The Joy of Painting with Nicholas Hankins: Bob Ross' Unfinished Season

[Music] Hi, Welcome back to the painting studio.

I'm Nicholas Hankins and I'm delighted to share with you the 33rd Joy of Painting series.

Over the next 13 programs, we're going to place some of nature's masterpieces on canvas using some unorthodox equipment and the world renowned Bob Ross wet on wet painting technique.

So come on up to the canvas and let's get started.

I'll tell you about what I have done to this canvas as I pick up a little phthalo blue on my two inch brush.

This is an 18 by 24 inch pre-stretched, double-primed canvas and I applied to it a little self-adhesive masking paper from which I've removed an oval.

You can do that with a hobby knife or scissors and stuck it on there.

And then I applied some liquid white to the inside of the oval, a nice thin, even coat of liquid white.

And that's what's allowing me now to mix and blend color right on the canvas without worrying about working ourselves to death on the palette.

[chuckles] We just kind of let it all happen.

Let's pick up a little more, phthalo blue, and I'm going to reach right next door and pick up a little phthalo green.

Mix those two together on the brush, a little phthalo blue, and phthalo green.

We're going to have some water in the painting today I think so.

Just pulling that in from the edges with a nice level stroke.

Come from the other side here.

Working from the outside in.

All right, now, let's wash an old brush.

And you wash brushes in odorless paint thinner because they don't like soap and water.

Shake out the excess and you beat the devil out of it.

All right.

We'll pick up a nice, clean, dry brush, now, and I'm going to start in the light area and blend out.

Just soften any unwanted brush strokes and we've got a nice, bright, clear, crisp blue sky.

Come down, soften this into the water as well.

I'm going to soften the light area.

And if everything works out just right in the end, that's going to look like a little sheen of light playing across the lake or the river, really big pond, [chuckles] what, whatever this is, we'll figure it out later.

We're not too worried about it just yet.

All right, it's big decision time already.

We're going to take our knife and we're going to mix up some blue, some black, a little Van Dyke brown, and Alizarin crimson.

Just mix all those beautiful colors together here on your palette.

Make a nice mountain color.

A nice, dark base for our mountain today.

Now I'm going to pull that paint up very flat, cut through it and pick up a little roll on my knife, just like that.

A little tiny roll.

All right, let's come back up here and decide where the mountain lives.

Mine's going to be right there.

That's where it is now, for sure.

I'm going to put a few little peaks in this mountain.

Just kind of, just kind of play with that outside edge and figure out exactly what shape you want it.

I'll have another little peak lives over here.

And then scrape away all that excess paint.

Remove any buildup.

Let's see, let's have this come on over a little further.

Yeah, about like that.

We'll give him another little peak right there.

This, this mountain stretches out.

It's, it's an expansive mountain.

He wants to be the center of attention.

[chuckles] There we go.

All right.

Wipe off my knife here.

Let's grab that two inch brush again.

I'm just going to grab that paint.

And again, because we have liquid white on the canvas, we can grab that paint and pull it and move it.

You can, you can literally move mountains.

[chuckles] On canvas you can.

You can move mountains.

That's the wonderful thing about painting.

You have unlimited power and unlimited freedom.

And you're the boss.

When you're on, when you're working on your painting and creating your own little world, you are the boss.

And that's kind of fun.

I can identify with, I can identify with Bob's old lament that the only thing he had power over when he went home was the garbage.

I feel the same way.

It just sits there and waits on you.

[chuckles] I'm going to take a little titanium white, cut off a little roll once more on our, on our knife.

Let's come up here and we're going to highlight our mountain.

You have to decide where the light's coming from.

In my painting, it's coming from the right.

You can have it come from just any direction you want but all of these little peaks then have to mirror that.

They all have to have consistent lighting.

Can't have light on one side, light on the other side.

You'd have two suns or more.

We'd be, we'd be living in a different reality with that so just keep little things like that in mind when you paint.

It'll help you, help you make nice, believable paintings.

Kind of let this, maybe that kind of drifts up a little valley right there.

Light spills through the valley a little bit.

Just kind of, just kind of decide how you want to engineer all these little all these little peaks and valleys and those little cracks and crevices in your mountain.

I'm going to mix up a little white, phthalo blue, and just a touch of that mountain base color.

So I've got a nice shadowy color.

Maybe a little bit lighter than that.

There we go.

Cut off a little roll with that as well.

And let's come up here and add some shadows.

Now, these are all going to go in the opposite or opposing direction.

