The Best of the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross

[music] Hi.

Welcome back.

I'm Nicholas Hankins, and it's a pleasure to have you with us for another Bob Ross technique, wet on wet oil painting.

As you can see, we've got a black canvas up here today.

I've prepped it with black gesso which is a water based paint.

It dries very quickly, maybe 10 to 15 minutes.

Once that's dry, I coated the entire canvas with a [chuckles] very thin, even coating of liquid clear.

And I do mean very thin.

You don't need very much liquid clear.

And then to that I've added some transparent oil color.

You might be able to see them, just a little hint of it.

I've got some Indian yellow and alizarin crimson in the sky and in what will eventually be some water.

Then I've mixed in a little phthalo blue and phthalo green, and finally in the corners, a little black.

So now that you know what's going on, Bob was always apt to say in every series that he, that he filmed, we always needed a crazy painting.

And I guess, I guess today is the crazy painting.

[chuckles] So we pick up a little titanium white and just start allowing this to spin outward.

Just use some little crisscross strokes and I'm just going to stretch this color outward, outward, outward, outward, and allow it to mix through all those layers of color.

Isn't that pretty?

It's pretty already.

And we've barely done a thing.

Just picked up a little white and took off.

This is one of those paintings that, you know, you could you could do this as a demonstration for your friends or family.

And they just won't believe that you pick up a brush and fill it with white and take off and then all of this crazy stuff happens.

Just all this beautiful color comes out of nowhere.

It's amazing.

It's literally just amazing.

Let me wash the brush and we'll do a little more.

Of coarse, as you know, we wash the brush with odorless thinner, shake it out, give it a little wrap on the easel leg and we're ready to go again.

So let me grab a, let me grab a big, big two inch brush and we'll soften some of this color out.

I'm going to start in the light area and then just begin to work my way out.

Once I work my way out, I'm, I'm not going to go back to that real bright center.

If I go back to the center with this sort of dark blue tone on my brush, it'll, it'll kind of destroy that light area.

And I don't want to do that.

Wipe the brush off, maybe just knock out some of the excess.

We'll park that one to the side.

Let's go back, let me go ahead and take care of the water as well while we're working with white.

I'll pick up a little titanium white again on a one inch brush, clean and dry, and we'll come up here and just start to pull some of this color down into the water area like this, just sweep it down.

Sweep it down.

There we go.

See, all that stuff just happens.

It's too cool.

It's too cool.

Now, back to the, back to the big brush.

Just brush across nice and level.

Turn that into a nice watery effect.

Wiping the brush out just a little.

I'm going to kind of soften, make sure we got everything just like we want it.

You can if you'd like, you can go back with a little more white if you decide you need it and just lighten, lighten some of these areas out here.

I don't want too much, though.

I do want this to be kind of a nighttime scene.

This is a painting I, I painted, gosh, eight or ten years ago now.

And it was real popular with my students.

They, they really had a good time painting it.

And I actually presented it on a little live streamed thing long, long time ago.

We've had, we've had we've had a lot of requests ever since to, to do this painting again so I thought this would be a fun one for you.

That's why I picked it out.

That's why I picked it out.

We'll finally get her, finally get her own video.

All right, now, here's where the, here's where the crazy stuff happens.

You're gonna, you're going to think I've lost my mind.

And maybe I have, but we'll, we'll see if we can get it back before the end of the show.

Just picking up a little white on a fan brush.

And then let's come back into this light area and I'm just going to kind of take my brush and go like this.

And if you're neat and careful, it helps.

Neatness counts.

Not really.

Just, just go nuts.

Just go nuts.

Something about like that.

Let me wash the brush out.

And now clean and ready to go for later.

Maybe, if you do decide to come back into the sky just a little bit, make sure you've got a clean dry brush before you go back into your bright white area.

You can let some of this twist out.

Just let that brush spin and play and have fun.

Then we're going to take another clean, dry two inch brush and very gently just sort of whisper over this, two hairs and some air.

Working from the, working from that light area back outward.

