[Music] Welcome back, certainly glad you could join me today.

And today, I'd like to introduce you to some little friends that I have with me.

This is four little chimney sweeps and they're just sort of hanging right here on my shirt.

These are the cutest little devils.

[chirping] And they live in chimneys.

Ooh, we've got one that's hungry here.

And a lot of people hear them in their chimney but not too often do you get a chance to see them, and believe it or not, in this mess of birds here, there are four of them.

There's one hidden under there.

And they're little babies, just a couple of weeks old, I thought you might enjoy seeing these.

I borrowed these from Diana Schaffer, the Bird Lady, here in Muncie to show you.

So I tell you what, let's have them run all the colors across the screen that you need to paint along with me today.

And while they're doing that, I'll see if I can get these rascals off my shirt, and we'll get started here.

This is like pulling leeches off, so.

We'll just take them right off, they have unbelievable little claws.

Come on, there we go.

There's one, yeah.

There we are.

As I say, you don't have to worry about them falling.

All right.

[chirping] There.

Okay, today I have my standard old 18 by 24 inch canvas up here.

This is a triple primed canvas, so it's all ready to go, and I've covered it with a nice thin even coat of the liquid white, so it's wet and slick, and we can get started.

[chirping] They think it's time to eat.

Let's have some fun today.

Let's start out today with a little touch of the Cad Yellow, just a small amount on the brush, just, just sort of tap the bristles into it so you get a little tiny bit, we don't want to overload it.

Just a little bit.

Okay, let's go right up here.

This is such a fantastic day, let's do just a beautiful happy little painting.

Put a little tiny bit of this yellow into the sky.

Just a small amount.

Just somewhere right along in there.

Now then, without cleaning the brush, I'm going to add a little touch of the Yellow Ochre.

And we'll put a little touch of that in there.

Just let them blend together, just happy little colors.

They make you feel good, they're nice and bright, warm colors.

Now then, maybe, but still without cleaning the brush, because I'm lazy, I look for easy ways to do things.

A little of the Alizarin Crimson, just a small amount.

And right down in here, we'll just add a little touch of crimson, and we're just making little criss-cross strokes.

Little x's.

That's all there is to it.

And just allow these colors to blend together, just blend right together.

Maybe even a little bit of that crimson up in here, wherever you want it, just sort of look around and decide where you think it should live in your painting.

Hope you enjoy the little birds and stuff that we show on the program.

I am such a fanatic for God's little creatures that I like to share those with you.

There we are.

Now then, maybe we have a little light spot right here, so I tell you what, maybe I'll just take my finger and take a little touch of that crimson, just a very small amount of paint, and we'll just put the indication of a little sun up in there.

We can take the big brush and blend it.

And this will soften it to any degree of lightness or darkness that you want.

You can just soften it until it goes away if you want to.

We want to keep a little tiny bit of it there, just enough that there's a little indication.

Now then.

Put some little clouds up there, and for that, I'm going to take some Alizarin Crimson, and a touch, just a touch of the Phthalo Blue.

Now, the Phthalo Blue is many, many times stronger than the crimson so proportionately, we're using much, much more crimson than we are blue.

Be very careful.

That blue is so strong, [chuckles] it'll eat up your whole world in a heartbeat.

And we just take the old large brush.

I still haven't cleaned it.

Still haven't cleaned it, just tap a little color into it.

Now then, maybe up in here will live some nice, just happy little stringy clouds across here.

Now, if you was to use blue by itself to do this, and you touched the yellow, oh my gosh.

Well you know what'd happen, you'd have bright green.

And in this particular painting I'm not looking for a green sky.

So by using this lavender color, when you hit the yellow the worst that can happen is it turns a beautiful brownish color.

And that's okay, we can live with that today.

Maybe, there's one right in here.

You have to make big decisions though.

Where does your little clouds live?

They just float around have fun all day.

There's another one.

As many or as few as you want, let's go to the other side over here.

And have a few coming in here.

Little stringy clouds.

There.

Just sort of stair step this one, maybe it comes right on down, might go right up to the sun there.

Just right up to it.

Now then.

And a little bit right along here.

This will, this will be our horizon, right along this area.

So we'll just put a little color right in, wherever you want it.

Okay, now at long last we'll wash the brush.

And we wash our brush with odorless thinner, shake off the excess, and then... [chuckles] just beat the devil out of it.

That's the most fun part of this whole technique.

Take out all your frustrations and hostilities.

Be sure your brush is good and dry.

And barely touching, barely touching, three hairs and some air, just gently blend the sky.

And you blend it to any degree of softness that you want.

You can continue to blend it until it's just as soft as velvet.

Or you can leave it quite strong, it's up to you, it's up to you.

Painting is a very individual thing.

So you have to make big decisions in your world.

There.