Let's come up here.

Kind of comes down, get a little on that.

And then I'm just going to kind of let it blend into that one a little bit.

It's just going to come right across there and it's going to kind of work together.

There we go.

A little behind that one.

[Nic makes "tch, tch, tch, tchoo" sounds] Works so much better if you make little noises.

That sort of sounded like hogwash first time I heard it.

Works better if you make little noises, but it really does.

It's the funniest thing.

All right.

Let's play a little game here.

Now that we've got all this established, let's come back and maybe let's decide right about here.

[Nic makes "ssshoo" sound] There's another little, there's another little outcropping here.

And the light, again, just sort of spills through there and plays and has a good time.

It's fun to, it's fun to go back and kind of kind of feather, feather them together a little bit.

All right.

Something like that.

Come back, pick up our brush again, give it a little tap here and there.

Feather out those strokes.

Make the, make the base of the mountain nice and soft and misty.

There we go.

Fuzz out the tap marks.

Shoot, we got pretty good looking little mountain there.

Now, I'm going to take a little bit of that snow shadow color and a little bit of the mountain base mixture, mix them together, and add a little Van Dyke Brown.

There we go.

Just gray it down a little bit.

Gray it down a little bit.

And we'll pick up a, let's try a one inch brush.

That should work.

I'm going to load that brush full of paint on both sides and then just give it a little push.

Push it into the paint like that.

Let's come up here.

We're going to tap in some little, little footy hills back here, living at the base of the mountain.

I want these to live right in that misty area that we just created.

There was, there was a purpose for all of that you see.

That makes them stand out.

just kind of decide the lay of the land in there.

You can come back and pop up the top of that paint, just straight up, little short strokes.

[Nic makes "too, too, too, too" sounds] Create just thousands and thousands of little trees that live on that hill back there.

Let's grab a, let's grab another clean brush, let's grab a clean two inch brush and give that a little tap at the base and soften it.

We need a little mist at the base of those foothills too.

There we go.

Isn't that pretty?

Almost feels, almost feels chilly.

I can feel the chill in the air back there.

Crisp, nice day.

Let's come up here, go a little darker.

I just added a little more black and blue, a little touch of brown to my color.

We'll have another little layer of foothills live in here.

Something about like that.

[Nic makes "tchooka, tchooka, tchooka, tchooka" sounds] Now, with a little bit of that color remaining on the brush, I'm going to pull some of this down so we can have reflections in our lake.

I think I've decided this is a lake.

I've committed to it.

It's going to be a lake.

I need a little shadow back here, a little reflection back here beneath those foothills.

Then I'm going to pull that straight down again with a nice, clean two inch brush or at least semi clean two inch brush and then brush straight across.

Level across, straight down and straight across.

Give this one a little tap, soften the base of that one too.

It'd get upset if I pampered that one and, and not this one.

I don't want mad footy hills.

Shoo.

It'll get you.

All right let's take a little, a little liquid white.

It's fun to have fun, isn't it?

[laughs] There, we've got a little liquid white, a little titanium white.

Cut off a very small little roll and I'm just going to come back here and basically pretend like I'm trying to saw right through the fabric of the canvas and create a little, little ripple back there.

Another one here.

Just separates those two darks and makes it real pretty.

Before I run off and forget, I don't want to, I don't want to forget to have some little trees on this footy hill, too.

They'd, they'd even need to be just a little bit taller than the ones in the background, I guess, if we weren't being real technical about it, but.

[chuckles] Maybe we don't need to be that technical.

All right.

All right, let's come back down here to our palette.

I'm going to make a little room to work here, clean up my mess, because I'm making a big mess.

Let's add some more, let's have some more black and blue, brown and crimson.

Just some of that same good dark color, same old mountain mixture that I had there.

But I'm going to add some sap green to it this time.

There we go.

Big old hunk of paint there, too.

That's a lot of paint.

I'm going to use it.

I need it.

I need all that dark color to make this happen.

And I'm going to pick up a little round brush.

It's a, that's a fun little brush to use.

I don't use it all that often.

But if you take it and just tap the top corner of that brush into the paint like this, you'll see lots of texture on it.

I'm going to just basically tap the paint off the same way.

It's how you paint with it.

How you load it is how you paint with it.

And we'll tap in a nice little piece of land that lives right here with all kinds of little trees and bushes and vegetation of all sorts.

Just want to fill that in nice and dark right now.

Because I want to have some closer trees and we need a, we need a little, little place for them to sit.

