The Best of the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross

[Music] Hi, welcome back.

Certainly glad you could join us today.

It's a fantastic day here and I hope you're also having a fantastic day.

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

While they're doing that, as usual, let me show you what I've got done up here.

I have my standard old 18 by 24 inch pre-stretched canvas, and today I've taken and cut a little oval out of some adhesive back paper, or contact paper, whatever you call it, and just stuck it on here.

And we've covered the center with a little bit of the liquid white and it's all wet and ready to go.

Thought today we'd do one of those little ovals, that's become one of the most popular things we've ever introduced.

So, let's start out with the old two inch brush, a little bit of the phthalo blue, beautiful blue color.

And we'll tap a little into the bristles, and let's go right up here.

And we'll start up here at the top today just making little criss-cross strokes, little Xs, right over, and that's continually blending with the liquid white.

So automatically you get this beautiful variation of color and the beautiful blending.

Here we are.

There, and a little bit more.

And we'll come right in over here.

Maybe we'll have a happy little cloud in the sky, so I'll just leave a little area open here.

There.

Come right on down to about there.

it doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter.

Anything we don't like we just paint over it, keep right on going.

Okay, come right across.

That just takes out the brush marks and just helps blend everything together.

Something like so.

Now then, let's do the fun part.

Let's wash the old brush.

And if you've painted with me before, you know this is the part that's most exciting.

[laughs] Especially to the camera crew.

Alright, I'll tell you what, today, let's just use a little one inch brush and make a happy little cloud.

We'll take a little titanium white.

Just pull the old brush through the white here, just to load a little color on it.

And let's go up here to the canvas.

Now, then, let's figure out where our little fluffy cloud will live in our world.

And we'll start out and sorta let it bounce around and play here.

Wherever.

Wherever you want it.

A little more paint on the brush.

But keep the brush moving.

If it stays in one place and you go around and around, it'll look like a big cotton ball up here in the sky, and we're not after that today.

There.

Okay.

Maybe an old cloud lives right down here, and comes right on, I don't know, maybe it just goes right on over here somewhere.

In your world, you put it wherever you want it.

Alright.

Now back to our two inch brush, and very gently, just using the top corner, I'm gonna blend the base of this cloud out a little.

The top, I'm not gonna touch at all yet.

Just blend it a little, making tiny little circles.

Once again, using only the top corner of the brush.

And I beat the brush a little just to remove any excess paint that we've picked up.

It's easier than going through the whole cleaning procedure.

In layman terms, that's called laziness.

[chuckles] There we are.

Alright.

And very gently, we'll just go across it.

And maybe today, maybe there's a couple little layers in our clouds.

Maybe we have another little cloud that lives right here, right below that one.

A little happy cloud that just sort of floats around in the sky.

There he comes.

There he comes.

Alright.

See how easy it is to make these big, fluffy clouds?

There.

And same thing, once again.

Two inch brush, using just the top corner.

And the reason we use the top corner, watch.

If you use the bottom corner, you really can't tell where the brush is hitting.

Use the top corner, and you can see exactly what you're doing.

Okay.

And you have a lot more control on the brush that way.

Once again, fluff it up a little.

[Bob makes "tchoo" sound] Like so.

And very gently, just blend it.

There.

Just enough to take out the little brush strokes.

But do them in layers.

Do the one that's farthest away first, and then do the second one.

Alright.

Now then.

Let's have some little, like little rolling hills that live back in here.

I'm gonna take, oh we'll use a little Prussian blue, a little Alizarin crimson, proportionately, much, much more blue than crimson.

And, put a little white out here.

Maybe just a touch more of the blue.

Ooh, that's nice.

That's nice.

So, I have the same color, but two different values here, by putting the white in it, this one, as you can see, is much lighter than this one.

Alright, so let's take the lightest one first.

Let's go up in here.

Come right up in here, and let's take, and let's just put us a very basic little shape.

Something like so.

Don't let these get too pointy.

This is a little, just a soft little hill.

There.

Just really push it into the fabric, and then scrape off all the excess.

The value, or the color, will remain in the fabric.

Then we'll take our brush, and grab, and firmly pull the paint.

Firmly pull it, just like so.

There.

We want it to get lighter toward the base.

Okay, pull it right through there.

Think I'll have some trees over here, so I'm not too worried about this side.

I don't know, if we leave it blank, then for sure we'll have to put something over there.

Alright.

But that's really all you need.

It gives the indication of a nice little rolling hill that's far away.

And if you wanna make that illusion of depth and distance even greater, we go into that same color that we mixed, that's darker, and we'll once again pick up a little roll of paint on the knife.

And let's go back up in here.

Come right back in here.

