[Music] Hi, I'm Nicholas Hankins.

Welcome back to the painting studio.

Today, I have a little nighttime seascape planned for us, so come on up to the canvas and I'll tell you what I got going on.

This is an 18 by 24 inch pre- stretched, double-primed canvas.

And I've coated it with a very thin, smooth coat of black gesso.

That's a water based paint.

So I've allowed that to dry completely.

Once that's dry, I applied a very, very thin coat of the liquid clear and kind of paper toweled the excess off.

And then I made a little mixture on my palette here of equal parts, call it equal parts midnight black and Prussian blue.

And I was just, let me take my little two inch brush and I applied a thin, even coating of that sort of blue black color to the entire canvas.

So with all that out of the way, let's get started.

I'm going to grab a one inch brush and some titanium white.

And this nighttime seascape, it's going to be a moonlit seascape.

So let's come up here and just decide kind of where we want our, our moon to live or the brightest area to be.

I want it to be right about there.

And then I'm just going to start working away from that with little crisscross strokes.

We'll have kind of a crazy sky in this one.

Have a little fun with it and see what happens.

And I'm just going to continue to carry this color out and out and let it get darker and darker and darker as it picks up more and more of that blue black base coat that's on the canvas.

Just take it all the way out there.

There we go.

Now, we'll stop and wash our brush.

I'm just going to swirl my little one inch brush around in some odorless, paint thinner, shake it out the excess and we'll beat the devil out of that little bitty one.

That's not nearly as much fun as big brush, but that's okay.

Now, I think in my mind, I think that could be just a little brighter.

So now that we have a clean brush, let's come back and we'll grab a little more, a little more white, and we'll just kind of repeat that procedure.

If you do it once and you think it needs to be a little brighter, that's perfectly fine.

You can come back and make it a little brighter, just like I'm doing.

Take it all the way out there.

Now, we can grab a clean, dry two inch brush and we'll come back and soften that.

Take out some of those unwanted brush strokes and smooth it all down still using little crisscross strokes.

Something like that.

There we go.

It's a nice little home for our, our moon.

We'll have some little clouds down here on the, on the bottom in just a minute.

Just wiping that brush out and kind of go all the way across and smooth it down.

Bring it all together.

Now I'm going to go back to my... Well, I don't know that we need a completely clean brush.

Just take my little one inch brush and kind of wipe it out.

I'm going to come back into the white once more.

And before we set our little moon in the sky, maybe there are some - just use corner of your brush - maybe there's some little moonbeams that are kind of emanating out from our, our moon.

You just sort of touch and sweep out, touch and sweep outward.

Do that again, just touch and [Nic makes "tchoo, shoo" sound].

If you do fast, you can make them pretty straight, reasonably straight.

There we go.

Just a little, little aura around our moon there.

Then I can take the two inch brush and just kind of soften those strokes occasionally.

I might even grab a paper towel, put it in my hand here where I've got one close by.

Just in between strokes.

Every couple strokes, I'm going to wipe the brush off so I'm not taking any dark back into my nice bright moon area there.

And I do want to sort of soften and lose the, the end of those little strokes so we can't really tell where they, where they start and stop.

Now.

Isn't that kind of different?

[chuckles] Looks like we're about to have a close encounter there maybe.

Okay.

Let's come back and take... Now we make a little moon.

It's going to be a full moon tonight so I'm going to take a little titanium white just on the, on my little index finger.

Make a little circle.

There's our moon.

Once again, I'm going to take that two inch brush and just very, very gently [Nic makes "whoo, whoo" sounds] float across.

And then we'll get out of there as soon as it looks like it's smoothed down and soft and I, I leave it alone.

It's hard to teach you when to stop touching it.

That's the one thing I can't teach you.

Just have to go by instinct.

All right.

Let's grab a little, little number three fan brush, and I'm going to fill it with some of that, that good old black blue mixture.

It's just Prussian blue and midnight black.

All right.

Let's come up here and we'll have, we'll have some little clouds that are kind of swirling into our, our scene here.

Maybe, maybe they kind of taper down into a little, into a little stringy, flat sort of feeling there.

Keep a two inch brush handy so I can kind of blend in between, in between layers here.

There.

Like that.

Little nighttime clouds coming in.

We have a, I have another one, just below there.

Just using the corner of the fan brush and little, making little circles or little commas, another good way to think of it.

There we go.

Up top here, I'm going to have some little clouds of some sort.