Put a little reflection under that so we know that that's right there on the water.

And I'll pick up a fan brush.

Number six fan brush, one of the bigger ones, and I'm going to load that one full, absolutely full of this dark color on both sides.

Just draw it through there one side and then the other until the brush comes to a nice chiseled edge.

And then we'll come up here and make a decision about our trees.

I'm going to plant one right there.

He's probably going to be the tallest one.

In my mind right now, this is the tallest one.

Use just the corner to start and then work back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

And you can create gorgeous little evergreens that quickly.

That quickly.

Let's come on this side, touch just the corner and work your way down.

Bigger, bigger, bigger as you work your way down.

Let's come over here and give them, give them, oh we're going to turn it into a tree party.

It's a whole party back here.

We have a gathering.

It's not just buddies.

We have a gathering.

We'll put a little reflection of those into the water as well.

Just brush across it, graze, across them.

All right.

Now, let's take, let's take that knife.

Actually, I'm going to just give these a little indication of a tree trunk back here.

We want to get real fancy, we can take a little, a little titanium white off to the side here and I'm going to add some Van Dyke Brown and Dark Sienna to that mixture.

And I'm going to leave it quite marbled, just meaning I'm not going to over mix it.

I'm not going to mix it too uniformly.

Cut off a little roll of that color.

And let's give a little, little indication of a tree trunk here and there.

Just enough to see it, just enough to see it.

Take that same dirty fan brush.

I just wiped it off a little bit, dipped it into some liquid white and I'm going to load it up with some cad yellow, a little Indian yellow, yellow ochre, we'll just take a touch of all of them.

But it mixes with that base color and you get a gorgeous highlight color just kind of automatically.

Just automatically happens.

Biggest and most important factor when you're highlighting trees here is not to cover up all that dark.

They'll just turn flat.

Wouldn't that be awful?

Go to all that work and then just flatten your trees with highlight.

It works so good and it looks so good that you just have a tendency to want to run away with it and put it everywhere.

But don't do that.

You'd be mad.

Be mad at me.

I'm going to take that same dark, dark color on the round brush, didn't wash it, tapped it into some yellow too, and now I'm just going to touch gently and kind of work around in a little, little fan shape.

We'll put highlights on this little, this little island back here.

This little, this little jetty, whatever it is.

I've been all over the map.

I don't know whether I want to have lakes or rivers or ponds, and I don't know if I want islands or jetties or what else is there?

Isthmus, isthmuses.

I don't know if I'm saying that right.

I think that's a thing.

[chuckles] Sweep a little Van Dyke brown under that land.

Under all those bushes.

We've got to give them something to stand on.

Take a little bit of that highlight color or tree trunk color, I guess it's going to be highlight color and then we'll just barely graze across that.

Make that look like rocks and soil and just all kinds of good stuff going on back there.

Take the, the tip of the knife.

Just come at it like this and we'll scratch in a few little sticks and twigs and something to hold all that stuff up.

All right.

Grab just the edge of that land.

Sort of, sort of tickle it.

Seat it down, anchor it down into the water just a little bit.

And we need to put a little, little water line under that.

A little ripple under there.

When you're at home and you've got unlimited time to work on these things, you can really, really throw the detail in there and just make them look spectacular.

We have to, we have to do what we can in 26 minutes and, you know, give you an idea and then let you take it and run with it.

All right, tell you what, let's go ahead and come up here.

I'm going to peel this contact paper off.

So we've got our little oval, our little oval vignette there.

And then I'm going to wash my fan brush and we're going to do something fun.

We're going to get crazy.

Got to get crazy.

Wouldn't be, wouldn't be, wouldn't be thrilling if we didn't have a little last minute, a little last minute tree here.

Let's take that dark color and, here's where we're going to get crazy.

We're going to go outside the oval.

Oh, Oh, I know that's scary, but go on and do it.

Go on and do it.

Take a chance.

What's that old axiom?

You've got to go out on the limb that's where the fruit is.

In this case, I guess you've got to go outside of the oval.

That's where the, that's where the action is.

[laughs] Have a nice big tree standing up here in the, in the foreground.

Oh, yeah.

And we can't let that one get lonely either so we'll, we'll give him a little friend too.

It's going to reach out on that side.

[chuckles] The first time I saw that down going outside the Oval, I thought, that's, that's a little much, that's kind of crazy.

But, boy, it really works out well.

It really works out well.

It's sort of scary at first, but it all, it all comes together.