[chuckles] Isn't that crazy looking?

Now, if you've ever seen these photographs and I don't know why this hadn't been done before, but I had never seen it done in Bob's technique.

If you've ever seen these photographs that show, you know, kind of like nighttime up in the North woods, where you can really have a nice, clear view of the starlit night and there's just, there's just absolutely no light pollution of any kind I've seen these long exposure photographs where you can kind of, well you can kind of see the galaxy or big clusters of stars.

So we put a little background in there and now I'm taking a fan brush, just dipping it in a little paint thinner and a little liquid white.

I'm adding that to titanium white.

Now, you'll have to kind of, you'll have to kind of check this out and see what you've got.

It's hard to tell consistency wise on your palette, but I want to soften this up quite a bit.

Just a few drops of thinner in there, and we'll take it up to the... let me set my palette board down just a minute and pick up a palette knife and I'll start, start in an innocuous area and I'm just going to take that fan brush and flick it.

Just sort of flip, flip, flip, flip, flip.

We'll put lots of little stars up in the night sky.

[chuckles] Isn't that wild?

Isn't that wild?

Yeah.

There are lots of possibilities with this.

See, on a black canvas, it looks like stars.

You can make beautiful star lit paintings.

Or if you painted a winter scene, you could have all kinds of, have all kinds of snow blowing.

Just, just whatever you want.

Be sure when you do this, though, that you do flick the brush that way and not this way.

I learned that the hard way.

You benefit from what I've learned so far.

[chuckles] All right.

Back to the palette here.

Let's mix up some phthalo green and blue.

Phthalo green, phthalo blue, some midnight black, Van Dyke brown, alizarin crimson and we'll just mix all those colors together on the palette.

Make a nice big batch of dark paint.

Something like that, now that we've got that brilliantly lit sky in place.

Got to wipe my knife off.

And we'll go back to a fan brush, load that brush absolutely full of that dark color.

Just wiggle it in there, pick up lots of paint, fill it full and let's come back up here.

Now, I'm just going to take that brush and paint some what I call tap and crash trees.

And you just kind of tap and let the brush crash downward.

Like that.

All different heights, Some are short, some are tall, some are kind of in between.

But they make a, they make a nice striking silhouette back there.

Go back to a two inch brush.

I'll just kind of soften the base of those little trees.

Let them fade off into the distance.

Maybe we, maybe we even see a little bit of that showing up in the water down here.

There'll be a little reflection in the in-between area here.

Let's take, let's take a little one inch brush.

I'll grab some of that color, add a little cad yellow.

I want this to stay kind of subdued, so I'm adding some green to it.

But if we're going to have a nighttime scene, we don't want this to get too, too bright.

I'll take a little bit of green, let's come back here.

Just establish a little little grass, little grassy hill back here, some land in front of those trees.

Let it get darker and darker and darker and darker as you come down.

Gotta get quiet when you do little quiet stuff like that.

I don't know why, it's just a, it's an unwritten rule, unspoken rule of painting.

You have to whisper when you do delicate stuff like that.

No, truth, truth is there are no rules.

There are no rules in painting.

You just, you just have a good time.

Long as nobody gets hurt and you're having fun, that's, maybe that's the only rule.

Mix up a little liquid white and a little dark sienna on my knife, cut off a little roll of paint.

We'll come up here and just add a little, a little ripple right there where it meets the water's edge.

Just keep the blade nice and level.

Don't let it dip or dive in one direction or the other.

All right, let's go back into that big, big pile of dark color we made.

Just load it up again.

There we go.

Closer trees.

Bigger, closer trees.

These are maybe happy, happy big trees.

We'll have some of these big evergreens out here.

Just work your way down, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, almost in a little z pattern.

Got to give him some friends.

We're going to have a whole party out here with a sky like that.

You'd have to have a gathering, invite some friends over to watch it.

At least I would.

That would be my plan.

There we go.

Nice and dark through the center.

Nice and dark in the center.

Got plenty of these trees out here.