Now then, let's drop right down like that, and let's just put another little hill in here.

It helps create that illusion of depth in your painting when you do that.

Maybe it turns and goes up right there.

I don't know.

You decide.

In your world, you make all these big decisions.

But once again, we're firmly, firmly pushing that color right into the canvas.

And then we'll take our two inch brush, grab it, and just move the color.

Allow it to actually just blend with the liquid white that's on the canvas.

And you always want the base of the hill or mountain lighter than the top.

And as you can see, look at the little light area in between these two.

That's a separator.

That's your good friend.

Take care of it.

Treasure it.

There we are.

And sometimes I'll just dip the brush into a little color, sometimes it's fun just to put a little dark area in there, and it'll look like there's a whole nother plane in there.

You can just play all kind of tricks, or you can take and lift gently upward a little bit, and it'll look like you can make out the indication of little trees that live way back in the woods.

Way back on that hill.

See there?

I hope you can see those.

They're quite small, but they're there.

Now then.

Tell you what.

Let's take, we'll use that same lavender color, I'm gonna add a little black to it.

A little black, a little brown, a little touch, maybe, of the crimson and sap green.

There we are.

Let's go right up in here.

Right under this, and we have to decide where we'll have some land areas.

Maybe right in here.

We'll just put a nice little hill.

And this is just the base color.

This is just, just so our light, our highlights will show when we put them on top of this.

You could really put this on with a paint roller.

[laughs] Doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter, but it's a good place to practice with a brush.

Cause so much of painting is a feel.

You, very quickly, you can feel just by touching the canvas, whether your paint's too thick, too thin, you got too much on the brush.

and it comes with just a little practice.

There.

Now then, I'll just use the same old brush.

I'm lazy today, I don't wanna wash them all, so we'll use the same old brush and go right into a little bit of the cad yellow, a little yellow ocher, maybe a little bit of sap green, There we are.

There.

Just gently tap.

See?

You can see that little ridge of paint.

There's an identical one on the end of the brush, and that's what we're after.

Let's go up here.

Now.

Just barely touch and tap downward.

And this is one of the easiest, nicest ways of creating the effect of little fields or little grassy areas.

Way back here in the distance.

There.

Just let the sun play through there.

There we are.

Okay.

And sometimes, it's fun just to take, and I'll just grab another brush here, I got a, it doesn't matter what you use, I'll pick up a one inch, it happens to be handy.

Doesn't matter, as I say.

Maybe there's a little tree that lives right here.

Just a little bushy guy.

There.

We just put in a little dark color.

And, let's give him a little friend.

You know me.

I think everything needs a friend, even an old tree.

We'll take a little touch, a little bright red, a little yellow ochre, I'm even into a little Indian yellow there.

Just a little sparkly.

Get that little bit of paint right there.

And let's go right up in here, and let's just, ooh, nice.

Let's just put some little highlights on that little rascal right there.

And this little one here, he needs a few little things too.

There.

Okay, now back to our color we were using, we'll come right in here, and just put a little grass down at the base of those two little trees.

But see, that creates a whole nother plane in your painting.

And these different planes are what give depth.

Okay.

Now, maybe, let's put a little more color right in here.

We need that dark so light will show.

There.

Tell you what, watch here, watch here.

[chuckles] I get carried away.

Maybe right here, maybe there's a happy little pond that's way back here.

Pull straight down.

I'm gonna get just the least little touch of titanium white and just sparkle it.

[Bob makes "tchoo" sound] Gotta make those little sounds, though, just pull it straight down, and then very gently, go across.

Very gently, just enough to wiggle it a little bit.

I'll tell you, let's do it with a fan brush today.

We'll take a little Van Dyke brown, a little dark sienna on the fan brush, and you can do it with knife, or you can do it with a fan brush.

Let's just put in the indication of a little bank, way back in the distance back here.

This is just brown.

Straight old brown.

Maybe there's a few little dark things that grow right along the edge of the water.

Just lift upward, and it makes it look like little bushes, maybe little cattails that are dark in there, whatever.

Just make up little stories and drop them in.

A little of the liquid white on the knife, and we'll come back in here and put a little touch of a waterline right along there.

Just act like you're trying to cut a whole in the canvas.

There.

Now then, we'll go back to our one inch brush we were using, had black, Prussian blue, crimson, a little sap green.

Same old colors.

Just should be very, very dark, though.

Okay, now then.

Maybe, just go, I'm touching and sorta pulling downward.

Just want a little touch of that lake left back here.

We'll put in some dark.

Alright, right there.

[chuckles] Just sort of look at this and make a decision where you think it should be.

Now.

Brush is too slow, let me get a big one here.

You get lazy after a while, and you like these big brushes.