Now then, tell you what, let's take that same color, we'll just add a little bit more to the two inch brush.

Same old brush, just a little bit of color.

Maybe back in here, mm, somewhere in here, maybe there's a happy little hill that lives back here.

I want it almost the same color as the sky.

Very soft, very subdued, it's far away.

it's far far away.

Don't let it get too strong on you or it'll stand out, we want this to be way off in the distance somewhere.

Far away, far far away.

There, that's all you need.

Now.

[chuckles] There we are.

You ought to see our camera crew.

There, now we can soften that.

It just sits way back there.

Now then let's have some, maybe some little grassy areas in there, shoot.

We'll take, we'll just use that same color, I'm going to add a little Van Dyke Brown to it maybe a little black, just want to darken it up a little bit.

But the same lavender color with a little Van Dyke and a little black mixed.

Just so it's darker.

And let's begin tapping in some basic little shapes here.

Maybe there's a little hill lives right there.

Shoot, maybe it comes down.

Just make a decision, you have unlimited power here.

You can create any illusion that you can conceive in your mind.

So just allow that to happen.

Allow it to happen.

There we are.

Again, thinking about where you want all these little things to live.

See, now you can see how distant that hill looks.

It really doesn't show up well until you put something in front of it.

There.

And we're always playing darks against light, lights against dark continually.

Continually.

The finest paint made can only capture a small portion of light.

So we have to work with illusions.

And when you paint you play, once again, with lights against dark, darks against light.

There we go.

There.

Okay.

So that quickly, we have some background filled in here.

And you could really just wipe this on, this is just a super way to practice.

You could put this on [chuckles] with a paint roller.

All we're doing is just blocking in some basic color here.

There.

Okay, same old brush, I'm not even going to clean it, I'm going to go right down here, pick up a little bit of the yellow, a little Yellow Ochre, a little Indian Yellow.

Here and there we'll get the least little touch of the Bright Red, not much, not much.

Maybe, be right back, get a little touch of the Dark Sienna here just to dull it a little so it's not too bright.

A little touch of Sap Green too.

Ooh, that's getting nice.

But by loading it on the brush and mixing color on the brush, in this brush now we have a multitude of colors happening, it's not one flat old dead color.

And you push that brush, give it a little push, and that load paint right on the end of the bristles.

And with that, then we can go up here.

And very lightly begin tapping in some beautiful little grassy hills.

Start in the area that's farthest away from you and work forward, forward, forward, always coming forward.

There.

Now maybe, watch here.

See, maybe it comes right down.

See now, you created a different plane there.

That simple.

That simple.

What power you have.

There we go.

And I'm just going to vary these same colors back and forth, a little darker there, a little more of the Sap Green.

But just vary them back and forth, forth and back.

There we go.

But now, the lay of the land begins to become very important so begin thinking about how the land flows.

The little hills and the valleys and all these beautiful little things in here.

All you're doing is tapping, and the more you tap, the softer it becomes.

You can hear [chuckles] the little birds in the background there.

Yeah, they're just chirping and having a good time.

Yeah.

They are something else.

Something else.

In the last series, we, we showed a baby owl, and later on in this series I'm going to show you what he, he grew up to be.

Because he's, he's a big owl now.

There.

But see, just layer after layer after layer and as many and as few as you want.

Now sometimes, sometimes, sometimes, you get excited and you see nice things here.

Maybe you want to show, I'm taking a little bit of the just straight Titanium White, maybe you want to show a little light zinging through here, so just add a little white to your brush and where you think light would hit just tap a little in there.

But don't overdo, if you overdo then it loses its effectiveness.

It's effective only because it's a small amount of it.

It's like gold, if everybody had a lot of gold it wouldn't be worth anything.

So treasure these little things, don't, don't use them, don't use them all up.

They're your good friends.

Okay.

Tell you what, shoot.

That's such a nice place there, bet there'd be a beautiful place to have just a happy little pond.

And just take another two inch brush and I have several of each brush going so I don't have to continually wash brushes, I'm going to add a little touch of the Phthalo Blue.

And maybe, I have to make a decision.

Maybe, we have a little tiny body of water here.

Way back here.

Pull it straight down.

Just straight down.

And don't worry about this, if there's something here that you don't want or don't like, all you have to do is cover it up.

But see how beautiful that is with that lavender that's underneath that mixes with it?

Don't fight these things, allow them to happen, can be some of the most beautiful effects.

Now, very lightly, go across.

Just enough to give it a sheen or watery appearance.

That's all it takes.

Now, maybe back in here let's make, take a little white, a little white, a little Dark Sienna.

Like so, just white and Dark Sienna.

Pull it out as flat as you can get it, but leave it marbled so there's a lot of colors happening.

Pull across, get our tiny little roll of paint right on the edge of the knife.

