It's not important for me to be the best artist on TV, only to be the best I can be today.

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ What a wonderful opportunity I have to show you how to paint a rearing horse!

And it reminds me, I might have said this before, but one time I went to a place.

Somebody gave me permission to go and kind of draw some horses early in my career.

So I'm down there and this lady comes up in a car, pulls up-- "What are you doing?"

I said, "I'm painting a horse."

She came over and looked, she says "That's a prize-winning horse.

You're painting a nag!"

And I said, "Well, I'm trying to learn!"

So this may not be a prize-winning horse, but it's past the nag stage!

Look at that rearing horse!

You've heard it said you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him swim!

So I don't think that horse is going to go out in the water, but it's right close by it.

It's a marvelous, powerful subject, and the way we're going to do this, we're going to come over to the canvas where I have the tracing on, and then we're going to kind of put in some of the background first around the horse.

So I'll mix up, it's in the blue family.

Blue family, White, and Ultramarine Blue, but I'm sure we'll have little additions as we go around.

Let me just hold this up to the canvas.

Yeah, you're pretty close, so we'll have that, and then we'll add in some warmth on the side.

So I have a large brush, and I dipped it into water, and I'm putting this on.

I'll start out at the sides of the canvas.

The nice thing about the drawing is, if I accidentally touch into the horse a little bit, no problem.

When I put the horse colors on, I'll come right back out to the outline.

We'll put some in here, and what I'm doing is staying away a little bit from the horse only because the color in there is a little different.

Then why didn't you stay away from him there?

I don't know, forgot.

So this is a pink priming on the canvas.

It's Cadmium Red, let's see, Naphthol Red and White.

So it's a little cooler than Cadmium Red Light.

But you could use other colors.

You could use-- Alizarin Crimson would work, anything in the red family.

Now see, same way here.

If I wipe quickly, I can still retain the outline of my foam and rocks.

Okay, so on the two sides that I have, one over on the left, and then when I talk about the other side, I'm talking about the light against the horse, always with the understanding that we can come up a little higher, enhance him a little more.

I have Alizarin Crimson, and I have White.

I'm brush-mixing it, and I'm using a little bit of the blue.

I think I need a little more Alizarin.

Okay, this is going to go over in here, and you're not going to see much difference, are you?

Because we have all the pink surrounding us, so this doesn't do much more than give a little opaque color, and it's actually just a little gray compared to the pink priming of the canvas.

I'm pushing this just to push up to the top of the canvas.

Okay now, let's put some lights on, and this-- not real light yet.

It's White-- boy I'm doing a lot of brush mixing.

Well, that's good.

Should I take Yellow Ochre or Raw Sienna?

Let's take Raw Sienna.

Raw Sienna and White.

A little more White, And I want to make sure that I cover those little lines, the markings for the clouds.

Right down to the horizon, and then on this side, it goes a little bit above the horse's head, and then down under here.

You know, I was painting a horse once, and I said something about the withers, and I don't know where I was on the horse, but I was totally wrong.

So I've kind of left away using terms of the horse.

This is the horse's head.

This is his body.

This is his legs.

This is his tail.

So I've given you some things; I haven't kept it all a secret.

There's some great horse artists around.

Gee, every once and a while we'll receive a catalog, no not a catalog a calendar, that's got a different horse for each month, and they're just exceptional artists around.

[soft scraping] And you can say things like that without putting yourself down.

You don't have to put yourself down to fish for a compliment or to feel that you're in your place, and you're happy.

Okay, now let's take some darks, and I'm going to establish the darks in the side of the cliff, the rocks over in the right corner, and then maybe the sand.

Then we'll take a little color and go against the horse, and then eventually we get to the horse.

So the darks... what are you?

You're Payne's Gray.

Are you Payne's Gray?

Yes, you're Payne's Gray.

Burnt Umber and Payne's Gray.

It'll give me a dark, but it will be kind of softened a little bit by the Umber in it.

Put a good edge on there.

Does this place exist?

Well, I've seen the rearing horse, and I live quite close to the ocean.

It's not a case of where I saw this particular happening.

He was rearing out in a field.

So combining is fun.

You know, I grew up in Minnesota 50 miles from where the television station is.