Let's just fill this all in here with some of our nice, dark color.

Once again, this dark is here only to make the light show.

Because without it, you just, you don't have any light.

If you put light against light, you have nothing.

If you put dark against dark, you have nothing.

So you're always playing games, light against dark, dark against light.

That's what makes it work.

It's just illusions.

We only have a two-dimensional surface here, so everything is just illusions.

While we're working on that illusion, let's [chuckles] get crazy here, what the heck.

Take a look-see, decide, we said there was gonna be a big tree right here.

Well, let's just have us a big tree.

We'll just use the corner of the old two inch brush.

Same basic colors.

Same colors.

Let that old tree live right out there.

Tell you what, while we got that going, let's have one over here too.

[chuckles] You'll get carried away with these, they're fun.

But you can make very detailed little trees and bushes with a two inch brush.

It doesn't have to be a little Tiny Tim brush to make small things, or to make detail.

You can make it with a very large brush.

It's just a matter of practicing a little until it works for you and you're comfortable with it.

There.

Okay.

Now then.

Let's take, we'll use the old script liner brush, a little bit of white, I'm gonna reach down here and get a little titanium white, mix them together, maybe get a little more of the paint thinner on here.

I want this paint to be very thin, almost the consistency of ink.

In fact, you can see it running there.

Very thin.

Let's go up here.

And here, we just put the indication of some little tree trunks here and there.

A little more of the white.

Yeah, that's better, now you can see them a little bit better.

And we'll put a few limbs and stems and all the little things that you need to hold up these happy little trees in here.

Okay.

Shoot, I'll tell you what, there might even be one over here.

Who knows?

Wherever you want them.

There.

While I have that old brush going, I'm gonna go into straight Van Dyke brown, same way, thin, very thin.

Maybe, yeah.

Let's do this.

Maybe there's a little fence back here by the pond.

Just goes right on down out of sight.

And we can see some old rails still on the post.

[Bob makes "tchoo, tchoo, tchoo" sounds] [chuckles] Makes it sort of interesting.

Just breaks it up.

I'll take a little light color, just put a little highlight on some of these.

There.

And we got a happy little fence that lives way back in the distance.

Back to our brush that has our greens and yellows on it.

A little more of the sap green, oh there we go.

Nice.

Let's go back in here, and just begin tapping in some little grassy areas.

Now, this is gonna be just like we did in the back.

And while you're doing that, you know I get a lot of letters from fantastic people all over the country that send pictures of what they're painting at home, from watching the show, and I'd like to share some of those with you.

You would not believe what people are doing.

This makes it all worthwhile.

And a lot of people that have sent in paintings have never had a painting lesson in their life, other than watching the television series.

And this is what they're accomplishing.

And maybe most important, it makes people understand and believe that they can do this.

You don't have to be somebody special.

Anybody can do this.

You really can.

And that truly is the joy of painting, when you produce something like this, you know what a pleasure it is to give someone a gift that you've produced yourself?

Or to hang it in your home, and people come by and they say, "You didn't do that.

[chuckles] "You didn't do that."

People won't believe that you could paint like that.

But you can.

You really can.

And every day, as I say, I see more and more evidences of it.

Every day.

Shoot, let's have fun.

Maybe, in [chuckles] our world, let's have another little watery spot right here.

Just, just to break up the monotony a little.

There, just a little white, cause we have some blue, well, and we can add a little phthalo blue to the brush, if we want to, just to give it a little blue tone.

There, okay.

A little white.

And then, once again, just pull across.

[Bob makes "tchoo" sound] And now we have another happy little pond, right out here.

And, we can take our little grassy color, and let's come right down, [Bob makes "tchoo" sound] and bring a little thing, a little peninsula right off into there.

That easy.

You can just push that rascal right back in the distance.

And just as many layers as you want of nice, beautiful areas down in there.

Tell you what, while we have this old brush going, let's go right up here.

Whew, there we are.

And let's just put some little sparklers on these trees.

They need some nice little highlights on them too.

There.

Mm.

And all we're using is just the corner of the brush.

Just the corner.

There.

We load it exactly the same way as we did to make the grassy areas down below, but all we're using is the corner, and going in the direction that we want these little limbs to hang here.

Touch a little bit of the bright red here, and let's put a little sparkler right in there.

Whew, ooh, that's nice.

Like him.

Maybe a little yellow ochre, we'll give him a little friend that lives right there, and you can just vary these colors, back and forth, and put in all kinds of little things.

Alright, maybe on the other side over here, we'll give this tree some nice little highlights.

And I'm just using the opposite corner.

There.

Okay.

But think about shape and form in your tree.