I'm not too, not too concerned with those just yet.

I'm just going to block in a little dark color.

We're going to see the bottom of some of those clouds way in the, in the upper sky, and we'll have another one that kind of twists down from here.

Again, just using the corner of the brush, making those a little tiny circles.

Another one comes rolling in and it kind of levels off and just snakes its way in near the moon there.

Isn't that kind of neat?

I like painting mysterious nighttime skies like this.

It's, you see some beautiful things when the moon's fall.

And there's so many things you can do on these black canvases.

I mean, that's the, that's the beautiful part.

You're only limited by your imagination because the color just shows up so much differently on a black canvas, and it makes for such a dramatic scene.

It's amazing what you can do with this technique and you're, like I say, you're limited only by your imagination.

And that's the best part.

We'll have a few little skinny clouds down here, too.

Just kind of making little, little cradle type strokes with the brush.

Just, just the edge of the brush.

I've got it turned on edge.

If you get, [chuckles] if you get real brave, you can sneak up here and just kind of let it [Nic makes "tchoo, tchoo, tchoo, tchoo" sounds] cut right, right in front of your moon.

There we go.

Just all kinds of neat little, little cloud motions in there.

These are easy to blend, though.

All we have to do is just kind of graze across them.

They're not quite as involved as those big guys.

Those big puffy, fluffy clouds.

There we go.

Let me quickly just wipe a little bit of that black and blue combination out of my brush and I'm going to jump right over here to some titanium white.

In fact, if I was smart, here's what I'd do.

I'd move a little bit of that titanium white down here so I don't, I don't mess up my clean white.

Now, that's what a smart feller would do.

I'll try to be one of those one day.

All right.

Let's come back here now with this lighter color.

And I'm just going to add a little highlight in a few places.

A little bit to the bottom of some of these clouds.

[Nic makes "tchoo, tchoo, tchoo" sounds] A little moonlight strike, some little moonlight strikes these.

Just have to, just have to think like a cloud and think like a moonbeam.

How, what, which cloud are you going to strike?

And how strong is it going to be?

It'll be a little bit, a little bit of high highlight maybe just tickling on the top edges of these little clouds here.

Let me do a little blending.

A little blending.

Once again, just very softly across those.

These get a little more special treatment.

They get the top corner of the two inch brush.

Some little tiny circles just to sort of buff away the bottom edge and we'll brush them up and brush across.

Like so.

Once more, let's have, yeah a little on this one too.

I'm a big fan of these sort of monochromatic paintings that just have one or two colors in them.

It's the lights and the darks that you really get to see do the work.

These will make you a better painter, too, if you paint some of these with the limited palette.

Makes you understand how all the lights and darks work.

And that's really, really neat and really important as well.

Maybe just a little bit of highlight on a couple of these down here.

I'm not going to get too involved with those.

I want that to stay pretty dark and mysterious right down there.

Whew, it's the kind of sky you would want to go out and walk on the beach and see isn't it?

At least I would.

I get to do that sometimes.

I live down in Florida, so I have that luxury from time to time.

All right.

Let me drop just a little below the center of the canvas here and kind of make a mark.

Excuse me a minute.

I'm gonna kind of step in front of the canvas so I can get this at least reasonably level.

Decide where my little ocean horizon lives.

It's about right there.

Keep my paint, keep my paint orderly, Nice and tidy.

[chuckles] Got to do a little housekeeping on the palette from time to time.

And we're going to have a big wave in this painting that lives [Nic makes "tchoom" sound] right there.

And this one's, this one's going to be spilling over.

Have a little, [Nic makes "pshew" sound] little cascade and kind of hit and roll that way.

And maybe there's a little, little swell rolling in behind that one.

So we'll kind of figure out where it lives.

And maybe there'll be another, Another little water movement, little motion in front of that wave right there.

And somewhere down in here we'll have a shoreline.

We'll figure that out in a minute.

Okay.

Now, if I just wipe that brush out.

This little brush has been doing a lot of work, too.

And I haven't even cleaned it yet.

It's a versatile thing.

I am going to keep a paper towel handy, though.

I like that.

That way it's right there where I can reach it.

Wipe my brush out.

We're going to take our little fan brush that I've wiped out and just again, using these little cradle type strokes or a little rocking type stroke, we're just going to blend the top of that first wave backwards like this.

Kind of making little lazy eights.

Or you know, that little symbol for infinity, that little sideways skinny eight.