Let's take a little, a little round brush again and some of that dark color.

This is, I jumped up to the big, round brush.

This is the full size.

We've got two sizes of round brushes that I, I like to use.

There's a, a great big one and a half size round brush.

And I needed to conquer some land here quickly, so I jumped up to the big one.

And just kind of frame all this stuff in.

Put a little dark color up front, something like that.

I'll go back to the little, go back to the little one.

Add some highlights here.

Pick up, oh, a little touch of all those yellows Okay, just outside the dark, nice light touch, [Nic makes "tchooka, tchooka, tchooka, tchooka" sounds] drop some highlights in there.

But as with the trees, as with, as with any type of vegetation in your highlighting, just, just watch and make sure whatever you do that you don't cover up all that dark.

It's so important.

Everything flattens immediately.

And it's so sad, go to all that work and just stomp it flat.

Here we go.

That'll get us started.

I need to put a little highlight on those trees, too.

Got to give them a trunk first.

I like to paint trees sort of back to front.

You do, do all that shadow in the back there.

Trunk comes in the middle.

Put a little indication of it on there.

Right now this looks like it's sitting on top.

It looks sort of strange, doesn't it?

But when you come back and you add a little touch of that highlight... once again, I'm taking that dirty, dirty fan brush, dipping it into a little bit of the liquid white and then just a taste of all the yellows, maybe even a little, let's put some phthalo green in there.

That's always pretty on evergreen trees.

I'm a sucker for phthalo green.

I like it.

Yeah, there we go.

And then you come through and just sprinkle a little highlight on there.

I tell, I tell some of my students sometimes, you highlight trees the way you put salt and pepper on your food, just enough to give it a taste.

Enhance it a little bit, but don't want to put so much on it, you ruin it.

All right.

I would want to get back there and see this up close, wouldn't you?

Let's put a little, let's put a little path in here so we got a way to get back there and look at this.

This is a little Van Dyke Brown.

I'm going to start very small and then we'll get bigger and bigger and bigger as we come up to the front here.

[Nic makes "shoo, shoo, shoo" sounds] Needs to, needs to widen so our perspective looks correct.

Bring it out to about there.

I'm going to take a little bit of our good old highlight mixture, again, I'm going to darken it just slightly though.

I don't want to jump off there too brightly.

I've got a little roll with that on there.

And this we're just going to graze, just graze across there.

[Nic makes "shoo, whoo" sounds] Light as a feather.

Never press down on it.

Just let the canvas take what it wants.

It will give you back what's left.

There we go.

All right.

Kind of close up that front a little bit.

I'm going to come back to my, back to my little round brush and go through.

Again, just a combination of all of the yellows.

But look at the texture there.

Can you see that?

I hope that's showing up.

When you tap, that's how you know you're loading your brush properly.

When you tap it in there and you have enough paint on it, it leaves all those little peaky things that stick up on your palette like that.

All right, let's come back up here.

Then, you don't have to touch it very hard.

You just kind of poke, poke, poke at it like that.

I'm going to let some of this over take the path just a little bit so it sits down into the painting a little bit more.

And ever so often I am changing the flavor just a little bit.

I'm, I'm varying how much of the yellows and which yellows I pick up.

We might even want to ... yeah, let's take a little bright red too.

That always looks nice.

Yeah.

Put a little firecracker in there.

Those are pretty.

Those are pretty.

Maybe a little out here.

Just sprinkle that around some.

Then we'll close up the front here just a bit too.

Let that grow over the edge of the path.

Something like that.

This is going to need a few sticks and twigs.

We'll scratch those in.

Got something to hold all this stuff on.

Okay, while we've get a second or two left, let's take a little liner brush, dipping it into paint thinner.

Quite a bit of paint thinner.

And I want this thin like ink or water, very thin consistency.

A little Van Dyke Brown gets, some sienna gets in there that's fine, too.

We're not too worried.

Let's have a little, let's have a little stick that grows up and out of the, out of the weeds.

That's a, that's a tree that maybe passed its expiration date.

[Nic makes "ssooo" sound] Just a light little touch.

A few little, few little detail things in the front like that.

All right.

Well, with that, I think we've got a finish painting, So, I hope you enjoyed it.

I hope you'll come back and paint with me again.

And until next time, happy painting.

[music] [announcer] To order Nicholas Hankins' 68 page book with 13 painting projects or his companion DVD set, Call 1-800-BOB ROSS or visit BobRoss.com [music] [music]