The Best of the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross

[Music] Hi, welcome back.

We're certainly glad you could join us today.

And today I'd thought we'd just do a fantastic little painting that I hope you'll enjoy.

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

And as usual, they'll come across in the same order as I have them on the palette starting with the white and working around and they'll put 'em right about there.

[laughs] All right, come on up here let me show you what I've gotten done already.

Today, I've taken and cut a little oval out of some contact paper, or any kind of adhesive backed paper, and just stuck it on the canvas.

Then we've covered the whole inside here with just a very thin, even coat of the Liquid White.

So it's all slick and wet and it's ready to go.

So let's just have a good time.

Tell you what, today, today's such a wonderful day let's just take and make a happy little painting.

We'll use a little bit of Yellow Ochre.

We'll start with that and let's go up in here and let's just very quickly put in a very beautiful little sky that's very easy.

Nothing to it.

Just make little crisscross strokes like so.

Something like that, I don't want a lotta color in this sky.

I want this sky to sort of be, oh, nondescript.

Just very, very quiet little sky.

Maybe, maybe we'll get a little bit crazy.

You know me, I like a little bit of action.

I'm gonna take a little touch of Alizarin Crimson.

Very, very small amount.

Can't say that enough.

I just wanna warm it up a little right about in there.

Just the smallest amount possible.

There we go.

Now then, let's go into, I hadn't even washed the brush yet, we'll go into Midnight Black.

Just load a little of that on that old two inch brush.

Just tap the bristles right into a little bit of the color.

And let's go up in here.

Then maybe right in here we'll just put a little of that black color.

And as that gets with the Liquid White that's already on the canvas, we have a beautiful gray color.

There.

And maybe, maybe in our world.

Now I'm making little circles just using the corner of the brush.

Maybe there's some little floater clouds that's gray that just sort of live right in here.

Just little floaters, they just hang around here and have a good time all day.

Okay, I have several brushes going.

So let me grab another one.

We'll take a clean brush now and we just wanna blend this right here.

Just blend it and soften it.

So it just sort of just sits there very gently.

Doesn't scream at you, it just sits there.

But now your world, if you would like to make that more distinct or brighter please do.

Because, as you know, on this piece of canvas you can do anything that you wanna do.

And that's what you should do, it should make you happy.

Painting should make you happy.

All right, well, you know me I like water so while we got this little brush going I'm gonna take a little touch of the Phthalo Blue and the least little touch of the Phthalo Green mixed into it.

Not much, that green is very, very strong.

Just a little and maybe in our world there'll be, maybe we'll have a little water down here somewhere.

I don't really know at this point.

Then again, by the time we get down here we may change our mind and take the water out.

We can do that, we can do that.

As I've mentioned before, when you buy your first tube of paint you get an artist license and it says you can do anything that you wanna do on this piece of canvas.

All right let's wash the brush.

That's the fun part of this.

[laughs] We wash our brushes in odorless paint thinner.

And be sure it's odorless or you'll be very unpopular.

Shake it [laughs] and then just beat the devil out of it.

Beat the bristles against any firm object.

For home use, though, I really recommend that you look into a little brush beater rack that you can put in the bottom of a garbage can.

It will save your marriage.

[laughs] Let's take a little black, maybe a little Prussian Blue.

Very strong blue.

We'll just mix those together, cut off the least little roll of paint.

Very small roll where it lives right on the edge of the knife.

Now come right up in here and let's decide maybe today, let's really practice on a mountain.

I get so many requests for mountains, even though we do quite a few of them.

People love mountains.

It seems to be the most popular thing that I get requests for.

All right, maybe there's a big valley right down in here.

I don't know, whatever, whatever.

There we go.

Now we have a valley there.

We could have another little bump in there.

Anything that you like.

There we are.

Okay, something like that.

Now then, let's take the old two inch brush.

We'll grab that and pull it.

This does two things - removes excess paint and it starts creating that illusion of mist down at the base of the mountain.

That illusion of mist, that's what makes your mountain so beautiful.

It just looks like it's floating in all that mist.

There.

But the removal of the excess paint, will make the next step much, much easier.

Because we're gonna put some highlights on there.

There we are.

Already it looks misty down at the base and that's exactly, exactly what we're trying to do.

And I wash the old brush again.

[laughs] If you haven't figured out, I just like to wash the brush and watch the camera crew's reaction when they dodge.

All right [laughs], let's take some white.

I'm gonna put the least little touch of, least little touch of some Dark Sienna in there.

I just want a hint.

Cut across, a little roll of paint and let's go up in here.

No pressure, no pressure at all.

And let's just begin forming our mountain.

And this is where you make all the little highlights, all the beautiful little things that happen in your mountain.

