[Music] Hi there, I'm Nicholas Hankins and welcome back to the painting studio.

And welcome back to another adventure with one of Bob Series 32 paintings that he left for us to enjoy.

Today we're going to be painting a beautiful little moonlit, nighttime wooded scene with a big, big tree up in the front.

And you just caught me working on my canvas here.

Let me tell you about my canvas and what I've done to it so far as I spread a little Prussian Blue up here on a two inch brush.

So this canvas was prepared.

Of course, this is an 18 by 24 inch pre-stretched double primed canvas and it was prepared with a little bit of black gesso.

I just took an old natural sea sponge and plop, plop, plop, plop, plooped around and made some of these little shapes that sort of, sort of look like trees if you, if you squint.

And then we added just a, just sort of an impression of little rocks down here.

And I used a little black and gray gesso on an old filbert brush and just kind of swept in those little rocks.

Same way you've seen Bob do with the oil paint.

Allowed all that to dry completely.

And then on top of that, I've applied a very thin, even coat, very thin, very thin, even coated in the liquid clear.

And you only need a tiny bit of liquid clear.

And then you caught me, I was just, all of this area has been covered with a little Prussian blue.

That's what I was doing when you snuck in here.

So we're just carrying on.

I carried that Prussian blue out into the sky.

In fact, now I'm going to go back and pick up a little more of the Prussian blue and add a little, I'm just going right next door and pick up a little midnight black and I'm going to darken the corner.

Since this is kind of a nighttime scene that Bob's created here, we're going to make this just a little darker.

It does feel like we've wandered out into the woods at night.

And these sort of look like swampy woods to me.

They've got, got a Florida look to them which is appropriate.

Bob lived in Florida and I live in Florida so I can identify with this.

Kind of place you'd see an old owl hanging out.

All right, let's wash the brush.

So we'll wash our brush out in odorless paint thinner, shake out the excess, give it a little rap on the old easel leg and we're back in business.

All right.

Tell you what, let's take... Let's grab on our, on our clean two inch brush, let's grab a little titanium white here.

Just tap that into the bristles.

Don't need a tremendous amount.

All right, let's go back up here.

We're going to create that moon glow back here.

So I'm just going to jump in that light area, I ft a little spot kind of open and a little brighter back there.

Now, the Prussian blue that I've painted on the canvas is a transparent paint.

So we can see, that just - all that means is we can see right through it.

So all of that gesso work still shows up.

Now Titanium White is opaque.

So as we start to add a little titanium white, you're going to see some mist and kind of a foggy, hazy appearance.

You're going to be able to just sort of put, put a little gossamer curtain over all of those, all of those little tree shapes that you painted back there.

And obviously, if you want this to be a little brighter than it is on the first go, you can go back into your white, grab a little more, just wipe your brush off before you do it.

And you can brightness even more.

Can make this as bright or as dark as you want it.

And I want mine just a little bit brighter.

Matter of fact, you can even come down in here and add a little fog.

See, isn't that neat.

Without completely obscuring all that work you did, you want some of it to glow through.

Maybe there's just a little bit of temperature change and a little humidity up there.

All right.

That should just about do it.

Well, while we've got that old brush going, it's working pretty good, let's pick up a little more white.

Be right back here - I'm going to grab a tiny little touch of my liquid white, because that white is super duper thick.

Grab a little white, a little touch of the phthalo blue.

I'm just going to mix those on my brush here.

White, phthalo blue.

Then I'm going to tap particularly toward one corner.

I'm just going to tap, tap, tap that brush and then push up a little ridge of paint there.

Okay, let's go back up here and go into these, these distant trees back here.

If we take just the corner of that brush, we can tap in tiny little indications of little trees that live very, very, very far away.

And they're just sort of being kissed with that moonlight.

Just corner the brush and kind of kiss them with that moonlight, tap, tap, tap and just kind of turn your brush and all those little branches should just fall right out of there.

Come on down in here a little bit.

Just tapping with the corner.

It's almost like you're tapping down, down a set of steps there.

Just tap, turn, tap, turn, turn.

There we go.

That'll be our most distant little tree.

Pick up a little more of that color.

Let's come back here, get this one.

Bob's got, Bob's got a few of these back here.

As I look things over, I always wonder, I always wonder if this is some place that Bob visited.

I wonder whether this was a photo somebody gave him or did he go out on a walk there and see this?

It's fun to think about the little stories that go with paintings.

I know I have a number of paintings from photographs I've taken.

Or sometimes it's, it's good just to paint from memory.

It might even be, it might even be more advantageous to paint from memory sometimes.

Your mind can sometimes paint even a prettier picture than you can capture with camera.

