The Best of the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross

[Music] [laughing] Hi, welcome back.

Certainly glad you could join us today.

And today I think we'll just do a fantastic little painting that I'm sure you'll enjoy.

So let's start out and have them run all the colors across the screen that you need to paint along with us.

While they're doing that, let me show you what you caught me doing up here.

Today I have standard old pre-stretched canvas up here, and as you can see I've covered this whole area with black gesso, allowed it to dry completely.

And then on top of that I've put a thin, let me say it again, a thin coat of liquid clear.

Just a very thin coat.

And on top of that then we've added a mixture of sap green and Van Dyke brown.

I put the Van Dyke brown there just to dull down the green a little bit so it's not quite so bright.

And up here, I was just putting in a little liquid white right in this little spot that has no gesso on it, and just let it blend back.

It just literally blends right on back and begins to mix with that mixture of sap green and van dyke brown that we have up here.

I love these canvasses with the black gesso.

It's so fantastic what you can do.

Alright.

Now then, let me just mix up a little more paint.

And as I say, we're using just Van Dyke brown here and sap green.

About in equal proportions.

Just sorta get it the flavor that you want it.

Alright, let me wipe off my old knife.

And back here in the background, I want to put the indication of a lot of little trees and stuff that live far back.

Way back.

So I've taken a little white, a little titanium white, and mixed it with this nice brown and green color that we have here.

Alright, let's go up here.

Now then we begin picking out little things.

Now we can take the brush, use it sidewards, touch, give a little push, for example.

But see how that makes the indication of just gorgeous little tree that lives way back here.

And we don't want a lot of detail, because these are too far away.

Too far away at this point.

Now the other thing, see I've made some little things back here with the black gesso that also sort of resemble little trees in the distance.

The paint is still transparent enough that you'll see some of those through there.

And people will think you just worked yourself to death trying to put them in.

[laughs] Don't you tell them any different.

That's our secret.

There.

And here and there we can just take the brush and tap in some bigger shapes.

Something like so.

Alright.

Okay, maybe a little thing here and there, wherever you want them.

This is gonna be background material that's far, far away, so we're not looking for detail.

I say that over and over, because it's almost as bad to have too much detail far away, as no detail close up, if all that makes sense.

I hope so.

There.

Dip the corner of your brush into a small amount of the titanium white, very small amount.

And with that, I'm gonna create like little misty areas down here at the base of this.

Just little soft misty areas that just sort of float around.

There.

Something like that.

That's just a little titanium white right on the brush.

And tapping only with the top corner of the brush.

There we go.

But It's unbelievable what you can make.

Even that, if you play with it a little bit, you can even make that look like a lot of little foliage that's just hanging around back here.

There.

Okay, maybe a little touch right in here.

Put a little mist at the base of all these little trees that are back here in the distance.

And the more you tap it, the more it'll pick up that color that's on the black gesso, and it'll just disappear if you tap it enough.

There we go.

Very gentle.

But isn't that a neat way of making a lot of little trees and looks like background material.

So simple.

Alright.

Let's get crazy today already in this one.

Let's have some fun.

Let me clean off my palette a little bit.

Now we'll take, we'll just use that same got black, brown, put some sap green, how about a little bit of Prussian blue.

Let's mix all those together.

There.

You know, one thing I do want to do here, I wanna take a little bit, I see a little spot up here.

I want to take a little bit of phthalo blue.

Let's just put the indication that there's a little sky showing through there, what the heck.

I almost forgot to do that.

That looks sorta nice up there.

Something about like that, just to give a little indication.

Now we can see a little sky just sneaking right through there, alright.

Okay, now.

Let's see here.

We're making a good dark color.

And let's find a fan brush.

We'll use the old fan brush to do this.

Load a lot of color into the brush.

A lot of color.

Alright, let's go up in here.

Now right up in here, lives in our world, some nice little evergreen trees.

Just make a line with the brush, and then use the corner of the brush, work back and forth, pushing harder and harder as you work down the tree.

I tell you what, let's do, let's have a bunch of trees up in here.

And if you want to make the indication of a lot of trees, just tap downward.

But see how that dark stands out against that other color that we put up there?

And this will help create the illusion of many, many planes in this painting.

Many planes there.

There.

Okay, how about in our world maybe, yep, you're right, right there.

Right there, there's another little tree.

I think I'll put a bunch of little trees in here, what the heck, all the way across.

Be a good place for my little squirrel to play.

He loves to run around a tree.

In fact, let me show you my little squirrel one more time.

I'm so crazy about that little rascal.

