used by the old masters, and it's a very effective technique because you shouldn't actually paint on a pure white canvas. There we are. Now we're going to put our grids in there again to place our subject correctly. In quarters, like this.

That way. This may get a little boring, but it's worth it, believe me, it will save you a lot of headaches and aggravation. There we are, fine. Now we're going to have a glass bow. Not much different in shape, but very different technique. We will do our square as usual, like this. And again, we have the top of the bowl dipping round off the corners like this. Come around the bottom and go down like that. It's a little bit like a fish bowl, doesn't it? There we are. There. I'll leave it for just a moment. Now in painting the stashems, of course, they shape very

much like the tunas. Of course, the tunas are not these colors. They're very beautiful, very vibrant, and I don't want you to take a lot of paint with the drawing. However, it does have a very special shape, which we will delineate in the painting as usual. Now there again, we will put our flowers in, and be sure that the stems go into the bowl. That's very important. Shall we try that now? Let's put a little tail, because they do have little tails like that. And they grow in clusters like this. This way. We'll work it out that way. And don't have them exactly as saying, have them going up, because they are viny. They grow rather like a vine. They don't grow straight up. They rather crawl. They love the sun, and they're extremely

brilliant in color. They're not very tall, by the way. They're rather short. Now these, you can have a great deal of fun with, and just simply paint them in, and they change fine. This is a little freer drawing, and I wanted you to try to break away a little bit. Here we have some here like this, like that. And then we have some buds, and again, it has a very distinctive bud. I will draw one, but actually I only want, I will paint them in, but I want to draw one to show you. It has a little tail like this, and the flower comes down like that. Of course, it doesn't look very good now, but with a paint it will improve. And we have one that's like this. We should have a few like that, actually. So let's put another one here. There again, please be sure that it goes into the bowl. There we are, fine. We can add a few, but anyway I can put

it on here. There we are. There's our drawing. Now, as usual, the light is coming, well not as usual. The light is coming from the right. Actually, we just decide where the light is coming from as usual. So let's take the shading like this, and shade the bowl very lightly like that. And the flowers, since they are cupped and the light is coming from the right, they hit the opposite side of the petals because the other side is shaded like this. So actually, we do this. That breaks a little rule. Actually, it doesn't break a rule, but it's again another aspect of shading. There really isn't much to do in this painting. It's mostly painting and not too much drawing. It's a fun painting, a fast

painting, and you have a little freedom in this one. There we are. Our drawing is finished and we're going to put the background in. At this point, I would like to discuss the knives that you paint with. We use a straight knife for mixing your colors and the offset knife for painting. The reason we do this is the offset piece here that's raised. Keep your fingers from going into the paint. Take good care of them. They are your tools. Let's start with our dark tone. And we go to the left of the canvas, the lights coming from the right. Now, we must go in with this background color because these flowers do have little spaces in between. Petals are raised and they're separated. They're not close together as other flowers are. Now, the mysterious part of the glass, which isn't mysterious at

all, you're going to see in just a moment. We're going to take the background color and go through the bowl like this. In the shape of the bowl, leaving the outline of the drawing like that. Don't cover that. If it happens, of course, simply scratch it out, but don't worry about it. Leave the outline like that. And then put the middle tone in the rest of the bowl, no light tone, only the middle tone, like this. And the reason will be apparent as we go along. Just the middle tone. In the shape of the bowl. Now, I want to explain why this is so. We will assume, and it is, glass, which is clear. So anything around it or through it shows because it's not colored and it's not dense. It's clear. Like a window.

