[music] Hi there.

Welcome back.

I'm Nicholas Hankins and I'm delighted to have you with me and as well to share with you another one of Bob's beautiful paintings that he created for his series 32 for The Joy of Painting.

Come on up to the canvas here and I'll show you what's going on.

As you can see, I've already been busy with some black gesso.

I used just an old hardware store type foam applicator, and I just used that to draw in some basic little tree shapes back here.

And then I used a natural sea sponge or you could use just a crumpled up paper towel to blot on a few little shapes up here to sort of approximate foliage.

And then I had an old, an older, worn out script liner brush that I painted some little tree branches on there.

So that's basically all I did.

I allowed that to dry completely.

And then I covered the entire canvas with an extremely thin, even coating of the liquid clear.

And you caught me just applying a little bit of yellow ochre and Indian yellow to the canvas.

And these are, the Indian yellow is, is a transparent color.

Yellow ochre is opaque, but I'm spreading it out nice and thin.

Transparent just means you can see through it.

That's all and, and the ochre is more of an opaque color.

So let me set that brush down here and I want to mix up a nice big batch of, of color here that's going to be made from alizarin crimson and some sap green.

Almost equal portions, alizarin crimson and sap green.

I might have just a touch more crimson than sap green.

You can make this, this makes a gorgeous brown and you can sort of tilt it one side or the other.

You can tilt to the green side or you can tilt to the red side.

It's, it's entirely up to you.

I like, I like it to be sort of balanced right in the middle or maybe just a touch to the red side.

Just, just depends on what mood you're in I suppose.

So, wipe my knife off there and I'm just going to keep the, keep the party going with that same big brush.

We'll go back into that red, reddish brown and I'm going to come up here and just start tinting this corner of the canvas a little more and stretch it over, carry it over a little farther there.

Now you can change it on the fly.

Let's say, let's say you wanted to sort of swing it back in a different direction.

I just picked up a little bit of green there.

Not that I was really unhappy with that color, but it is good to know that if you want to kind of sort of doctor a color on the fly there, you can just you can just grab a little bit of color and add to it and off you go.

No harm done, no harm done.

And I have a little bit of that color all over the bottom of the painting down here too.

Just all over the base.

Stretch it out nice and thin and spread it out.

And I'm going to let it sort of carry over and into some of this, some of this yellows.

Really warms it up nice.

And very moody, very moody paintings you can create with this black gesso and liquid clear.

There's just, just all sorts of marvelous supplies and ways to use them.

I want to show you how to use some of them.

And like Bob always used to say, just show you how to do them, give you some ideas, show you how to use some of the equipment, and then turn you loose on the world and come up with your own thing.

All right.

That's probably good for a minute.

Set that brush down.

I'm going to grab a clean brush, clean, dry, two inch brush and pick up a little titanium white and we'll lighten up the, we'll light up the other side of the painting.

Now, Bob has extremely bright light coming from this side of the painting.

This is, this is Titanium White.

And I'm just going to add a little glow over here and start working it in and it's going to, it's going to obscure a little bit some of that foliage in the background.

Just sort of makes it look like it's bathed in haze and sunlight.

Stretch it on over.

There we go.

Wipe that brush off.

And I tell you what.

This may be my favorite part.

Well, I have to, have to admit, of all the paintings that Bob did prepare for his series 32, this one's my favorite.

This one is my absolute favorite.

So I really want to, I really want to do you a good job on this one.

Show you how to paint it.

But one of the reasons it's my favorite is Bob paints these beautiful little sunrays in here.

Watch this.

I'm just going to take a one inch brush, a little titanium white, and just pull, like that.

Do it fast, do it fast.

And then you can have some light rays just zinging through there.

Isn't that cool?

I just love that.

I just love that.

It's so cool.

It's such a neat look and it works so well, particularly with this method.

I just thought that is the neatest thing I've ever seen.

But you can't overwork them, Nic.

I'm talking to myself, can't overwork them, put the brush down.

And we'll just soften them a little bit with that big brush like that.

All right.

Isn't that, isn't that just wild?

Isn't that just wild?

I think that's so neat.

All right, maybe just a little more hazy look down here at the base.

Something about like so.

And we can wash a brush.

Let's do it to it.

Let's see.

Let's wash. Let's wash that one that has a dark color in it first.

We'll get it cleaned up.

Now, as Bob often says, we wash our brushes in odorless, paint thinner, not soap and water, and we'll shake out the excess.

Give it a little wrap on the easel leg and we're ready to go again.