That's kind of cool, too.

All right, tell you what, let's grab a fan brush here.

I'm going to just indicate, just indicate a little tree trunk kind of buried back here in all these trees.

So I'm picking up a little dark sienna, a little Van Dyke Brown.

I'll tell you what, I'm going to pull one side through a little bit of that lighter color.

It's got a little blue in it, but I don't really care.

A little blue will hurt anything.

So I've got dark on one side of the brush and my lighter color on the other side of the brush.

Turn the lighter color out here toward the moon and we'll just sort of sneak in, like I say, a very subtle little indication of tree trunk.

I just want to see maybe a little bit of this peeking through.

Not much.

Maybe it just kind of goes off there and disappears somewhere.

We don't really, we don't really care all that much about it.

Just want a little something back there in case it shows.

Now let's go back to our, back to our two inch brush.

It's working well, it's already got some blue and white in it, so I'm going to go into the cad yellow and let's add a little sap green, maybe a little yellow ochre.

We'll just, we'll just in general change the flavor of that color we were working with.

Maybe a little touch of the blue and the black in there, just to keep it from getting too, too, too bright.

Tap that into your brush.

And again, we're going to come up here and just sort of do a little, do a little taste test.

Basically.

We'll put a little up there and see what we think about it.

And I kind of like that, that's working pretty good.

Got lots of paint on the brush, just using a very light touch.

That may be the, the number one secret to painting lacy looking little leaves, making them look delicate.

And leave plenty of dark in there.

You don't want to cover all that dark area up.

And every time I load the brush, I'll just, I'll change the flavor slightly.

Maybe this, this brush load has a little more yellow ochre in it.

Maybe in the next brush load will have a little more blue mixed in there.

Just so it, just so it changes slightly and don't get monotonous.

Let some of those little leaves overlap.

Overlap our further distant blue tree there.

Still tapping and turning, tapping and turning.

Tapping and turning.

And you just kind of let them wander around wherever they want to go because that's exactly where they ought to go.

After all, as our old buddy said, "It's your world.

You get to make it the way you want it to be."

That might be, that might be the best thing about painting.

You get to make things the way you want them to be.

And sometimes it's nice to escape there.

All right.

Still just changing, just changing that color slightly as I come on down here.

There's another little clump of leaves.

And that's the, that's the best way to think about them.

All of these leaves live on these trees and little clumps.

They're little individual sections.

You don't want to get up here and get too, too happy too fast and just kind of tap them all over without a plan.

You kind of want to think about individual little clumps of leaves and you want to go out and maybe even study trees a little bit and look at them, and think, well, how, how are they built?

How are they put together?

How is that tree constructed?

What does it look like?

Get to, get to know - if you want to paint a tree, kind of get to know the architecture of that tree.

It helps because evergreen trees are put together a little different than oak trees or sassafras trees or whatever it is.

Every tree is an individual just like people are individuals and you kind of have to get to know them.

And just sort of continually getting a little bit darker, a little bit darker, a little bit darker as I work my way down here.

Still loading the brush, the same way, but that color's changing a little every time.

That's what we want.

A little darker, a little darker, a little darker.

Saving lots of dark, though, saving lots of that sort of under painted area.

We want to take advantage of all of that, all that gesso work we did in here.

We want that still show up.

All right.

We got a little something on the other side here.

Let's jump over to the other side.

And I'm just kind of randomly grabbing all three yellows.

I don't even know.

I don't even know exactly what proportions I'm grabbing them in but it doesn't, it doesn't really matter because they all look good together.

They all mix well and play well together.

And that's what, that's what I'm concerned with.

Let's come up here and drop a little, a little accent on this tree Being moonlight and being sort of a dark painting, almost hesitate to call it highlight even though that's what it is.

Accent's a good word.

It's a little accent of green.

Just kind of floating around there.

There we go.

Saving lots of dark down there at the bottom.

Shoot, let's go.

Let's go in here and get a little brighter.

Let's get a little brighter.

A little more cad yellow, maybe.

A little more of that brilliant, bright yellow.

Still mixing it with the greens though so it doesn't get out of, out of hand.

I sort of feel like that's a little closer to my, my moonlight glow.

So I'm going to take advantage of that.

Same on the other side.

Let's grab a little more of that brighter yellow, a little something sticking up right there.

And again, I'm just using the corner of that big brush.

I'm not trying to get in here and go to town with too much of it.

Out on some of these edges you can take a little brighter color occasionally and just sort of, just sort of sparkle these edges a little bit as they reach out.

They're closer to your moonlight.

Just don't do too much though, it sort of, it'll sort of it'll sort of lose its effect if you do too much.

All right.

