The Best of the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross

(instrumental jazz music) Hi, welcome back. Certainly glad you could join us today, you know every once and a while I get my son Steve to come in and do a show for us and today we're fortunate enough to have Steve right here in the studios with us and I've asked him if he'll do a little show with us. Steve, welcome to the show. Thanks, dad. Good to have you with me my son, Tell you what I'm gonna turn this over to Steve and let him do a fantastic little painting for you and I'll be back later. Steve, good luck. Thanks a lot. Okay we're gonna do something real simple but yet complicated too today. The beginning of it will have a few little cliffs back, in here and a range of mountains in front of it with some mist in between but let's just get on with it. I've already coated the canvas with a thin even coat of liquid white and I'm gonna start off by putting a little Pressian Blue on the brush, maybe a little Pressian and a little Thalo together, why not? Use both of them. Make sure you load both sides of the brush real evenly. We'll just go with a simple blue sky today and they'll be running your colors across the screen here for you. Just make little X strokes like this and as you come towards the center kind of turned the brush onto the side so it makes a your shapes smaller. That leads the eye into the distance. Keep those corners nice and dark. Okay and then maybe a little bit of the same two blue colors and a tiny bit of Sap Green and we use this for watercolor, always make sure to get that paint in the brush real evenly, that's super important. Just straight horizontal strokes and we might leave a little bit of light in the center. Okay. Now with a clean dry brush you can go ahead and start blending that out. Start in your light area first and then go out towards the blue and try to kill those edges inbetween the light color and the dark color. Make them look like they just flow together and never stop. And one thing you don't wanna do is over blend your sky, you wanna leave some of these nice dark and light mixtures in there. And on the bottom of the canvas. Maybe we'll just do the same thing, try and a tiny bit of that light in the center, once again. Sometimes if you have a problem blending the water down, here you an always push in real hard with the side of the brush and get rid of some of those streaks that, you've got. Just like that. Okay, now I'm gonna use my palate knife and put some cliffs in the back. I really don't know what I'm going to paint today, I'm just kinda making it up as I go along. Little brown, little black, little blue and about half that much crimson and to this color I'm gonna a bit of white and we'll jump right back in here real quick. Just throw any old thing in, it doesn't really make any difference. Kinda some triangular shapes to start with and you wanna scrape all that paint down to bare canvas too. There we go, just some far away things. Remember you wanna keep you lightest colors, in the background and the your darkest ones in the foreground. Cause you're closer to the sun way back here. So it's brighter and we can just pull that down with a dirty two inch brush, will work just fine. Sometimes I use a dirty brush intentionally, you know? So I get some of that last color I used, in the things I'm gonna put in front and X out the bottom a little give it that misty look. Maybe a few little white highlights, I don't like to use pure white though try putting, a little bit of the mountain color itself in with it, dull it down. Maybe even leave it marbled like this and a little roll in the knife. There we go. Stay away from using too much paint back in here, you wanna let the grain of the canvas do most of the work for you and if you just stick a little bit of Pressian Blue, with that same color. You can always make a nice light blue shadow, come down on that other side of that. Doesn't have to be anything perfect, this is way off into the distance and most of it will be covered up. This is what we call Diet Painting just with practice of it. Here we go And it's amazing if you go in with a two inch brush, afterwards and blend it out a little bit, what a soft misty effect it will give if you're really, really brave, this will be your bravery test. Just pull down over that whole thing Whew! Dangerous. Gotta take a few chances though. There we go. Okay, let's put a real big mountain in front of this. We'll just go with the pure dark color I mixed up before, maybe with a touch more of Alizarin it. We'll just throw in a nice big one that comes right across here. This one will be a little bit more dramatic, it'll have a lot of contrast in it probably, quite a few more highlights. And if you want to before you go too far, you can take a little white on your fan brush and squeeze in a tiny little misty spot right here. I only got time for one but you can make as many as you want and blend that out just a little bit. Like a little cloudy thing back in there, there we go and you might wanna pull out the mountain shape, that you just put on too. I've purposely left a little bit more excess paint on this because sometimes if you scrape too much off, sometimes you get too light of a mountain and you don't get enough contrast out of it later. Make it nice and dark. Okay, a little roll of Titanium White on the knife. Just lay in a few quick highlights, kinda turning the knife on the way down to widen the stroke. That