I'm just gonna be putting in a few trees here.

This is what I call my peek-a-boo squirrel.

But isn't that the cutest little thing.

Watch what's in there?

What is it?

Peek-a-boo!

[laughter] He likes to sleep in my hand.

In fact, once you feed him, that little rascal will sleep just about anywhere you put him.

But look at the size of his foots.

It's no wonder they're so agile in trees and stuff.

With a foot that big you can run up and down any old thing.

There.

Okay.

But I like to just watch him sleep like that sometime.

He's so pretty.

There we go.

Now then, I'm just adding more and more trees in here, wherever you think they should be, or however many you want in your world.

Completely and totally up to you.

Tell you what, maybe over here one goes all the way to the top.

Maybe it goes off the canvas right there.

Wherever.

But these old trees just live right here in your fan brush, just sorta push them out.

And once again, as you work down the tree add more and more pressure to your brush.

Make those bristles bend.

Let's go back over here, put one right there.

Right there.

Okay, just work down, once again.

Once again.

Maybe this one's got a little crook in him.

He doesn't stand perfectly straight.

And we'll just put a few indications.

There we go, something like that.

Now then.

Let's take the old knife, a little bit of white, a little bit of the dark sienna, mix it together, cut off our little tiny roll of paint.

Very small roll.

Now, here and there, and there and here, we'll just put the indication of a few little tree trunks.

And not every one has to have a trunk, and you won't see the entire trunk but just a few here and there.

You can even have a few that don't have a tree on it, because maybe the old tree passed away but the trunk's still there.

This whole big one needs something here too.

There.

Now I have several fan brushes going.

Let me grab another one here, and let's put some green and some of that same tree color, I mean some of that tree color with yellow, and we'll make green.

There we go, sometimes the old mind goes and I forget what I'm saying.

But we'll get it back together here.

Some nice green.

Load both sides of the brush.

We can go up here and here's our light source, zinging right through there.

There.

And we'll just put the indication here and there, of a few highlights on these.

I wanna keep this quite dark though, don't want it to get too bright on me because these are way back in there.

But I see the light coming right through there.

There.

Okay, just a few things.

And think about where your light's coming from.

In this particular painting it looks like it's coming from the right, so we need more emphasis on the right side than on the left.

A few on these little rascals here, we don't want them left out.

Nothing worse than an angry tree that's after you.

Here there, a couple little on that little leaner there.

There.

Little leaner.

Reminds of horseshoes when I was young.

I used to play horseshoes a lot, because we lived way out in the woods, and that was about the only thing there was to play.

We didn't have any video machines or Pac-Man or any of those good things to play.

So we would play horseshoes.

And take a little white, just tap right in here.

In fact I became the champion of my school.

There.

I have to brag a little here.

There we go.

All I'm doing here is just creating the illusion of a little mist right down at the basement.

The basement, the bottom.

I'm really having trouble with the tongue today.

There we are.

Just tap in a little bit of that.

Something like that.

Alright.

Okay, now we have to make some more big decisions.

What other kind of things can we put in here?

I know, let's do this.

Let's do this.

Let's take a little white maybe at least a little touch of yellowish green color in there, a little yellow and a little green, cad yellow.

Well, maybe a little yellow ochre too, I like that.

Ooh, that's even better.

Maybe I like the ochre better than the cad yellow.

But it's still just about white.

Just about white.

And we'll take the fan brush, go right through there.

And maybe, maybe right in here, with the light's coming there, maybe it's hitting a few little bushes right in here, just gonna push upward with the fan brush.

And they're just really sparkling out here in the sun.

Just some beautiful little bushes that live in here.

Wherever you think they should be.

But push upward with the fan brush and you can create the illusion of all kinds of little things.

I know, maybe there's one way up in here.

But isn't that a neat, neat way of making all kinds of beautiful little bushes?

You can do this in any color you want.

There.

Okay.

I know what we need.

Maybe, let's have a big stone.

I like to do big stones sometimes.

Let's take some black and Van Dyke brown, maybe have a little dark sienna in there.

Cut us off a little roll of paint maybe, how about right here.

Right here, maybe we'll have us a little, maybe we'll have a big stone.

We can have any size stone we want in our world.

Maybe there's a big boulder that lays over here.

This is no longer a stone.

We just turned it into a boulder.

There.

Big healthy stone.

And one of the neatest ways of making a very effective little stone.

Let's take a little white, a little touch of the blue in there, a little Prussian blue.

There.

Get a little bit of color right on the right on the end of the fan brush.

Let's go up in here.