That's kind of the motion that you want to make when you blend these, these little ocean waves backwards, because that creates the trough or the low point between your two waves.

And that's the point that's going to catch the most moonlight right in there.

Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Something like that.

Even, even this one, we can take and sort of blend back a little bit.

And that's pretty, pretty good start to our moonlit ocean.

If you get close enough to the wall of the wave, you can even kind of pull it up and you get a little sensation of the shape of that wave, because this one's really starting to curl and stand up.

Isn't that neat?

I mean you can just make so many illusions with the black canvas, and there's just so much you can do.

I love it, I love it.

Let's take a little titanium white, just a tiny little touch of the bright red.

I guess I can put that paper towel down now.

Get it out of your way.

[chuckles] Ooh, that's too much bright red.

Let's, let's, let's put the fire out there.

That's better.

I just want kind of an off white, like that.

We'll cut off a tiny little roll of paint, and I'm going to come back in here right below the moonlight and just, just do a little touch, touch and put some moonlit sparkle on my distant horizon back there.

All I'm doing,literally, is just touching the knife [Nic makes "tch, tch, tch" sounds] right against the, the canvas and then backing away.

Then the canvas will take what it wants and give you back what's left.

There we go.

All right.

Go back to my little two inch brush.

Very gently.

[Nic makes "shoo, shoo" sounds] Two hairs and some air there.

Just brush across.

Mmm, let's grab a filbert brush next.

I'm going to keep going with that, that white and red mixture.

I'm going to load our brush very full again.

This is not really a pink.

It's just, it's just kind of off white, it's warm white and that's all I want to have there.

We're going to start right in the eye of the wave right in the transparent, thin part of the water and I'm just going to make little circles and kind of scrub in a little light.

Right in there.

And then I'm going to let it wander away [Nic makes "tchoo, tchoo, tchoo" sounds] very softly.

Back to the two inch brush.

Now, if you want to be extra careful, you'd want to wash your brush.

I'm being a little lazy here.

That's not always the right thing to do but I'm being a little lazy and just wiping it out.

Then I'm going to take the top corner of the two inch brush, top corner only, and just give it a little, maybe you can, there you can see it, just with the top corner.

Give it a little circular motion like that and I'm blending away.

It should feel almost like you're polishing.

You're just sort of polishing the eye of your wave until it, until it gets very, very soft.

Sort of dissolves into the ocean.

Wipe that brush out again.

There I go being lazy.

That's setting a bad example.

Give it a little curling pull like that.

That kind of helps with your shape of the ocean.

There we go.

If you want to get that real, real soft you can take.

I got a new little brush here.

This is a little mop brush.

You can make it very, very, very soft with that.

That's a handy little thing.

It's so tiny.

It gets in a lot of the places that big brush won't and I love it for that.

Okay.

Let's find, I don't want a big one or ... I think I want a big fan brush.

Or excuse me, you're little, I wanted a little fan brush.

Tongue out over my teeth that time.

Okay, let's come up here and give this a little push and [Nic makes "whew" sound" let it release.

And this will be our cascade.

[Nic makes "pshew, pshew" sounds] If you've ever made noises when you paint, now's the time to do it.

If you were ever unsure, you've got to have a little noises when you paint an ocean wave.

[Nic makes "pshew, tchoom" sounds] And that water just spills over.

Now this is an ocean wave and it's got speed behind it.

It's got velocity behind it so it has to come out and over.

It doesn't just trickle out and go [Nic makes "thht" sound] like a, like a waterfall.

They just kind of come over because they don't really have any speed behind them.

Here's another good use for that little mop brush.

We can take it and just kind of soften, soften from the bottom up a little bit here.

Kind of make sure old ocean wave feel like it's, it's really moving.

Like it's got a little blur.

I took a stop motion photo of it.

That's kind of cool.

Okay.

Tell you what.

Let me, let me pile my paint back up.

It's trying to wander all over the palette here.

We'll take that white, a little bit of that white and blue and black we had mixed up earlier.

I'm going to make some more here with my filbert.

I'm just going to take a little more of my blue black mixture and a little touch of alizarin crimson this time and add to it.

I want kind of a medium, sort of grayish, bluish, lavender color.

Something about like that.

Okay, let's come on up to the... let's come on up to the wave here.

And we need a little, we're going to have some foam on our wave, but I'm going to have a little shadow in place for that foam first, because it's going to come over and crash and splash and carry on.

And you have to treat it just like any other object.