Up in the north woods like that, you, you'd likely have lots and lots of trees.

Especially evergreen trees.

I believe, I believe these are probably more like spruce trees than any other kind of evergreen that I know of.

But I've never worried, worried too much about exactly what species of tree this is.

I just, I just paint them.

They're all happy little trees, that's good enough.

It's good enough for Bob.

It's good enough for me.

[chuckles] I have one more here in this, in this little crevice.

Now, I know those are hard to see right now because this is a dark canvas, but you just wait.

You just wait.

We'll bring them alive in a minute.

That's half the fun of painting on a dark canvas.

It looks, it looks kind of hidden.

It looks sort of subdued.

And then we come back and we start having fun with some highlights.

Pretty little highlights.

Let's have a little piece of land out here for this to sit on.

Just take my two inch brush and tap, tap, tap.

Pull some of that color into the water.

Now, take that same fan brush, pick up a little touch of the liquid white, go back into my yellows here.

I'm just going to get a little mixture, a little combination of all three yellows and a little liquid white.

And before I, before I pick a little highlight on them, let me take some dark sienna, Van Dyke brown and a little touch of titanium white and cut off a tiny little roll of paint on the knife.

Just tiny.

Let's come up here and add a little indication here and there of some tree trunks in these trees.

Now, these may or may not show, but that's kind of how I drew it up.

They're there in case anybody sees them.

All right.

Now back to my, back to my highlight brush.

Let's come in here and just, I want just to add a little pizzazz to these trees.

Who doesn't love a little pizzazz on their tree?

You can change the flavor as you go.

Maybe we'll add a little more phthalo blue to our color.

And if your paint, remember if your paint doesn't stick right away, add a little more liquid white and soften it up.

I want these to be bright, but like I say, it's a night time scene so let's get bright, but let's not get too crazy.

A little on this one.

Just go right over the trunks.

I want those trunks to sort of peek through from the middle of the tree.

So it really feels like they're down, down in the middle of that tree and not stuck on top.

Take my two inch brush, grab a little more of that same, same combination of all three yellows.

Tap, tap in there and pick up a nice little roll of paint.

Let's come up and just add a little, add a little highlight to this, little bit of grass, little bit of land here.

This is where you establish and you start to, you start to give some consideration to the lay of the land.

How is this land sloped?

And you create all of that, all of that impression with the angle of your brush.

Let's take that ... this brush will work.

Let's just, let's stick with this one.

It's working pretty good.

Take that one inch brush and I'm going to pull it through, I dipped it in liquid white, and now I'm going to pull it through some of these yellows and maybe, let's take a little sap green, maybe.

Just change the flavor slightly.

Just pull it through in one direction there.

Turn the rounded corner up and we'll plant some little, little bushes down here at the base of these trees.

Just let them fall right out of your brush.

Lots of paint and a light little touch.

Maybe adding a little blue so I get a slightly different color.

A nice shade of green but slightly different.

There we go.

Take a little Van Dyke brown now on my knife.

Put a little soil under that and a little white, brown and sienna mixture.

Just barely graze it.

Just barely graze it.

There we go.

Let it get a little darker as it comes off that side, if we can help it.

Be nice.

That'll be nice.

We'll take some of our grass and just let it sprinkle down over the edge of that exposed dirt and rock there.

And of course, we'll kind of set it into the painting.

And brush across.

Back to my, back to my liquid white and titanium white mixture here.

Cut off a little roll of paint.

We'll just set in a little, a little water ripple here.

Just push very firmly.

This is one time that you, that you do want to push very firmly on the knife.

Most of the time we're trying to practice a nice light touch.

But here I want to, really want to dig in.

Just feel like you're trying to saw through the fabric almost.

There we go.

A little ripple back there.

All right.

Once more, I'm going to wash out that fan brush.

Let's have some, let's have some big trees up in the ... Now, fan brush isn't as much fun to wash but we'll make do.

Let's mix up a little more.

About to run out of my dark color, so let's make a little more.