Now by just tapping, you can sorta just create all the shapes you want on this, but just tap.

And let the natural bend of the fan brush work for you too.

Sometimes that works out very well.

Very well.

Just tap, think about shape and form.

Think about it.

Don't just tap at random, because that's all you'll end up with.

Think about what you're trying to do.

There.

And here and there on the edge we can see a little light coming down the side just wherever, wherever.

This goes all the way out.

Now then, with a clean, dry, two inch brush, one hair and some air, gently, gently, gently, just blend that.

Very gently.

There we go.

That's one of the easiest ways of making just a happy little stone.

And you can put a little highlight on there, we'll take a little bright red, a little white, just a little bright red and white, same thing, and pick out where you think that light would really strike.

And you can put the indication here and there of a little highlight, not much though.

Not much.

It'll overdo real quick.

And then once again, whew, barely touch it, whisper.

There.

Okay.

Now.

Let's have a little bush like that in front here too.

I want a couple in front of that big stone.

Right there, since we decided this was the basement down here [laughing].

The basement of the painting, that's a new one.

There.

But that's the way new terms come about, is half the time they're mistakes.

Oh, we don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents.

Maybe, right over in here some little things that just live right in here.

Some bright little rascals.

We'll take our little liner brush, a little touch of the paint thinner, a little brown, a little white mixed together.

Make this paint very, very thin.

Very thin, should literally run on your palette like that.

See it dripping?

Should be that thin.

Now with that, we can come back in here, and go right over the top of that firm paint, and put in all kind of little sticks, twigs, and little happy things that live back here in the woods.

See them?

There they are.

And just wherever you think they should live.

There's one right in front of our big stone.

The big stone that lives down here in the basement.

There.

See, when you do your basement painting you can have a big basement sale and sell all your works and start over again.

There.

Okay.

Now then, have to make some big decisions.

What are we gonna do with this?

That's the first big decision.

I tell you what, let's have some grass in there.

We'll use some green, Sap green, a little bit of cad yellow, Indian yellow, yellow ochre.

Just make a variety of color, right here on the brush.

Push that paint so you get that little ridge though.

It's most important when you're loading a brush for this.

Push it.

Now then think about how you want the land to flow.

And with this black canvas here, it will show up so fantastic it'll just jump right out at you.

There.

Leave some dark areas here and there and it'll look like deep, recessed areas.

There we go.

But pay very close attention to the lay of the land.

In other words, the way the land flows.

There's a little hill here.

There we go.

Now then, just tap.

All we're doing is tapping, and the more you tap the more it'll mix with the color that's underneath.

Now, in my mind, light's coming through there.

That same color we made the bushes out of, I'm gonna add a little bit to the tip of the brush, here and there, just so we can show that strong, strong light that's just zipping right through there and sparkling all these little things.

But don't overdo.

The only thing that makes this effective is that there's very little of it in the painting, this very bright area.

And this is where the eye will go when this painting's finished.

There's no doubt in my mind that this is gonna end up drawing your eye right there, no matter what you try to look at, you're gonna see this.

And that's good, that's what we want today.

Let's take [laughing] let's take a little bit of titanium white, we'll just use it on the same old brush here, and maybe, yeah why not.

Maybe, this is water.

Okay, just pull straight down.

Allow it to mix with the color that's already on the canvas.

Okay, make it a clean, dry brush, and we'll go right over the top of that, really get in there and pull it down.

See it makes some of that sap green and brown that's under there.

There.

Really pull firmly down, I want it to mix with those colors.

You can even pick up a little dark and add it back in there, here and there, so you have a variety of things happening.

And now go across.

Even though this goes uphill, go straight across.

Otherwise it won't look right.

Straight across.

Instant water, that easy.

Now.

Maybe [chuckles] you know me I like to get a little crazy here.

Let's take some liquid white, dark sienna, Van Dyke brown, mix them together, I wanna make a very thin, thin paint here.

Very thin.

But you can see it's almost almost like liquid white.

It's very thin.

Let me get a brush.

Let's use the old filbert brush today.

And I'm gonna take it through the Van Dyke brown and the dark sienna, both sides, and then I'm gonna take and go down here, and just pull one side, just one side see, through the light color.

So we have dark on one side, light on the other.

Now maybe in our world, right up in here, lives all kinds of happy little stones and rocks and pebbles and shoot, maybe they live on out here in the water, we don't know.

We don't know, this is your world, so you do it any way that you think you want it.

But that's the nicest way of making a lot of little stones and rocks so easy.

There, another one.

Maybe some little ones back here in the background.

Alright.