And maybe there's a little bit of land back here.

Just a little.

And all I'm doing is scrubbing, just really scrub it in.

There.

Okay.

All right.

Now.

Maybe, maybe our land continues, get a little more of the brown, a little black, a little of the Alizarin Crimson a little touch of blue, all the same colors again.

Maybe, this is very small little pond here, so maybe, maybe, maybe, let's have it come right along here so not much of it shows.

We just want an indication, there's a place back here where all the creatures can go to get a little drink.

There.

Okay.

But this, again, puts another plane in the painting and each one of these planes helps create that illusion of depth and distance.

And to me that's very, very desirable in a painting.

There we go.

Tell you what, I just, tell you what, let's take a little Dark Sienna and white, we'll just use that same old brush, leave whatever's on there with it.

Maybe.

We could just put some of this color on like that.

But look at all the beautiful colors that happen because you don't clean the brush.

If you cleaned it and started with fresh color you'd have one dead old color.

As it is, you're picking up everything that's there and it's all mixing together.

And just beautiful things are happening.

Okay.

Now then.

Go back to this brush that has the yellows and the greens on it.

Tap a little bit of color.

Just tap, give it that little push.

See how that loads the end of those bristles?

Most important.

There we go.

It's surprising, little ponds like this, sometimes it just, the fishing here can be fantastic.

When I was a kid I used to fish in little ponds like this all over Florida.

Caught some pretty nice fish.

[chuckles] I remember when I was only about nine or ten years old, I was looking for some fish bait one day, one of the big guys in the neighborhood told me that the larvae out of a wasp's nest makes beautiful fish bait, which it does, it does.

So I said, "Well I don't know how to catch them, how to get them."

So this guy told me, he says, "Now, if you want to catch, if you want to get a wasp nest to get the little larvae out for fish bait, what you do is find a big one, and then you take a pole and you sock it, and when it falls down, you run and grab it.

But in the meantime all these wasps are going to come, so if you stand real still like a tree, they'll think you're a tree and they won't bother you."

At nine years old made sense to me.

So I went out and got a big pole, I knocked the biggest wasp nest in town down.

And stood real still, and these wasps used my face for an aircraft carrier, they came in like jets.

[Bob makes "psoom" sound] And my eyes literally swelled shut, and then [chuckles] I spent days in the bed.

Didn't do any fishing for a long time.

So if anybody tells you that, don't believe it.

If you going to knock a wasp's nest down, you, you run.

There we go.

That look like a little road there, so let's just put something on this side.

That easy.

And we're using the same old colors, crimson and brown, a little touch of the blue.

All we're doing is just applying a dark color.

So when we put a lighter color on there, it'll show.

Have to have dark in order to show light.

While we got that going, tell you what, I see something else here.

I see something else.

Same old colors.

Maybe right in here.

We're still using this old brush.

Maybe there lives in here, oh, well it does now.

Maybe there lives in here a big tree, just a nice tree.

Friendly tree.

There we go.

I'm just using the corner of the brush and just tapping in here a very basic little shape, I'm not looking for any detail at this point.

In a minute.

In a minute, we'll find some details in it.

But right now we're just looking, looking for a nice tree shape.

Some place for that little noisy bird to stay.

There we are.

Okay, and maybe comes right on down here, we don't know, we don't know.

Maybe there's a nice little bush lives here.

Whatever you want.

Just have to make a decision and drop it in.

Okay.

Now then, I'm going to take some of the liquid white, put it out here, I'm going to take a little Yellow Ochre, a little Dark Sienna, not much, just a little.

Maybe a little more of the Dark Sienna.

Mix it all up.

There, now this is very thin paint, let me clean my knife, let me clean my knife.

We'll take our liner brush, we'll go into some paint thinner, and I'm going to go into Van Dyke Brown.

Let me get a little more of the thinner.

We want this to be very thin paint.

So we load the bristles full of Van Dyke Brown, okay now I'm going to just go right down here.

Now, take where we have this liquid white with color in it, and pull one side of it only through.

So you have a light side and a dark side, see?

Now, let's go up in here.

And let's build us a trunk in there.

That's all, we'll put a little more color, a little of the dark, a little of the light, you have to be careful that your light's always on the same side.

And get nervous, let it wiggle and jiggle and have fun.

Shoot.

Put some character in that tree, don't just make an old straight tree.

These are so much more interesting when they have some shape and gnarly, I like that word, gnarly.

There.

Now then.

Tell you what, shoot.

[chuckles] We've used this old two inch brush so much, let's just add a little bit of green.

That Sap Green, a little Cad Yellow, a little Yellow Ochre, Indian Yellow, whatever you got there.

Tap a little color into it.

Now the yellow paint is thinner than the other colors.