I know you get tired of hearing me say that, but that's probably the single most important thing, when you're making these trees.

It's more important than what you use to make them with.

Is the fact that you give them form and shape.

There we are.

And that's what's gonna make your painting so special.

And, the other thing, try to leave some dark areas at the base of your tree.

That gives the illusion of a big shadow underneath there.

And it creates depth, once again.

Or if you feel that something's needed in there, make it something very dark, like a very, very dark, dark green that you won't see so much.

There.

See, like that.

Alright.

Let's go back to our little fan brush here that has the Van Dyke brown on it, and we can just, here and there, put a little touch of the brown to give the indication of a little dirt down there.

Let's take, let's have some fun.

I like to do this.

We'll take a little liquid white, a little bit of dark sienna, a little Van Dyke brown, we're gonna make a very thin paint here.

Just the consistency of liquid white, with a little bit of flavor in it.

And we'll take our little filbert.

We'll go right into Van Dyke brown, little dark sienna, just mix them together, but a lot of color on each side of the brush, a lot of color.

And we'll go right down here and pull one side through this thin color.

And, let's put, just the indication of some little stones that live, there's one out in the water, that live out here in our world.

Wherever you want them.

And we can come back, a little touch of the liquid white, go right in here, and just clean the bottom of them up some.

There.

But isn't that a sneaky little, nice way of making some very effective little stones out here in your water?

Tell you what let's do.

Let's take a pull the contact paper off.

And see what we have.

Alright.

[chuckles] And you know me.

[laughs] I never leave well enough alone.

I think today, I'll just use the old fan brush that has the Van Dyke brown on it, and in our world, stand back and sorta look.

I like to have something that sorta projects [Bob makes "shoo" sound] right out of the scene when we do these little ovals.

I just, I think that's neat.

And maybe when you do yours, you don't want to have this big tree here.

It's up to you.

It's really up to you.

I just sorta like these.

Now, let's put a little background material behind the tree.

Just a dark color.

Maybe there's a little bush back here.

Maybe this little bush comes right over.

That way, it'll push everything back.

How's that?

Maybe it just sorta disappears into nothing.

Whatever.

Anyway that you want it.

Back to our old two inch brush that has the highlight colors on it.

Put the least little touch of paint thinner on the brush so the paint will be much thinner, because we're getting in quite a few layers of color here.

And as you know, the thin paint will stick to the thick paint.

Thin to thick.

And, maybe there's another one here.

Just all kinds of little bushes.

Get a little more of the sap green.

Let's just tap in some little grassy areas that just flow right down from there.

Just like that.

Now, sometimes it's fun to do little things.

You have to make big decisions when you paint, because you have unlimited power.

see, this tree right now... do a close up on this tree.

It looks like it's behind those bushes.

Now watch.

But pulling this through, we just put the tree in front of the bushes.

[chuckles] And we'll put in a big old root that hangs out right down there.

Shoot, see what you can do?

Now.

Let's take paint thinner, we'll go into Van Dyke brown, we'll load a lot of color there.

A lot of color.

Very thin.

Maybe he's got a little buddy.

A little friend, lives right there.

[Bob makes "tchoo" sound] Got a couple little arms on him, like that.

There we go.

There.

Just a little guy that lives here.

Now, sometimes it's fun, just load the liner brush with the Van Dyke brown and dark sienna mixture, then pull just one side through a little bit of that liquid white with a little color in it.

And you can make a nice thing that's already highlighted, that easy.

And if you wanna highlight the whole tree, we can take a little of that thin color on the liner brush, you can do it with a knife, whatever.

And just blend it back, so it gets darker, darker, darker as it works around the tree.

Look a there.

[chuckles] Isn't that sneaky?

And it works so easy.

You'll like it.

There we are.

Now then, a little more of the paint thinner, and let's just begin putting some nice little limbs off this.

There we go.

And you put as many or as few as you want in your world.

Just sort of let them go.

And this is where it really pays if you got a little twitch in your hand.

There.

Because you can make all these beautiful little limbs and don't want them all just exactly straight.

Limbs grow every which way.

Let them grow.

Let them go.

Just wherever you want them.

Maybe right there's a old big one that comes right on off.

There.

Something like that.

Okay, now, let's go down here, take a little of that Van Dyke brown, let's just do this real quick.

Take a little white, a little dark sienna, come right down here, and just barely touch, put the indication maybe of a little bit of grass down here.

And we can just take a fan brush, finish this thing up, pop in a few little happy bushes, right along the base here.

And it makes one of the most interesting paintings.

I hope you try this one, cause I know that you'll really like it.

And when you show this one to people, they'll certainly get excited.

I hope you've enjoyed this one.

From all of us here, happy painting, God bless, my friend.