We'll give that one a rest.

[chuckles] The brush has been working hard.

We'll clean out a little fan brush here, and I'm going to load it with some titanium white.

A little bit of that blue color Clean off spot here.

I've got a little, little blue and white left, so I'll just leave it there on the palette.

Dip my fan brush in just a tiny little drop of the liquid clear to help it, help the paint move a little better.

All right, get that thing loaded up back in here.

Shoot, I'm going to add a little more blue.

I just made a, just made a game time decision there.

I want that a little darker.

All right, let's go back in here.

And right about there, Bob has [Nic makes "pshew" sound] a little waterfall.

Just pull the brush over.

[Nic makes "sshoo" sound] Drop it down.

[Nic makes "sshoo" sound] Yes.

You have to make the little noise or it won't work.

No, it probably will.

It probably will.

But it's more fun if you make the noise.

Maybe there's another little [Nic makes "sshoo" sound] waterfall [Nic makes "sshoo, sshoo" sounds] right there.

Another little splash.

And again, the beauty of having some of this, some of this work done with Gesso is that it's going to glow through there.

This sort of feels like those rocks are under water now, and I just adore that effect.

I think that's so cool.

It's one of the neatest little things I think Bob ever did.

[Nic makes "tchooka, tchooka, tchooka, tchooka" sounds] A little splash, blend it in.

Let that stream come on down and around.

Just sneak a little ripple in on top of that water once in a while but save plenty of darkness and plenty of your rocks in there.

You sure, you sure don't want to cover them all up.

All right.

Soften that down a little bit.

Speaking of, speaking of rocks, we need... if we've got that many rocks under the water, we'd have a few rocks up top, too, I'm sure so.

Let's take a little dark sienna, a little brown, a little white.

There's a little blue in there.

I'm not going to be too worried about it.

And I'm going to add and just a little touch of the liquid white to that mixture and soften it, make it a little, little softer.

Got two browns, a little white, a little liquid white in there, too.

Move this off to the side where it's not in the way.

There we go.

And so we have a slightly softer, lighter, brown.

Beige gray, whatever you want to call it.

I'm going to grab our, grab our fan brush here.

And let's load that with Van Dyke Brown, a little Dark Sienna, mix them together, just load both sides very full.

And we'll pull one side through that lighter color.

So again, just like with the fan brush, I've got dark on one side, light on the other side.

Okay, let's come back up here and turn that light side of the brush up.

And I'm just going to give it a little pull and we can plant some little rocks out here.

And get, get our highlight and our shadow all in one stroke.

When you reload, just pull your dark side through your dark, your light side through your light.

And you can have big rocks or little rocks.

It's up to you.

It's up to you how big or little they are.

I'm trying to like I say, I'm trying to match Bob's example as closely as I can for you so you see how he, how he created that effect.

There we go.

Just a few of them floating around there.

I'm going to leave that paint in the because I think we've got some more of those coming up later.

I'll go back to my brush that has all those greens in it, all three yellows, a little green, and we'll kind of take and plant our rocks down into the painting a little bit.

I don't want them, I want them anchored.

I don't want them floating around out there.

You know how it is when you have rocks out there floating around, untethered, they get in trouble and you have to go bail them out at all hours of the night so best if we kind of anchor them down here.

[Nic makes "tchooka, tchooka, tchooka" sounds] Just let that kind of disappear into the background.

Actually, while we've got, while we've got that color on the brush let me just, let me just keep going.

It's working good.

I want to darken it, a little more blue and black, at least for our initial run here.

Still pushing up a little ridge paint there.

Ooh that's a good shot.

See that, just sort of scoot up a little ridge paint.

And you have a little ridge of paint just like that on the end of your brush or on the edge of your brush.

So let's come up here and kind of decide where our, our foreground cuts in.

And it looks like it's about there.

So we kind of establish where the front of this painting lives, and as you tap, like I, like I say, there's a little Prussian blue already on the canvas, and as you tap, it's going to pick up that color and it's going to get darker and darker and darker.

But it's good to tap, it's good to tap it and not just fill it in because you get a little feel for the lay of your land.

Whichever, whichever way you tap or turn or twist your brush that's the way your, your ground is going to want to lay in here.

And obviously, if we need to, if we need to darken it a little, we can, we can always pick up a little more blue, black, green.

Make it a little stronger.

And just kind of get a feel for where everything lives right now.

Get it all mapped out.

And I'm not trying to cover up all of that real, real, super dark either.

I want some of that peeking through too.

Tell you what, let's, oh, let's just wipe that brush out.

I think that'll work.

I want pick up a little touch of my liquid white.

Come back up here to my brighter yellows again.