I'm painting 50 miles from where I grew up, and on a small farm.

I'm dipping a little water, still the Umber and the Payne's Gray.

And a small farm, we didn't have horses to start with.

Years later, I guess when I graduated from high school, we had horses, but we loved to play cowboy.

So what would we do?

Ha, those poor milk cows doubled as horses during the day.

I don't think my father totally approved of that.

He was afraid they'd give buttermilk instead of milk.

Oh, I love buttermilk!

Mmm!

My mom used to say "Okay, if you churn the butter, you can have the milk."

Let's go ahead and put some of the dark out on these rocks right early too, and I did put a little "R" on it so I could see it, because just lines, it's hard to tell where the foam splash-up and where's that.

Okay, I think that's enough there.

So we'll take Raw Sienna and when I say it, I kind of realize that's gonna be a little light.

So I'll put a little Umber with the Raw Sienna.

So that's about equal part Umber and Raw Sienna for the sand in this little area.

I'll go just cautiously against the horse's hooves and the shank.

I'm trying to use words that sounds like I know what I'm doing on the anatomy.

It helps to study anatomy both of a horse, or if you're doing a person, that you become very accurate on the placement of things.

Okay, like that and like that.

I kind of feel maybe I better go to the horse so we don't ignore him.

See, I could put all the foam and that in when we get to the oil stage.

So let's find a color that we can use for the horse.

I have some Alizarin Crimson, and I have some Phthalo Blue.

I'm going to mix White with that, and then we'll see what kind of adjustment we need to make.

Okay, the adjustment I intend to make is by adding some of the Payne's Gray to it.

So it's really 3 parts.

It's 1 Alizarin, 1 Phthalo Blue and 1 Payne's Gray.

Pretty close, and then White.

So 3 of them are equal, and then the White you add in until it looks right.

I have a brush here which won't cover quickly, but it will inside, so let's go ahead and do this.

Going right to the line.

Sort of staying on the line so you know that you are within the boundaries.

A little water, same color.

I like this color, it's almost a kind of a slate blue.

Homemade brand.

And what I find that I'm doing is I'm placing this on, and then well, for instance here, I'll save that for a dark, but some of these darks I'll just draw in on top of this wet paint.

Good.

That's working.

Let's take some more of it and we'll come up on the head, and the ear.

Let's see.

The nearest ear is this one, so I'll go just a little higher than the other one, and what about the mane?

Well for now, I'll leave it like that.

I'll go into it just a little bit, but I'm not calling that-- that's not the edge; that's not the finish.

We'll wait till we put the oil paint on so we can blend into something that's wet.

Oh, this is such a neat project.

It's fun to do these projects, and it's always fun to hear from you and saying I really like what you've done, but would you consider painting and then name the subject.

Now inside the horse, the upper leg here, we want to save the little line so that you can see.

See right there?

I saved that little line, and we'll put darks on there later, but for right now this is what we want.

You're coming.

Do we have any-- oh!

You need to have a face!

It's great doing this painting!

You know, you can just say whatever you want, because it's just filling in.

Why is it important for you to see it filled in?

So you can do likewise!

Maybe you have a different method.

But I really like the idea, the aspect of the pink.

What happened there?

I like you!

It lightened a little bit.

I'm going to go back to the dark just for-- oh, no I'm not!

I'm going to go for that little lighter.

Put a little White in the edge of that.

See what that looks like.

More White, so that I'm not quite as dark on the legs.

See that was so neat.

I just got an angel up there.

It's probably my teacher, Claude Buck, guiding me.

He was such a great guy.

That's how I received my name, "Buck" Paulson.

The first painting I did when I was 28 years of age and no idea how to paint, and I was at a class with him.

He had 3 of us in the class.

So when I finished the painting, I asked if I could sign it Buck Paulson, which I'm so glad that I did.

It pleased him, and it's lead well.

Some people would say why don't you use your own name?

You don't have to depend upon him!

And I'd tell them, I know how to paint, so I'm doing it out of respect.

I'm taking some of the same lighter color and just making a little bit of body form by this.

And I'll be doing more of that as we go with the oil.

What about the tail?

Well, for now, let's take and put just some darks in, and that looks pretty much Umberish.