It's like seeing through the window into a room. We're looking through this glass bowl with the stems and part of the wall behind it. We're using this very peculiar gray-down green so that the marvelous color that we will put in the flowers will stand out. It will be very effective. Like this. Middle tone at the bottom, like that. It's strange. When I was in London, or actually in Dublin, and I was on the show there, and a man who was also a guest on this particular program with me, was a painter as well as being a child psychologist. And he was like, a boy,

he was so excited about this painting technique. And he said, you know, I could never paint glass, and he had been painting for a very long time, never, definitely quite good. But he said, I had never been able to paint glass. And when I explained to him how simple it was, he didn't believe it. He was absolutely dumbfounded. There we are. So you see, there's a simple explanation, a logical explanation for everything in painting. And then this is what we're here for, to take the mystique out of painting for you. Very simple logical answers. Now, let's go to light tone. This is always the best part. You can really let yourself go. And certainly, if you have any frustrations or hostility, this is the way to blow it out. Not on your mate or your children or the dog. Just pick up the paint, the knife, and let it go.

I've also splashed the wall just now. There we are. Don't forget to take our colors and mix them a little bit, one into the other, to create harmony and to blend the colors just a wee bit. Not too much. We don't want to lose it. I know you're worried that I've lost my flowers, but by golly, they're there, and I know they're there. Now, we're going to darken the base, which will be our shadows, and we're going to darken between the flowers with purple, like this. And the best, at this moment, it's best to outline your bow with purple into the wet paint, like this. And we're going to put a slight shadow very lightly of purple. It should be lighter than that. It will mix with the background color just enough to create a shadow in the bowl,

because there again, it does have some dimension, even though it is glass. We want to give the feeling of depth and roundness, so we would add just a bit of purple to create a shadow there. I got to leave that for the moment. It still doesn't look like glass, does it? It will. I'm going to put some purple here. When I do this in class, my students turn absolutely white, especially if they're going to a lot of trouble to put in flowers in the drawing, and then I take this terrible purple and just throw it in there in the hysterical. Fine. There we are. I'll leave everything for just a moment. I'm not going to put the shadow underneath. I did forget that. Like this. Now, we're going to put some lovely reds. So before I go any further,

I would like to do that right now. When you're painting it home and you put your flowers in, you have noticed, and you will notice, that I always add some of the colors of the subject into the background. It's best to do that while you are doing it, because if the background dries, or you run out of color, then it is a problem, especially if the background dries and you try to do it, you may have a little problem. So I would suggest that you don't. Let's have a little reflection of glass like this. I need that for a moment like that. A little purple and a dark side of the painting like this. We're going to add a little red, a little orange, because these are the colors that are going in the painting. I don't think I'd quite explain that to you, and I would like to at this moment to explain that this is the marvellous way to give your painting

harmony and unity. I'm going to add a little lovely red here like that. Be careful. Lightly does it, lightly please. You can always add more. It's terrible to have to take it away. You can do it a bit to nuisance. Leave it alone. I'm going to start with beautiful yellow flowers, and I'm going to pick up some two tones of yellow like this. Now I'm going to show you the knife. It looks like that. You see? Now I'm going to use a darker tone like this, and then I'm going to use orange in front like that. You see? I'm going to put another yellow one. We will reverse them because you see these flowers are all different colors in the same flower, which is a terribly interesting color arrangement. Wonderful for the painter.

I'll work some more. Be sure now that this must of course, the starsions can do this, so we're safe, but I did have a flower going off. Don't forget to add your little petals like that. In front. To create the little feeling of a tail, you see going down like this. We're going to use one with red and orange, lovely. We have orange. Let's put a nice red one right here. I think I'll use dark red, so you can have fun with this one. I'm going to use dark red up there and a lovely vermillion down here like that. Let's go over here and we use red below that.

You see? You get the character and the feeling of the flowers. By just the way you use a stroke, we put the paint on and we flip it like that, which creates the feeling of the bottom of a petal like that. This is such fun. I think we should have an international painting that would be wonderful. There you are. That's not why not. We have rock festivals and why not have a painting festival. It will be wonderful. Let's have some more yellow ones. We're going to use Naples yellow, which is a little different and a little orange in that. As we move along, I want to show you how I'm going to add little dark tones, which are very characteristic of nestersions, but we'll hold off for just a moment while I get all of this in. Now you can keep adding flowers.