All right.

Let's take, let's take, I'm going to grab a fan brush and let's pick up some Van Dyke Brown and dark sienna.

I'll just mix them together on the brush, maybe, maybe even a little midnight black.

Van Dyke brown, dark sienna, a little midnight black.

All three of those dark colors.

Now just gonna get an idea maybe, well actually, I tell you what, before we do that, before we do that, let's take a little since I've got this brush dirty, let's employ it here.

Let's pick up that two inch brush that had the white in it.

And I'm going to load it with some yellow, cad yellow, yellow ochre, and a little sap green, too.

We might as well get a little Indian yellow in there too since we're hitting all the yellows.

And let's come up here and maybe, maybe far away we'll kind of set some of this in first.

Just going to put a little, little sunlight zinging across some of these little bushes back here.

We could get a little bright red in there, why not.

Just tapping the brush, tapping the brush into the paint and giving it a little scoot or a little push forward like that.

There you go.

Now, just tap and turn your brush a little bit.

Tap, turn your brush.

Can make all kinds of little things grow up back here.

Just varying that color as I go.

Picking up a little bit of the green, a little bit of that homemade brown.

And we already have the black gesso back there.

So this automatically makes all this stuff show up just, just beautifully.

Just beautifully.

You've got plenty of dark back there.

Just striving for a slightly different color every time I, every time I load the brush up.

A little of this, a little of that.

It's kind of like cooking.

It's kind of like cooking.

After you get comfortable with it, you can just start throwing things together and it makes all sorts of lovely little things and you kind of develop things to taste.

We might give you a recipe to work from, but you get to, you get to tweak it, make it your own.

That's usually when it's the best anyway, when you, when you start tweaking.

Making things your own.

Now, I've got this vision here of a path.

That's what Bob's painted into his painting.

So I want to, I want to maybe darken my color just a little more, a little more of that green, sap green and some of that homemade brown.

And let's get a little feeling for some grass that's just growing right here at the edge of the path.

Tapping this very level, kind of like this, then I'm going to come back to my fan brush.

We'll talk about that idea I had there for the, for the trees.

Not exactly sure how Bob painted his, but I think this is how he did it.

This is what I've, what I've decided on.

I think he used a fan brush so we'll take, take our browns and just hold that brush into the canvas.

This is the way I like to paint these big trees anyway so I'll show you what works for me and what I came up with that gave me a pretty close approximation of what Bob had done there.

Close enough to, close enough that you could paint your own version of it and start tweaking it, making it, making it your own.

There's a big tall tree there.

These are closer.

They're just, kind of just like the ones in the background.

Only these, these are closer.

He's got a friend right there.

[Nic makes "wwhhht" sound] It's just Van Dyke brown, dark sienna and a little black.

If you need to strengthen it a little bit, you can add a little more black to it, make it cut a real nice silhouette back there.

See, we've got another one lives right about there.

[Nic makes "shhooowh" sound] Now you're going to have to make up your own noises.

You're, you're welcome to try mine, but that is definitely something that you have to come up with on your own.

You, you tweak your noises to get the effects you want.

Everybody's got very personalized little sound effects.

As long as they work for you, that's the main thing.

Let's see, we've got a big tree standing right there.

[Nic makes "shzzzzshong" sound] I'm trying out some new ones.

I'm glad you're here.

I'm trying out some new ones today.

We'll see how they do.

If we, if we hit a dud, you'll know it.

You'll know not to use that one.

Cur-zam, there we go.

That one might be a little out there.

Now.

Well, you don't know till you try.

[chuckles] Don't know till you try.

Let's take that same dirty brush and just pick up a little titanium white.

Maybe a little touch of my, my homemade brown.

That's such a pretty brown, that crimson and green.

We'll load it up on the brush, then we'll come back and add a little highlight to these trees.

I'm just going to tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

[Nic makes "tchooka, tchooka, tchooka, tchooka" sounds] There we go.

And then work it back into the dark just a little bit.

It makes those trees look round.

Very, very cool.

You can always light it up a little more if you need to.

As long we keep our, our highlights over here on the side they belong.

That's the one thing you've got to keep consistent.

Is just making sure that your highlights are in line with your sunshine and your light source.

Light source is coming from the right.

Of course, we can definitely tell it in this one for sure.

For sure.

Just little, little tap, tap, tap with the edge of the brush.

And then I'm coming back and kind of tapping it a little more softly and letting it work back into the dark, into the shadows on the other side of the tree.