one there is almost like a cliff again, that's what's so nice with this style of painting, you just never know what's going to happen. You're kinda just working with it and it just flows and comes out just the way it wants to. You really need that practice in there to get the control, maybe something like that, then the same old shadow color for the shadow color of these forward ones will work. You might want a little bit darker. There we go. And right over here we'll maybe make a little glacier area, happen in there. We don't wanna get too technical though, a lot of times, I found when I first started painting, you know, I tried too hard and I would do too many little things and it's really better just to put it in there like it, flows out of the brush and knife and let it happen. Cause it seems like the worst thing when you're painting, to you, is the best thing to somebody else. I find that with most all my paintings there will be a, tree or a bush I don't like and somebody will say "Man that's the best part of the painting!" Maybe they're just patronizing me but I don't know, after here that a lot of times you begin to wonder. Okay, let's go in with a few Pine trees now. You can mix this right on your brush, a little Pressian Blue, Sap Green, Crimson, brown just whatever. A dark green color and maybe for the background we'll go in with a little, bit of that old blue shadow color to lighten it up. Then I'll come back later and use the dark color for the forward trees. Like I said, lighter in back and darker as you come forward. Just throw it right in there. I find these trees come out a lot better if you do them fast cause you get into that symmetrical thing, if you know, you linger around in one spot. You know have fun with it. There we go. See you can build a little island just by real quickly, smashing up on the brush, nothing to it. And this tree over here looks lonely, we'll give him a friend right there. There we go. Maybe that's just half a tree, it's half way of the canvas. Little baby down here, that's what you need to do, think of your trees like a family. You got the mamas and the papas and the babies, all different shapes and sizes. Never make two trees exactly the same. Of course that'd be kinda hard to anyway wouldn't it? Okay a little bit of the same green color and just pull that down for a reflection. Remember a reflection should only be as low as what's above is high. So over here pull down far and then shorter and shorter as you come left. And then we should probably use a clean brush for this, go across that. Okay just like we made the mountain, if you take a little bit of your Van Dyke Brown, get a roll on your knife and just kinda pull, just like breaking snow and you wanna remember that most of this land will be, covered up so don't spend a lot of time on. A little Dark Sienna and white for a highlight will work good. About half and half, there we go, that's close enough. Like I said don't try to get things too precise. I don't believe precision is very artistic myself. Some people have different opinions. I know a real famous portrait painter named John Thamm that say's "portraits should never look like a photograph." And I believe that, cause I like the way he does them and to me they look much more artistic, than something that looks too natural, too real. I don't think that's what art's all about, you can do that with a camera, can't you? A little bit of Cadmium Yellow with a touch of Thelo Blue for your highlight on your Pine trees and when I get through with the highlight maybe I'll want, a little trunk down at the bottom of a couple of them but remember these are still pretty far off, these are like your mid grown area. There we go. I love that green color, that's one of my favorites. Well maybe with a little Van Dyke Brown, you can make a couple little trunk time impressions. Maybe a touch of highlight on them, same shadow and highlight as you use for your land. Keep those highlights on the right of everything cause your sun's come in from this direction here. Cover up a little bit of those Let's go ahead and do some bushes with the one inch brush, you'll notice with these bushes, if you pull through the paint without, tilting your brush downward you'll have a lot better luck because if you get too much paint too high up on these, bristles here you have a problem. So be very careful to keep that brush straight up and down tap down into your paint, flip it over where the heels to the top and then very lightly touch in, you get those nice sparkly bushes. I'm using Dad's brushes today and they seem to work, better than mine I think their magic. I'm convinced. Cause this works much better than my bush brush. Course I've wore it out I've probably had it for 10 years, you know? That's how it is you get a hold of a brush you like and you don't wanna let go of it. Dad might find his brushes missing after this show though. There we go. Oh yeah if you wanted to reflect a couple of those, that would be a nice idea, just real quick reflections like this. And pull down, go across. Maybe we'll do a little shore line under here, little bit of liquid white and maybe a touch of blue, any old blue. You don't wanna blue waterline you just want kind of a off white. Okay a little bit on the edge of the knife and then just real lightly go on the edge of that. There we go. Okay. On this other side, maybe we'll have, let's have a big bushy tree, I think. Maybe we'll do it with the big brush, gonna