Just a little combo of all three.

Tap in my little ridge paint.

Let's come back and pick out a little highlight.

You just have to think, where would the moonlight come zinging through here and hit all this stuff.

And it would certainly be up toward the top.

I know.

And then just kind of carry on.

Right on down, right on down.

Tap, little turn, tap, little turn.

Let it just kind of ease its way right on down through here.

Change the flavor a little every so often.

I got a little more ochre that time.

So we got a little different feel.

Maybe we even touch into a little bit of the bright red, sneak that in there.

Red will actually, believe it or not, kind of act like a duller when you mix it in with green, you'd think a color like a, like bright red or with the name bright red would, would come off very strong but that bright red will actually sort of compliment your green and dull it down a little bit so red acts as your duller in that instance and that's kind of cool.

Plus it's pretty.

A lot to be said for it's pretty.

I hope you think so too.

I like it.

All right.

A little something coming from this angle, maybe.

See you can change the angle a little, have some of this stuff sweep together.

This looks like the type of, type of place you could walk around and if it was dark, I'd probably step in a hole and trip, sprain my ankle or something, so.

Pretty much got to respect it.

[chuckles] Let's see, let's take a little bit of that color again.

I'm going to put another [Nic makes "rr, rr, rrr" sounds] rock out there.

Bob's got a few on this side in the foreground, a little more of that Van Dyke brown, the lighter color on top.

One or two out in, in the field here.

If I didn't find a hole I'd for sure, my toe on those rocks.

So something, something going to get me one way or the other.

There we go.

We'll sit them down into the painting.

Now.

Now, you ready for bravery test?

Are you ready for your bravery test?

This is the bravery test of this painting.

Take my knife and cut off a little roll of paint.

Let me show you that again.

Flatten your paint out real flat, [Nic makes "shoop sound] cut across and just remove that little section of paint that gives you a nice even roll on the edge of your knife.

This is Van dyke brown and a little dark sienna.

And we're going to have woo, hoo, we do now, we're going to have a big old tree.

Just lives right, there.

He's sort of a crookedy tree.

There we go.

This comes right on down.

Got a little bend in his back.

I guess we all deal with that at some point, don't we.

It's all right.

That means he's got a lot of experience.

He's had a lot of years of being a tree.

So he knows how to do it well.

Put him a little, little foot on there.

Come on down that a way.

There we go.

Old rough tree.

Rough looking.

He's, he's probably not.

He's happy.

He's a happy, easygoing tree, but he looks rough.

Looks can be deceiving.

[chuckles] Let's take a little white, a little dark sienna, a little Van Dyke brown.

Just mix all that together and I'm going to mix it to a very, very marbled appearance here.

Cut off my little row of paint once more.

Now I'm just going to barely graze [Nic makes "shoo, shoo" sounds] give it a little, give it a little pull.

It has kind of a rounded effect, has sort of a "shoo" little rounded shape.

"C" shape as you pull it around.

We'll put a little highlight and rough old textured bark on this tree.

[Nic makes "tchoo, tchoo" sounds] Just let it come right on up.

Right on up, right on up.

Something like that.

A little on his, a little on his root down there.

All right.

Now, let's grab a script liner brush, get a lot of paint thinner in there.

Mix that in with my Van Dyke Brown.

Paint thinner, Van Dyke Brown.

I want a script liner brush, and I'm just going to roll it around there.

That paint literally drips and runs.

There you can see it.

Very, very, very thin paint.

Let's come up here and just kind of extend the little top of that tree.

We'll give him some old arms.

Just little, little wiggles and skips and bumps along there.

[Nic makes "rr, rr, rr" sounds] Even branches work better with a little noise.

There we go.

Just kind of let them run wherever.

Occasionally it's good to let them cross over the trunk too.

Just, just think of them, just think of them like your arms.

Trees have arms too.

Just think of them as having little joints and elbows and they kind of turn and bend and change shape a little bit as they go.

You got to have that paint thin enough to stick on here, though.

That's the important thing.

Have plenty, of plenty thinner mixed in with your paint.

There we go.

[Nic makes "rr, rr, rr" sounds] Just all sorts of little branches and sticks and twigs and good stuff hanging off of there.

Branches can get a little bigger as they come down.

I tell you what's fun.

We've got just a second left here.

Let me grab my, go back to my fan brush, a little liquid white maybe a little midnight black mixed in there.

You can take your fan brush and just kind of show a little, little Spanish moss hanging out of those trees.

That's kind of cool.

Always enjoy seeing that.

Makes it feel like it's down in the south, down in Florida.

And from Florida, thank you for watching.

Happy painting.

We'll see you next time.

Bye bye.

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