There we go.

Maybe, maybe even a little touch brighter in a couple of spots if it feels like the sunlight and the sun rays would be zinging on that particular part of the tree.

You can, you can jazz them up just a little bit, and that's always kind of cool.

There you go.

Some on this one.

As you well know, you can't leave any of them out.

Trees get jealous.

And jealous trees are trouble.

Sometimes you can even grab a clean fan brush if you want to if it's not softening fast enough for you.

Just sort of blend it around a little bit more.

Let's come back and get this one.

[Nic makes "tchooka, tchooka, tchooka" sounds] Now, a lot of these, a lot of these evergreens like this, I'm, I'm assuming these are like Douglas fir or something like that, these big, tall, kind of sparse evergreens that don't have a lot of dense foliage on them.

They're just sort of branch here, branch there and they've got some, got some needles hanging around here and there.

Most of these have pretty rough bark so don't be afraid to, don't be afraid to try this with that fan brush where you just give it a little, a little tap, tap, tap.

Maybe take a little bright red and put it in there.

And tap, tap, tap.

Might be pretty.

Just a little taste, though.

I don't want to turn it pink necessarily.

Just make it a little brighter here and there.

Here we go.

I tend to, tend to get real quiet [chuckles] when I'm doing this detailed stuff.

I don't know why I do that, but I do.

Oh, well, oh well.

We'll take some paint thinner on our liner brush now.

And I'm just going to kind of dunk get right into that mixture of those three colors that I was using.

And I want to soften this paint up just thin as ink or water.

Get it real, real runny.

Here we go.

Now we can come up here and start to add some little branches on our, on our trees.

Some of them reach across.

They reach all the way across there.

Come across their own trunk and cross over the other trunks.

Just never know.

You, you arrange them the way you want them to look, certainly but most of these types of trees have branches that come down.

Then they start to turn back up.

I'm not sure why that is, but I have noticed that about them.

A couple up here.

We don't have to get super duper involved.

We are going to have some foliage and needles and boughs and etc.

on these trees but if you have any trouble getting your paint to stick or flow on the canvas or to come off in a nice little fine line, just add a little more paint thinner to it.

That's usually the, that's usually the issue.

There we go.

Just using the tip of the brush.

Put the tip of the brush on there and let it kind of sort of feel like you're painting them with your maybe your, your bigger muscles in your arm.

I just try to put the tip of the brush on there and then I try to swing everything around from my elbow or from my, from my shoulder.

That usually allows you to make a little, little finer line.

There we go.

Just let them, let them kind of reach around, have fun wherever they want to go.

That's where they ought to go.

Some of them get real gnarly.

And then cross over in front.

See that adds a lot of neat, a lot of neat dimension to your painting when that branch wraps down out of the tree and wraps around and comes on in front.

Just periodically picking up a little paint thinner.

It is important to note, though, that when you're, when you're softening your paint down and you pull that paint thinner out of the bucket and you put it on your palette, it will start to evaporate because it's a, it's a petroleum based thing so occasionally you do have to replenish your paint thinner just a little bit.

Because it'll start to dry up once you get it out of the bucket and get it out in the open air.

All right, we played around with branches for quite a while here, so we'll mix up some dark color and put some, put some pine boughs on these things.

There we go.

Got to show you how to make them.

That's the most important part.

You've seen how to make them.

Clean my palette off a little bit here.

Now let's mix up, we can use that homemade brown, sure.

I'll start with that and I'm going to add some Prussian blue and some more sap green and Van Dyke brown and alizarin crimson.

Just all of those dark color, even a little black.

If it's dark, it's fair game.

Throw it in there.

Pick all that color up, turn it over.

That should be just fine.

We'll try that and see how we like it.

As long as it's dark, as long as it's dark.

Let's grab a big fan brush here.

Grab a big number six fan brush, and I'm going to load that absolutely full of paint on both sides.

Nice and full.

Now let's come back up here and I'm just going to take the brush and tap it.

Tap it to add some, some needles there and see we want all that stuff, that hangy down, stuff that, that fan brush makes.

We want to see that and have it work for us.

And it's nice and dark, so it cuts a real pretty silhouette against, against all that light stuff.

Against all that hazy, hazy sunshine back there.

Boy, I've walked in the woods on days like this.

I just, I can, I can feel that.

I can smell it.

I love being out in the woods.

Just love it, just love it.

Let's come up and get this one.

And I'm trying to leave some little spaces in here.