And you can have this mountain go anywhere that you want it to go.

Anywhere.

Just like so.

That little touch of Dark Sienna in there is just enough, though, to make it very nice.

Be careful not to overdo.

Don't overdo.

Sometimes these things get working nice and we get carried away and just cover up everything.

All right.

Maybe, maybe there's just a little touch, tell you what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna take some white and put a little, a little touch of Phthalo Blue.

That's too much, don't want that much.

There, that's better.

And a little bit of Van Dyke Brown in just to dull it down.

Just to dull that color down some.

There we are.

Now then, take our little roll of paint, as usual, and we go right in here and just begin putting in some beautiful little shadow areas.

Just like so.

But think about form and shape here.

How do you want this thing to, to be?

There.

Okay, maybe right in here we need a little something.

Not much, though, I want that to stay pretty dark in there.

That's a deep crevasse in there.

Okay, over in here.

There.

There he comes.

Maybe this one just wraps right around and comes right in there.

I don't know.

See, it makes that mountain look like it's sort of standing up.

And we'll put a few little things over here.

This is back with the white that has a little bit of Dark Sienna in it.

And we're just gonna sort of play these back and forth.

However.

There.

A little hint up here, I don't want a lot back here.

It's too far away.

Keep him in the background somewhere.

And we'll come right along in here.

Maybe, shoot I don't know, maybe that comes right on out there.

Wherever you want it.

This is an excellent exercise in painting mountains.

It'll really make you feel comfortable with mountains if you'll devote a little time to a painting like this.

Because by the time you do this one, mountains will never give you any more problems.

There.

Okay, maybe, maybe.

Oh we'll do a little right in there, too, what the heck.

Not a lot in there.

Go back to our white, it's got a little brown in it.

There.

Come right back in here.

Now, you may find the little knife works much better for getting into some of these areas that are small like this.

Just sort of an individual thing.

There we go.

Just let those little things just play and think about shape and form and how you want this to be.

Now with a clean, dry two inch brush I'm gonna blend a lot of this together just by tapping being very careful to follow the angles that we've put in this mountain.

Even in here, I want to take the brush and very lightly, don't want to destroy I just want to blend it together.

See how gentle that is?

And that's a half a hair and some air.

[chuckles] That gives you an idea of how gentle.

Just barely graze the top.

And you can soften all of that.

That's why I wasn't too worried when I put it on.

Okay and then over here.

But isn't it just absolutely fun?

That's a pretty mean looking old mountain.

All [chuckles] right, now we have us a little mountain.

Maybe in our world, we have some great big foothills that live back here.

So let's take, we'll use some black, oh a little touch of the Prussian Blue.

I'm gonna reach up here and get a little Sap Green.

Maybe even a little brown and crimson in there.

We'll just put everything in there.

Then a little white because I wanna value this down to where it's color about like that.

And sort of a, sort of a greenish gray color.

Today, let's have some fun with the old oval brush.

It's easy to tell 'cause it's the only brush we have that has a black handle.

And I made that one black so it'd be easy to identify.

But as you can see, the end of it's sort of round.

It's like a huge filbert brush only it's like one of our one inch brushes.

Now then.

I like this brush because it makes it makes beautiful little roundy hill type things just by tapping down.

There.

Just think about the shape that you want, put it in there.

Drop it in there.

There's not a great deal of paint on here.

It might look like there's a lot of paint but there's really not a lot of paint.

Just enough to stain the canvas.

There.

Isn't that fantastic?

I knew you could do it.

Maybe this one goes all the way up here.

I don't know, wherever you want it.

There.

Okay.

Sometimes I get carried away and just let these things cover up half the canvas.

When you do yours be a little more [chuckles] careful than I am.

Sometimes, I was gonna say sometimes I let it get out of hand here because it's fun.

And even though I've probably painted, oh I don't, I don't even know how many paintings, 20, 30,000 paintings now, maybe more.

I still get a fantastic charge out of just watching it happen.

Still amazes me, it's still fun.

I don't think painting is one of those things that you ever get tired of, or ever gets old to you.

Now then, I'm gonna take my old two inch brush and just pull some of that down and that'll give us a little reflection already.

Something like that.

And by making this higher than these sides it gives the impression that that lake goes back.

And I guess that's a lake back there.

Makes it look like it goes back, it has distance.

Then we'll go across.

Instant reflections.

That easy.

All right.

I have several of these little oval brushes so I'm gonna grab another one and put a little Liquid White on it.

Go into some yellow, just Cad Yellow and I'll reach up here and be right back and get the least little touch of the Phthalo Green.

It's a very bright green, be careful with it.

Ooh, it'll eat up your whole world in a heartbeat.