We intentionally make that to a thinner consistency so it'll stick, because yellow's nearly always the highlight color.

Now using just the corner of the big old two inch brush you can begin placing in all kinds of beautiful little leaf indications.

Think about form and shape.

It's most important, don't just throw them in at random.

There we go.

See?

But that easy, using a big old brush, shoot, you can make a beautiful tree.

Beautiful tree, I'm going into a little of the Yellow Ochre.

Maybe in here there's another little bush.

Pick out a few little individual things.

There.

Add a touch of the Bright Red to it, sparkle it up a little.

There we go, maybe he's got a little friend that lives over here named Clyde or whatever.

A little bit, a little more yellow there, maybe it'll stand out, there he is, see?

Just changing the color a little, and then you have layer after layer of bushes.

That easy.

Shoot.

Maybe there's a little bush that lives right here.

There, okay, good.

Take the point of the knife, and just scrape through.

Put in a few little sticks and twigs, I tell you what, tell you what, that's such a beautiful little place, we're going to have a little house there.

Let's build a little house.

Maybe the little house, here's the roof, coming right here.

I scrape it out first, that sort of helps you lay it out.

Like so, maybe there's a porch.

If you want a porch, all you gotta do is pull out and down, out.

The house can live right there.

And we're not committed yet, all we're doing is putting in a basic idea.

There.

See?

But it lays out your whole cabin, and at the same time, it allows you to remove some of that excess paint.

I'm going to take a little white, a little touch, a little touch of Phthalo Blue, a little touch of black.

Just a little.

Like so.

Okay, let's build us a roof on there.

Get our little roll of paint.

Here's a little trick, outline it first with a knife.

And then when you come down, [Bob makes "ssssoo" sound] then you have a nice straight edge.

Like so, just let it go.

It's an old house here, maybe this is someplace, someplace in the deep south.

I was born and raised in Florida so I like these southern scenes.

Let's just put an old, old southern type house there.

It's old too, I mean it's seen its better day.

A little bit over here on this side, like so.

Now then maybe, maybe this old house, maybe it has like a screened porch on it.

So that just sort of looks dark.

Just sort of looks dark.

Big old porch.

There we are.

Now, take a... Let's take white, least little touch of, least little touch of black in it.

Then a little touch of Dark Sienna, just to dull it down real nice.

Okay.

Now then over here, [Bob makes "shoom" sound] we need just a touch more of the sienna in there so it shows up a little better.

There we go.

Very nice.

There.

Okay, and there'd be a little shadow, a little brown under here just to create a little shadow.

Maybe a little bit running right down there.

And we'll take that same color and add a little white to it, so it'll be a little big brighter, and underneath our porch out here.

Be...

There.

There we go, just let that slide right down through there.

And we can take a little brown, and just put the indication here and there of some nice boards.

And... Maybe you can make out here and there a few little things.

Little rail that runs right along here.

Okay.

Now then.

A little bit more of the sienna, I want this edge where they come together here to be a little darker so it shows.

There, and just pull it down so it blends right in.

Okay.

Now then, let's go back to our old big brush.

The bushes here are growing up, this guy cuts grass like I do.

Which aren't too good.

[chuckles] I'm not a very good lawn keeper.

So we'll just have a few bushes growing up around his old house.

Like so.

And sometimes you can just get crazy here, maybe, tell you what, maybe take a little brown, maybe there's what remains of an old fence, and then maybe, maybe we'll have it starting right there.

[Bob makes "doot,doot" sounds] Just goes right along the road here.

Because, because, if you had a beautiful pond like that, there'd probably be a trout in there, and everybody would be after your trout.

A little brown and white, so we'll put up a little fence to keep them out.

There, a little highlight on it.

Now right through the liquid white and let's just take and use the heel of the knife and cut in the indication of a little bit of wire.

How many strands you want?

Two, three, ten?

It's up to you.

That easy, you can just drop them in.

No problem at all.

A little bit of color, come right down in here, put a little grass at the foots of these.

Now we can take our big brush, blend that little path right in.

Just the way we want it.

Now, over on this side here, we need, we need a little bit of grassy things.

Same greens and stuff and we'll tap in just a few little things.

There we are.

This sort of reminds me though of the place I grew up in Florida because it was very quiet, had a few hills, there are a few places in Florida that have a few little hills.

When we were kids we thought those were mountains.

[chuckles] Years later, I never suspected I'd end up living in Alaska.

And see some of the most beautiful mountains in the world.

Okay.

I tell you what, I think we about have a finished painting.

Take a little bit of thinner, a little touch of the Bright Red, and we'll sign this one.

Hope you've enjoyed it.

And once again, I hope you enjoyed the little critters that we had on the beginning of the show.

I certainly enjoyed bringing them to you.

So from all of us here, I'd like to wish you happy painting and God bless.