Now, I don't want to, I don't necessarily want to cover up all these little branches I just spent all that time making.

I kind of want to employ them into the painting a little bit.

I want them to feel like they're holding some of this stuff up, but I don't want to cover them all up.

I want to see some of them still showing.

So that's good.

That's good.

Leave some space in there, leave some breathing room for your trees.

It would be a shame if we, if we choked them out with too many needles That wouldn't do anybody any good.

But let them, let them sit out there and be pretty.

You want to see some of the trunk, some of the foliage, all that good stuff.

Plenty of paint on that brush.

So it should do that.

Now, let's take, tell you what, let me take, I've got another little clean fan brush there.

This is the one I was blending some of that color with.

I'm going to pick up a little liquid white and some of that, some of that greenish color, that base color there I was using, maybe a little sap green too.

And just load some of that into my brush and let's back and pick out now some little highlights on a few of these trees.

This is my smaller fan brush.

This is my little number three but you could certainly use the number six.

It works just as well.

Since this one was clean, I just grabbed it.

And it seems to be working fine.

Seems to be working fine.

Now be advised, [chuckles] you can, you can get too much of this.

Highlights are kind of like, I tell people at the, at the classes we teach, I tell people highlights on trees are a little bit like salt and pepper that you put on your food.

A little bit's good, but if you get too much, it kind of ruins it.

So think of it like that.

You just sprinkle on a little to taste and then you, then you leave it alone and get out of there.

Go a little brighter here as I get closer to the sunshine.

There we go.

All right.

Now let's come back in here and see what we want to do with the, all this stuff at the bottom.

Right?

We've got some work to do down here, so we'll go back to that big brush, tap, tap, tap into the paint.

Push it, give it a little scoot and push up a little ridge of paint, just like that.

All right, let's come up here and set the base of these trees into the painting a little bit better.

Maybe, maybe we pick up a little more, a little more cad yellow, maybe a little touch of white.

Why not, we'll go a little brighter.

And here and there, we'll let some of that, some of that, same nice bright sunshine just sort of sprinkle through there.

Light up some little areas back there.

And take a clean brush and just soften it, soften it back into the background a little bit as it disappears into those bushes.

Before I totally leave my liner brush work alone here, I'm going to take a little Van Dyke Brown and just pop in a couple of little sticks sort of peeking through back here.

A few little things showing.

So it feels like there's something back there to hold all that stuff up.

And tell you what, let's take our, let's take our big brush we were painting that foliage on our trees with and I'm going to go back into the Van Dyke Brown, dark sienna.

Van Dyke brown, dark sienna.

I wiped a little bit of that green out of there first and I just want to take and get a little feeling of this, this path in here.

Now, I don't need tremendous amounts of dark because I already have quite a bit, really.

I'm just going to add a few darker shadows winding through the forest floor back here.

And then we'll switch and get our, we'll get our lighter brush, our other fan brush and pick up a little, a little dark sienna, a little Van Dyke brown, mix it with that white.

And then back here I'm going to, I'm just going to kind of whisper,whisper, whisper across here, here and there.

Kind of bumped into my tree.

There we go.

[chuckles] Whisper across that path.

Put a little sunshine on it.

Something like that.

And now we've got, we've got about a minute left, so let's have a little fun.

Let's take some Van Dyke brown, midnight black, load it up full and we've got, we've got a heck of a tree.

[Nic makes "wwhhht" sound] Lives right there.

And he lives all over this side of the canvas.

Big one, big one, big one.

I'm going to darken all of this.

And we are standing right behind this tree.

Sort of peeking out from behind to see what's going on.

There we go, something like that.

He needs a little bit of accent on him so we can take some of that same, some of that same highlight color and just kind of, just kind of sun dapple this side of him a little bit.

Ooh, isn't that, isn't that a nice expression?

Sun dappled.

Everything's better when it's sun dappled.

[chuckles] I guess.

Trees are anyway.

Go back to our liner brush get a little more paint thinner, Van Dyke brown.

We'll put maybe a big branch or two that snakes across there.

I know Bob had one, one particularly large branch that just sort of snuck across that part of the painting right there.

A couple other little doers up here and there.

Little dooders.

Little doers and dooders.

Tap in a little grass at the bottom, and we'll call that one finished.

Thanks so much for joining me and we'll see you next time.

Happy painting.

[music] [announcer] To order Nicholas Hankins' book of 13 Never before Seen painting projects from Bob Ross, call one 800 Bob Ross or visit BobRoss.com [music] [music]