Put a little Yellow Ochre in there to dull it down a little.

Now, just tap the brush.

There you are and we'll go up here.

And now we have to start picking out little individual hills back in here.

Just go right in here with that oval brush.

It'll make them almost automatically.

And just tap.

Gently, gently tap.

I want it to get darker, darker, darker, darker, darker.

So do the tops while the bush is fresh.

While you have good clean color on there, do the tops first and then work your way down.

And that way automatically it will pick up the dark color underneath and get duller and duller.

And that's what we want, we want it to get darker and darker, darker as it works down.

Okay, now, maybe there's another one that lives right here.

See, by changing the flavor of the color a little bit we can literally break them apart.

Make it like there's several layers here.

There we go and we just pick out little individual things.

Take it wherever you want it.

And every time you want it to stand out, put a little lighter color in there maybe.

Like that and then it jumps right out at you.

And then get darker, darker, darker down toward the base again.

That's most important.

If it doesn't get darker, then you can't put a lighter color against it and make it show up.

See, watch I take a little lighter color and that easy we can put another one in there.

There.

Okay, over here on the other side let's do the same thing right in here.

Don't want this side left out.

He wants some little highlights, too, but back in here I'm just going to fade into nothing.

I think in my world I might put some trees over there.

Gotta have some somewhere, I like trees.

There.

Okay.

All kinds of little doers.

Maybe this one comes on out here somewhere.

But look at all the layers in there.

Just tiny little foothills.

All right.

Okay, a little bit of the Liquid White right on the tips of the brush there.

Just want to highlight like there's some light just really zinging right through.

Just hitting a few things.

Ad I say, it's just a tiny bit of Liquid White right on the tips of the bristles but don't overdo or it'll lose its effectiveness.

Just a few, just a few.

Now then, maybe [chuckles], you know me.

Let's get crazy.

Let's take a little Liquid White and maybe right up in here in our world there lives a tiny little waterfall.

[Bob makes "pshoo" sound] I love waterfalls so let's just put a little one back in here.

Way back in the distance somewhere.

And then we'll just let that just sort of come out from there.

We'll just take liner brush and we put a little paint thinner with it to thin it down a little more so it'll slide over the top.

There, see, if it doesn't slide add a little paint thinner.

That's all you gotta do.

And that easy, that easy we have a little waterfall that lives back there.

Just has a super time into that mountain.

Maybe that's snow melting off the mountain, flowing down here in our little lake, pond, whatever it is.

Body of water.

There we go.

All right, that's basically about all we need in that water.

All right.

Let's take, let me clean off a spot.

Even with a palette this big I run out of room sometime.

That's a messy painter.

You know, I got a letter the other day from a lady who wanted to know if she had to put out this much paint to paint my method of painting.

And I wrote her back and told her, "No you really don't.

I have to put out this much paint because I have a mean director here and if I run out of paint she has no sense of humor.

[chuckles] She'd come over here and hurt my body if I have to stop and put paint."

But at home you can always add more color.

I put a lot of paint out here so I don't have to stop in the middle of a show and add paint.

That's all, that's all.

It's like, people ask sometime, they say, "I bought a palette and it doesn't look like yours."

Well, the only reason is I take sandpaper and I dull this so it doesn't shine.

Same as we paint the knives black.

We cover all the brush ferrules with tape.

But it's the same thing you have.

Okay, let's take our old fan brush and go right into that good dark color and let's build us some nice trees.

I like evergreen trees and they're fun to make and one lives right there in our world.

We take the corner of the brush, and we're just gonna work him back and forth and back and forth and let him just work his way right on down to about there.

He needs a friend so we give him another one.

Maybe there's a whole herd of trees back here.

Is that what you call a bunch of trees?

Or maybe it's a flock of trees, I don't know.

A lot of trees anyway.

Stand of trees, that's what they call it.

There, a few little ones that just live in between.

There's one.

Okay, maybe, shoot, over in here let's just put the indication of a few.

And we'll pick out a few of those and put some little branches on them.

That'll make the rest of them look like there's just a lot of little trees behind back here.

Give this one a few little arms.

[Bob makes "doot-to-do" sounds] Sometimes when you're doing little trees you can do little tricks like just making a stem.

Take the corner of the brush, grab it and flick out a few little limbs.

And then when you paint other things over it, close to it, those show and it looks like there's a very delicate little tree back in there, too.

And it makes your life easier.

There.

Shoot, we better, I'm gonna tell you what.

Let's get crazy, let's have a big old tree that lives right there.

Big old tree, I like a big strong tree here and there.

There he comes right across our mountain.

Oh, that's all right we know he's back there.

And you learned how to do it so it's not wasted time.