pull through little bit of that same green, black and brown. I must have wrong before this might be the biggest, bravery trust on this painting, this is a huge tree. Monster. and this is just some excess foliage over here, don't be afraid to smash in a big dark area cause you can always highlight it and make it look right. I never worry about the first few steps that I put on because I know the next steps are gonna make it better. Besides being worried is not what painting is all about, it's about having fun, enjoying yourself. Okay, let's see here. Palette knife and maybe we'll make a little trunk action in this tree. And maybe down here there's a little stick or something. When I'm at home I often get so wrapped up in this, painting thing that I can have people literally, screaming for me and stuff and wont hear them. I just get really taken by it. I would never even consider quitting doing it because it's just so fun to do. A lot of people try it once or twice and they say "Oh I really had fun at that" but then for some reason they just never do it again, I always wondered if that was just a type of personality, that did that or what. Cause I have a lot of people come into my classes and they tell me "I only paint when I come into class with you" and that's fine and everything but to me if you don't practice at something, I don't know you just seem to forget. So remember always keep on practicing. I know you hear that from every teacher in school. Sometimes when people are at a school for a long time, though they forget these little things. Here we go, just some little highlights with the one inch brush. Same way as you highlighted bushes over on the right side. Think about each individual shape, just like little bushes, like you're going around a clock. Think of it like 12 O'clock, one, two, three and back on the other side, then reload and start another one. Make one come in front of the next, adding plains of distance to the painting and if you wanna change it, you know, a little bit add some different colors, you can add some Yellow Ochra. Any color you want, just like Bob says it's your world. Even a little Bright Red with one makes a nice bush, there we go. And we might possibly have a little bit of that reflected, down in the water, here and there. You know they call them mirror reflections but they don't have to be anything super, super exact. Even in the foreground the water disturbed reflections and makes them look different than they do, up above the water so you can get away with, a lot of things in reflections. And then you wanna pull down, go across that reflection, very gently. Okay. Then once again a little strip of land with Van Dyke Brown, like we did before. Just pull it across. Notice I'm coming in from the opposite angle this time, I'm coming from left to right so just remember always pull your land towards the center. And then the Dark Sienna and white for a highlight and see how that land kinda cuts off, all those bushes right there? If you bring a few little bushy things down onto that land, it makes it look like it just goes right up there and never stops. Little tricks like this will take you far. A little bit more of that liquid white with blue and you an make a little waterline under here. There's a kid over there that drop a big rock in the water, that's why there's water gushing against the sides of these, islands I guess. You know I make up stories about all the paintings I do. People come up and ask me where some place is I painted, I always just make up a big story, tell them it was a fishing trip Dad and I took in Alaska. That's good for selling paintings, people like to hear these stories and 99 percent of them are true, Dad and I did go on lots of fishing trips when I was younger He caught all the fish I just watched. Maybe a few little shorelines down here, a little bit more liquid white. Let's go ahead and put in, one nice big tree right real quick, we can handle that. This is one of those lighting fast Birch trees and a little big of white for highlight, always looks good on those. Just very lightly caress across that brown, super gentle. There we go. Little trunk down here This smashing in foliage thing is always my favorite cause you know you just come in and pound it right in there, no problem. In class people always find this the easiest, then they have to come back in and highlight and that's not quite as easy but sometimes something that's harder is fun. More of a challenge. Okay, then you can just highlight these bushes down here, the same way. Maybe just a few little, that's my finger nail brush there, few little sticks in there. You find that you can really get away with a lot, different colors, different shapes, you can take a mountain, out of one painting, put it in another. Birch tree, cabin, whatever you wanna do. It's up to you. We gotta have a fire ball right out here, there we go, right here too. Lead that eye into the center. Okay maybe, maybe just an old dead branch, hanging off this Birch tree, extend the top a little and couple little dead branches. Coming out. There we go. There we go, looks good, looks good. Gotta tell yourself that, tell yourself you're wonderful. Cause you are, you can do anything you want. Okay that'll about do it for that one, you can always add a few more sticks and twigs but I'd like to thank you for joining me, on The Joy of Painting this series and thank Dad for having me here, God bless. (instrumental jazz music)