So I'm having Umber maybe with a small touch of Payne's Gray.

I have a nice little hump out there.

But I won't fill all the tail in, because I need to have the foam next to it from the water so I can soften some of the tail into it.

So I think what I'll do is stop there on the horse and go ahead and start putting some of the water in.

Let's see, where?

Oh, here you are, the big brush.

So for the water, I'm looking at Phthalo Blue and White and maybe just a little bit of Raw Sienna.

More White.

That's good.

The Raw Sienna-- see the difference it makes between those two?

It's almost sort of a greenish oh you're pretty!

Oh, that's great!

Now probably while it's off-camera, what I will do, I'll fill in carefully around the legs so that you see it's done there.

I went around it, but we'll have to do a little more careful work.

Okay, over in here.

Coming against the cliff.

Here I want to make sure that I'm coming against the tail so that when the tail is put on with oil, it can kind of flow just a little bit.

Here I come carefully against the body.

I thought you were going to do the legs off palette.

Well, up around there, okay?

So nice to have my mom being my guide.

And let's go ahead with a little bit of the foam color.

Oh, we got foam color down here too.

So let's see.

Any more of that?

Maybe up in here.

So the foam color...

It is very light.

Let's put some more White out.

And what I'll try first of all is just using what we're putting around as water and just see what happens when we lighten it.

It needs to have just a little Raw Sienna in it.

Like that.

I have lines there, but we'll splash up past them a little bit so it covers them.

There was one time I did a workshop, and we took a Sharpie pen I guess it was, and we outlined everything, and boy, it was very helpful to see everything, but the next time I came up there to teach, I had 10 paintings where the Sharpie pen was showing through, and they needed to have it covered.

So that wasn't a lot of fun.

It was a good decision at the time, but never again.

I'm taking on my finger just a little bit of the blue water back in there.

Okay now, the foam patterns which this is foam, now the foam patterns, you can see how there's a nice one coming down through there, and you have the foam right on the edge of the shore.

Come against the leg... and then on the other side.

I want to show you something in just a second here.

I'm filling all this in with foam.

And here, and then you say, well, you've put that on, but you don't have any character in the foam, it's all the same.

Well, let me just go a little lighter, and then I'll show you another way of doing it.

There that's lighter.

And that is taking a small brush, and we'll take and put some color on that brush.

Let's see, this color will work.

Bluish-green, and then if you push this on.

Let's go even darker so we establish what we're doing.

You kind of cut into the foam shape with the little openings.

I'm not doing quite so much there, down in here maybe a little bit.

That was meant to be a help.

I don't know if was or not, but this shows how you can do that.

Okay, I'm going to take the same brush since we have a little time to show you what we're going to do.

Yeah, that works well.

The fact that the acrylic dries quickly, and you're not as apt to make a mess by touching into it.

You can use it coming against it at this time.

Does it bother you that he has a pink tummy?

Well, what I planned to do is to take some Umber, Payne's Gray, and we have a little time so we can do this is just put on the darks and when we say the darks, it's really the shading portion of it.

This has a nice dark along that leg.

A little extra right in there.

A little bit back here.

And the hoof.

There's a little bit in here, kind of an armpit of dark.

And a little bit on the chest.

Is it possible to say hi John?

Is he watching?

You know it's nice to have friends across the country, and you just know that they're watching it, and pulling for you to be successful.

All right, I think we've gotten a great start on this.

If I use any other time it would be to just clean up a little bit.

You know, anytime you have a ground and in this case, it's the pink, the priming, the ground.

Then you're not sure how much you've left uncovered until you get to this stage, and then you say oh my goodness!

I really need to get rid of some of that pink!

Here I'm going to get rid of the pink, but I'm going to bring it in just a little bit, just so that's a little more narrow, which it is.

So we've covered a lot of pink.

Where we haven't is on the mane, and like I was saying, we'll put the light on there, and then we'll put the mane into that.

I've really enjoyed doing this!

It's exciting for me, and I hope it's exciting for you.

So, just a little wider cheek.

We'll see you next time.

You come back!

Home on the range!

If I had time I'd sing for you.

Okay, let's, see you next time the oil stage coming up!

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ (woman) Funding for "Painting With Paulson" is made possible by...