It was brown and black, Green and blue and a little crimson.

Just so we've got plenty, plenty of it.

Okay, now back into that dark color.

Load the brush full, give it a little wiggle and then pull it through.

Give it a little wiggle and pull it through.

Let's come up and add big tree on this side.

There we go.

Then down it comes.

Working from side to side.

It's like you walked down the steps a little bit and you go from the center and you walk down the steps.

And again, I know, that's I know that's going to be hard to see, but we'll adjust, we'll take care of it.

You've seen them come alive with some highlights now, so it's not, it's not quite as foreign.

It's not quite as strange when you just paint a dark tree on a dark canvas and nothing shows and you think, what's the point of this?

Once you know it's going somewhere, that's when it's a little easier.

There we go.

Friend of tree.

There he is.

Go back to our, go back to our knife and mixture of the two browns and white.

Give a little indication of a tree trunk in here.

[Nic makes "tk, tk, tk" sounds] About like that.

Then I can go back into my highlight colors.

Just dip that same dirty brush into the liquid white and we'll grab a combo of all of these yellows, maybe even a little blue.

Once again, I like that highlight color.

It works pretty well.

And we'll just sprinkle a little accent on here.

There we go.

All right.

Let's grab our, let's grab the two inch brush, fill it full of this dark color.

I, I'm going to pull it as well in just one direction only.

See all that paint on my palette?

Good heavens.

Pull it one direction only and then turn it up so that rounded corner is to the top.

Then let's come up here.

There you go.

You can see it.

A rounded corner on top of the brush.

Let's come up here and just give it a little push, push, push, push, push.

Now, this is already nice and dark down here, so I don't have to worry too much about putting tremendous amounts of paint on the canvas.

And that's what makes the black gesso so wonderful.

All that dark's already in there and we don't have to work quite as hard.

And I'm a big fan of not having to work quite as hard.

I imagine most people are.

All right, back to my, back to my one inch brush.

I'll dip it into the liquid white again and we'll pull it through all these, all these beautiful yellows down here.

We're just going to, we're going to strive for a combination as we go.

Let me add a little sap green to it.

Let's come up and add some delicate little lacy bushes and shrubs and plants and trees and etc.

up here.

That should, that should cover all our bases with that.

Whatever, whatever this vegetation is.

A lot of it, it's out in the wild so who knows?

It could be anything.

Could be anything in there.

A little yellow ochre.

Again, just to, just to change the flavor a little bit.

A little Indian yellow this time.

I'm going slightly beyond the dark, but just slightly.

Kind of makes your, makes your trees and bushes look a little more voluminous.

There we go.

Tell you what, let's grab... Got a couple of minutes left here.

Let's take a little, a little Van Dyke Brown.

Put some, put some exposed land in here, exposed soil or rock, whatever it is, whatever it is, I'm not sure, but there it is.

And we'll take a little more of our white and sienna and brown mixture.

A little roll of that color.

And let's add [Nic makes "ssshwoo" sound] just a little highlight and a little texture to our exposed, exposed rock and dirt there.

I like to call it soil.

Dirt, [chuckles] dirt is what's under your refrigerator.

This is, this is the planet.

[chuckles] This is soil.

This is good stuff.

All right.

Now, let's go back to that, go back to that one inch brush and we'll continue to plant some little plants around that there.

That kind of sets our, our soil down into the painting.

just a little more.

Overlap it a little bit here.

Maybe, let's add a little bright red.

I like to save the bright red for last.

We haven't done that yet.

Just change that flavor a little bit.

Have something fresh and exciting in there.

Again, just kind of overlapping.

And sometimes you turn your brush over and you just find all kinds of neat color on there.

I didn't even know that was on there, but there it is.

That's the fun painting.

That's the fun of painting.

A little bit on this one, too, right there.

Take the liner and brush and a little bit of dark color.

Maybe just add a few little strands of some grass growing up out there.

I hope you enjoyed this painting.

Come back and paint with us again.

Until next time, happy painting.

[Music]