Until you get your bouquet and of course it doesn't really matter because they do grow in a very strange fashion. Rather wild, actually it's pretty difficult to grow in certain soils. They don't do well at all. They're very spindly. We have some over here, like this. Now by no stretch of the imagination will they be called petunias. Now they look, they're shaped rather like petunias, but they have little tails on them and of course they have to be in the stursions. You have through here and red and add two or three colors on your knife. Play with it. Experiment. That's the fun of painting.

This is, I'll have one there. And also you can change it. I decided I don't like that color. There it's too near the other one so I have added yellow. We have a wonderful flower coming out here and the reason I like it is because we can use it to show the structure of this flower. Be sure that it goes into the bowl like that. There we are. They're going to have some lovely red one down here. Now I would like to put at this point some little buds because the bud formation is very interesting and very peculiar to this flower. It's not, let's like no other. And so I want to put a few of those in. I'll put the green one in just a moment. Look at that.

I'm going to add a little red down here. The colors of this painting is the most satisfying thing that I've done in a long time. I think perhaps I'm partial to earth tones and warm colors. Most people are. I'm going to put a little dark red up in here like this because it's very typical of misdertians. They have a dark tone like that. This way. That way. We hope they look like misdertians but then we never have. We don't have failures. They may not be what we plan them to be but they're successful paintings nonetheless regardless. There we are. We have one here. I would like to see one

down here now. Now if you have a friend who paints in a sturch and is awkward to match your drapes, well I mean decorating is one thing and painting is another. This happens. It happens all the time especially in classes. I don't mind telling you I turn very pale and I see people painting things to match their drapes but it does happen. I'm going to put another one right here like this because I would like this to sprawl out that way. I'm going to put another butt up here. Fine now let's leave that for the moment. I'm going to do greenery. You're going to put a lovely light tone. It has a

little hat on it like that. Like this. Now it has a small round leaf. Now obviously we're not going to draw every leaf but now and again on the outside I will paint a small round leaf which says you see I have round leaves. In the middle we simply put an impression of leaves with greenery like that. Now we have a nice little leaf trailing down here like this. It trails out and we must put some dark green in the middle. That's very important. Right here. That's a little, a few dark leaves right in here in the dark area of the painting.

Now let's leave that for the moment. We're going to go now this is what creates helps to create a glass bowl. We're going to run these stems through the bowl like this. Not too, and I've gotten that stem much too wide because actually it's a very delicate stem and it rather grows like that like this. And we put the light tone at the bottom where it's catching the light you see like this. Now this is very thick in here with stems because naturally the stems are bunched together. When they're grouped like that it's quite dark. That's got a yellow tone in here like this.

We're going to put a little purple on there up here like this. Also please add a little extra purple in between the flowers like this. Now this may give you qualms. I can be a problem. I hesitate even telling you because after all you've been through you might put four purple blobs and that's the painting. I make this very dark up here the petals and rather dark here where they all grouped together. Now leave that for the moment and I'm going to put the highlight. This is the thing that really tells us it's glass. This is the final thing that frosting on the cake, the final final point. We assume it has water in it I hope.

And we have a lovely highlight here like that and a little one here like that. And you see just like that you have glass and it didn't hurt a bit. Now I'm going to put a few blossoms around the bowl. Oops, I missed my bowl there's going to bump in it. Well let's tell you in glass. Fine I'm going to put a few blossoms at the base like this and leave which are dropped down as my special little gimmick. Don't forget to add your shadows beneath like this. Right here and don't forget to score it. That tells us that there are reflections.

I would like to outline it just a bit more on the bottom of the pot. Well there we are another masterpiece but before we sign off I would like to show you the palette the way it really looks. I know you've seen these colors in the openings but I want to show you how it looks on the palette before I filled with it. We have 10 colors and only 10 colors plus white and I want to tell you what those colors are. The first color burnt armor. The second color ultramarine blue, a lizard crimson, light red, orange, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow light, napalj yellow, cadmium yellow medium and veridian or thalogreen and of course white.

Now for the signature. Bye for now. This program was made possible by a grant from commercial union assurance companies.