There.

I change my mind so many times when I'm doing a painting.

I don't try to leave spaces open.

I just paint the background, then I paint the foreground and I make up my mind as I go.

That way I'm not committed and if I make a mistake nobody knows it but me.

We don't make mistakes.

[laughs] Take a little brown and white.

A little brown and white and this Dark Sienna and white.

Pull it out and get our little roll of paint.

Let me do that again.

little roll of paint.

Let's go up in here and in our world we have some trunks showing in some of our trees.

Not all of them but here and there we see the indication of a few little trunks.

Sticks, twigs, whatever.

Take another little fan brush.

I got a number three fan brush, it doesn't matter.

Take some dark green and I made this just from the tree color mixed with yellow.

You can make it black and yellow, Sap Green and yellow, whatever.

And we'll come back up here and let's just put the indication of some nice highlights on our tree.

Just some indications.

I'm gonna leave some of them very dark.

I don't want all of them with highlights.

I wanna keep that illusion that there's trees far away, too.

There we go.

I think that's about all we need.

Now, let's get crazy.

Let's take and use the same old color we were using for trees add a little brown to it.

Maybe right about here.

Tell you what.

Maybe there's a nice land area that comes, there it is.

If you just hunt around for it you'll find it.

Comes all the way down like that.

There we are.

And go right into some of the yellows and Yellow Ochre, Indian Yellow, a touch of Bright Red and then to dull.

And we can begin putting maybe some little grassy areas back in here.

There they are.

Isn't it fantastic?

And you can do it, you really can do this.

All you need is an old brush, a few oil paints, a little imagination, devote a little time to practice and you can do this.

You really can.

I think in one of the earlier shows we showed you just hundreds of photos of paintings that people had done and sent into us and you can do that, too.

No doubt in my mind and if there's no doubt in my mind there certainly shouldn't be any in yours.

There we go.

We got a second or two left here, let's get crazy.

I think maybe we have a little house that lives right here.

Use this little small knife and get in here.

Just make this house very small.

Just scrape out a little shape.

By scraping it out, that removes excess paint.

A little brown.

[Bob makes "tchoom" sound] This is sort of a long house on this one.

Just block it in here.

[Bob makes "doo-doo-ta-doo" sounds] Boy, whoever lives here has one spectacular view, doesn't he?

Let's take a little Bright Red, a little Dark Sienna, a little touch of white.

This makes sort of a nice pinky color and just go [Bob softly makes "poo-poo-poo-poo" sounds].

Gotta make that little noise, though, or it won't work.

[chuckles] And sometime when I do demonstrations for PBS stations across the country I have some of my young friends come and they'll make these little noises and they're better at it than I am.

I have met so many super young people and they're doing some of the most fantastic painting that you've ever seen.

I'm proud of them.

Proud of them.

Take some white, a little Dark Sienna, a little Van Dyke Brown, mmm hmm, cut us off a little paint and let's just go in here and just put a little front on this cabin, like so.

There.

I'm gonna leave this side over here very dark, just a little on it.

Don't want it, don't want it to be too light.

Don't want it too light.

Because in my mind the light's striking right across from there and so... Take a little touch of brown make a little door.

Gotta have a little door for him to get in and out.

There.

Now we can go back to our yellows and greens and let's put a little grass around this, around this little house here.

Weed's about to eat him up.

Tell you what, maybe, let's take a little Van Dyke Brown, a little touch of white and just mix it together on the old fan brush.

Maybe there's a, yeah there's a little path that lives right here.

Goes right on back here in the distance somewhere.

And it just plays and meanders or whatever you want to call it right down like that.

Right on off.

There we are.

Take another fan brush and take a little white and just very lightly graze that and put a little bit highlight on it.

There.

Isn't that sneaky?

Now we got a little way to get up to the cabin.

Tell you what, bring the camera right up here and let's take off the old contact paper.

The moment of truth.

This is what we've all been waiting for.

Isn't that fantastic, though?

I like that contact paper.

And let's have some fun, we have a second left.

I like to let things project right out of the painting, when we do these little ovals.

To me, it's just so neat.

And when you frame this, it's unreal what'll happen.

You'll love it.

Guarantee.

A little bit of a highlight color.

Only because we need a touch of tree trunk in there, too.

What the heck.

We don't want that left out.

A little highlight color, we'll drop that on.

Shoot, we've about have a finished painting.

I hope you like this one.

I think you'll find it to be one of the most enjoyable little paintings that you can do.

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

[announcer] To order a 256 page book of 60 Joy of Painting projects or Bob's detailed 3 hour workshop DVD Call 1-800-Bob-Ross or visit BobRoss.com [music] [music]