kWSU Media Home	Episode Descriptions
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		Episode 1: Tetons Fred paints the Teton Mountains , one of his favorite subjects, with energy and speed.  A lot of cobalt blue, a good deal of white and a touch of alizarin crimson (“to keep the snow warm”) go a long way in this scene which includes a lake and a pitched tent in the foreground.
		Episode 2: Buckin’ Horse “It’s a lot easier painting ‘em than riding ‘em,” says Fred of this horse in action, on which he paints a cowboy hanging on.  Catching and riding untamed horses was a childhood pastime of Fred’s, and stories of falling in the gravel and ducking at the barn pepper his rendition of the rodeo image.  Fred outlines his subject first and “cuts” around it for the background, where dust billows under the horse’s hooves.
		Episode 3: Autumn Camp “Using a pallet knife is a lot of fun,” says Fred.  “You don’t lose the color when you’re using the knife.”  Lots of color fills this painting of a hunter’s campsite in autumn.  To do fall colors, says Fred, you have to set them against cooler ones.  And so a blue-green sky and boulders outline the background while a creek streams by the tent.  Fred remembers that more cooking would sometimes go on at these campsites than hunting.
		Episode 4: Chief Watson Totus Fred grew up on an Indian Reservation in Washington State and remembers playing with a boy who later became a chief.  Fred recreates him here, with the feathers the Yakima tribe adopted late in its history from trading with inland, plains nations.  “The main thing about a portrait,” says Fred, “is the expression that you’re going to get on the face.”
		Episode 5: Old Trapper Fred remembers having to do a good deal of trapping in his younger days.  “We had to make a few bucks and that’s the way we did it.”  The brush and pallet knife come together for this snowy rendition of a trapper on his horse.  When painting people on horseback, warns Fred, make sure the rider is seated right in the saddle.  “You’ve got to make him sit down in that saddle,” Fred says, “or it looks kind of awkward if you don’t”.  Besides, it’s warmer this way.
		Episode 6: Uncle Jake Uncle Jake was into every kind of work and lived by himself in a little cabin in the woods.  A “good old cowboy,” Fred remembers him even scolding the fire for “lashing” and spitting at him.  A little Native-American and a little Dutch, like Fred, Uncle Jake has high cheekbones, long hair and a “handlebar” mustache.  Fred warns against too much pink or brown in skin tones here and recommends green for offset.  Greens also catch the pink-hue highlights he will apply later.
		Episode 7: Covered Wagon “A lot of people won’t believe this, but I’ve traveled a lot of miles in an old covered wagon,” says Fred.  He tells stories of those days, when he and his family traveled the northwest.  “Dad, you see them things running up and down the road with the smoke flyin’ out of ‘em?” he had finally said to his father one year, “ Them are cars. That’s what people drive on nowadays.”  But no Model-T could look this good at the end of its life on the high plains, could it?
		Episode 8: Miner’s Cabin You’re going to want to walk right into this painting, open the door and sit down by the fireside.  The snowy scene of a log cabin in the mountain woods reminds Fred of the days when he worked the mines and made a dollar a day doing it.  Using the brush and the pallet knife, he shows us how to create “the impression” of logs, light and reflection, allowing subtlety to rule.  As always, we enjoy Fred’s mix of lessons in painting, history and living.
		Episode 9: Lonesome Cowboy He may look satisfied but this cowboy has sagebrush in his coffee and a sore seat to rest on after a long day’s ride.  Still, the fire is warm and the sunset shines. In this romantic western painting, Fred demonstrates how, “with a stroke of the brush in his hand,” the artist can bring a cowboy moment to life.
		Episode 10: Logy Creek In this pallet-knife-only painting of “an old stomping ground” of Fred’s, he warns against saturating the sky with too much color (you should be able to “see through it”) and reminds us to deepen color as we go gown.  Always step back, too, to check your work.  But mind you don’t go fishing with too many friends in places you shouldn’t and without a permit.
		Episode 11: Mountain Scene Fred goes into the details of his color techniques in this episode of Painting the West, where a mountain looms in the background while bright foothills and fir trees frame the view.  “Always keep a little bit of the blue” in the lower layers of your image when painting scenes likes these, Fred says, “because there’s a little bit of the atmosphere all through the countryside.”
		Episode 12: Salmon at Celilo Not only salmon-fishing but trading, too, took place near this spot on the Columbia River where, according to Fred, Native tribes from as far away as Montana met to trade, hold potlatches and fish.  As with most of his paintings, Fred establishes the composition first and then applies detail and color.  In the end, some very perilous waters rush under this fisherman’s spear.  In later years, Fred remembers, “the government finally made [fishermen] tie ropes around themselves, so they wouldn’t fall in.”  If you were to fall in, the odds were heavily against you.
		Episode 13: Prospector Fred admits that he’d done some prospecting in his day.  “But not a real lot;” it didn’t pay very well.  A dark, deciduous background highlights the dreamer in this painting who seems worn out despite his “prospects.”  “There’s one thing about gold mining,” says Fred, “the same thing as in milking cows: you’re not going to have any fingernails left; you’ll grind them plum off when you’re digging in the ground.”