[chuckles] Let's have some fun here.

Let me find the fan brush.

We'll put liquid white on it, go into the titanium white.

The liquid white's there only to thin it.

Then I'm gonna go into a small amount of phthalo blue.

Very small amount.

Let's go up here.

[chuckles] I just see, with all these rocks it'd be a perfect place just to have a happy little stream.

It just sort of flows and meanders along through here.

It has a good time out here.

There.

Just plays through the rocks and falls over, [Bob makes "tchoom" sound] Here it comes,[Bob makes "tchoo" sound] right through those rocks.

There, a little splash here and there.

There.

[Bob makes "tchoom" sound] Gotta make those little [chuckles] noises or it just won't work.

I say that all the time.

But I think it will work if you don't do them.

It just sorta helps me.

But maybe you don't need little noises.

There we are.

It's always funny when Annette and I go out teaching or demonstrating, Annette's one of my partners, and she travels with me and we do demonstrations and teach this.

A lot of times though, especially my young friends will come up and they'll imitate the noises that we've made [laughing] so we have youngsters all over going "blip", things like that.

I just did a demonstration for a class in New Jersey, just recently of high school students.

They were some of the nicest youngsters I've ever met.

There we go.

Okay, maybe, tell you what, let's get a little crazier.

Take a little Van Dyke brown and white, maybe there's a little maybe, maybe there's a little sand bar right in there.

Just a little darker color behind it and we'll just sort of blend them together.

There.

Just a little something like that.

And we can take our brush with the with the white on it, go in here and clean up the edges a little.

Think we'll have a stone or two out here on this thing.

Same way we did them before.

There's some.

Put another one right in there, and there, and there and there and however many stones you want in your world.

A little bit of the blue and white, and once again just clean up the base of the stones.

Just something like that.

Okay.

We need a, speaking of stones, let's put a big stone here.

Maybe, there he comes.

Let's put some dark color in there.

I'm gonna have a huge stone over here.

Maybe it comes all the way down to there.

I don't care, wherever you want it.

Just a big old stone.

Back to our brush with a little color on it.

A fan brush, got a little of that blue and white, and once again, just sort of form the top of your stone by tapping.

Just tapping.

There.

Sure hope you liked seeing that little squirrel.

Isn't he something the way he lays up there in your hand and sleeps?

He's just so special to me.

And if you haven't been with us before in this series, his name is Pea Pod, The Pocket Squirrel.

That's what we call him.

Old Pea Pod.

Now, clean, dry two inch brush once again, barely, barely caress the canvas, just barely caress it.

There we go.

Alright.

I tell you what.

[chuckles] We got a minute left here, Let's get crazy, what the heck.

Take some black, Prussian blue, crimson, sap green.

We'll just mix all those together.

And, take a two inch brush [laughs] this is your bravery test.

Take the old two inch brush, load it full of color.

Bring it to a chisel edge, very sharp.

Very sharp.

Let's go up in here.

Now maybe right in here lives just a great, big old tree.

Stands here and watches what's going on.

There.

All we're doing is putting in some dark, we'll come back and highlight it.

Lives right there behind that rock.

Okay, here comes another one.

We'll give him a friend.

But now I wanna leave some of these little areas up in here, where light's shining between them.

Okay, let's have one on the other side, I don't want it left out.

Maybe over here.

Whew, boy that one's gonna really be a big one.

There we go.

And really doesn't much matter, because the highlights are where you bring this out.

Right now, all we're doing is just putting in some base color.

It's really the highlights that that make this tree show up.

Maybe we'll have it setting on a little peninsula, right there.

So we'll put some dark in like that.

Shoot, we about got it there.

Okay, got another two inch brush going here, and it's got a little green on it, yellow and green.

So let's go up in here.

And let's just begin putting the indication of all kinds of little happy things out here.

All these, there they come.

See them?

Just layer after layer, see now you know why it didn't matter what the dark looked like.

This is where you create the illusion of a big tree, right in here.

There he is.

Here comes his friend.

Darker, darker, darker down here.

And on the other side, we need to give him some nice leaves.

There we go.

Just a few.

Alright.

See there, but wherever you want them.

Darker, darker, darker down here.

Okay, take that same brush, maybe down in here, we'll just put in a bush or two.

There.

Just push upward and create the illusion of some little bushes down here at his foots.

A little touch of color under there, so we have a reflection.

And then we about have a finished painting.

Go across there.

So it looks like it's reflecting in the water.

I think with that, we'll call this one finished.

And from all of us here, I'd like to wish you happy painting, and God bless my friend.