It's got to have three values.

It's got to have a highlight and a middle value and a shadow.

So we're going to put the shadow in first and let it do the work of creating the shape.

And I'm going to come right back behind that, again with my little mop brush.

I'm just going to kind of knock down some of the texture, soften it, especially back here because that'd be a little further away and a little more out of focus.

Just take some of that texture off.

Now, let's fill a little.

This is a, I switched on you.

I pulled a new filbert off the table.

Or at least a clean filbert.

I don't know new it is, but it's clean.

And we're going to fill that one full of titanium white.

Let's come back up here.

And I'm just going to add a little highlight [Nic makes "pshew" sound] on the top of the, top of the foam.

See, now we're going to get that bright, brilliant moonlight.

And where those two mix, when you get down in here you can kind of make little circular motions.

Almost, almost the same thing you do with a cloud.

It's basically that same thing, just little drops of water.

There we go.

Make a big splash.

And I don't mind too much if a little bit of that, that violet or blue color gets mixed in with my white so long as it's nice and bright, it doesn't, it doesn't have to be perfectly clean.

I'll splash back here maybe, maybe it's kind of fighting the wind as it comes into the, as it comes in towards shore, there.

Take our little two inch brush and just with the top corner, once more, I'm going to blend where those two, those two values meet.

That light and that dark.

And that's going to automatically create our, our middle tone or our middle value without us having to work hard for it.

We didn't have to mix it up or anything.

It's a big brush isn't it?

Let's go back to our little one.

It works better for this kind of thing.

There we go.

Soften a little over the eye.

There we go.

I'll tell you something I just love on seascapes.

It's amazing the difference this makes.

I'm going to come back with a little liner brush and just kind of darken my, darken my dark lavender here.

A little more of the blue, a little more of the crimson.

Got a little paint thinner in there.

Not much.

Just enough to get it soft and runny enough to apply.

And I'm going to come through here and we're just going to... I'm just going to kind of restate the shadow, make it a little darker.

Ooh, that makes such a nice contrast between your, between your bright, bright eye and the dark foam.

We can even add a few little foamy patterns in here with that lavender.

Kind of crawling up the wall.

[Nic makes "tchoo" sound] There we go.

[chuckles] Kind of get in my own little world up here making noises.

Tell you what.

I'll take a little ... While we've got that brush in our hand, Let's take a little liquid white, titanium white, just a touch of paint thinner in there with it.

And we'll, we can grab our foam and just kind of extend it and define the top of our wave wall a little more.

Even a little off, off that side.

Some of these back here, it would be a little brighter in places.

Just think, just think where the moon would kind of catch and make that glow and sparkle back there.

Even, even a few little things right back here.

A couple little, couple little foamy patterns in the, in the water down here that are bright because that could be foam or that could be just moonlight sparkling on the water.

Any number of things.

But mainly just, just using those little cradle type strokes.

[Nic makes "tchoo" sound] There we go.

Don't need too much of that.

All right.

I'll grab a small palette knife.

Now, take a look at this.

Let's pull some white out very flat and cut off, get a little roll of paint on our knife.

And I'm going to come up here and just kind of decide where my, where my beach happens.

[chuckles] Where beach happens.

Right there.

And I'm going to push very firmly.

And this is our, this is our surf coming up on the sand.

If you've ever been out on a night like this at the beach, you know when the, when the moon light's out, it'll, it'll really glow so I'm going to pull some of that color down with my two inch brush.

Watch this.

Isn't that neat?

Because that's wet sand and it looks just like, just like still body of water which basically it is.

Might even add a little more right there.

Yeah.

I'm going to wipe that brush out and brush across as we would with any other reflection.

Just come right across like that.

Now, we can come back and restate that line.

There we go.

Put a little firmer, firmer edge on it there.

We'll take our little fan brush maybe, just pull some color back, directly back from that line.

That'll make it extend out.

Kind of, kind of join it up with our previous stuff.

Maybe we'll add a few little, little watery movements out here.

Something like so.

Put just a touch of light in a couple of spots out here, maybe a little foamy pattern over there or two.

I'd say we just about got a finished painting.

What do you think?

A little, little moonlight beach walk in order.

I hope you enjoyed this one.

And until next time, happy painting.

[Music] [Announcer] To order Nic's 68 page all color book with 13 painting projects or the 3 disk set of DVDs for this series, call 1-800-BOB-ROSS or visit BobRoss.com [Music] [Music]