[music] Hi, welcome back to the studio.

I'm Nicholas Hankins, and it's a pleasure to have you with us for another fun, little happy painting so come on up to the canvas and let me show you what I've got going on and we'll get started.

As a matter of fact, I'll just pick up a little cadmium yellow, maybe on my two inch brush and tell you about this canvas as I put a little color on it.

So this is an 18 by 24 inch pre-stretched, double primed canvas, and I've already coated it with a nice thin even coating of the liquid white, which of course is what allows us to mix and blend our colors right here on the canvas without any laborious mixing processes on the palette.

We'll put a little bit of that yellow down in the water as well while we've got it on the brush maybe.

Got a nice bright sunset painting in mind today so we'll see what we come up with.

Without washing the brush, I'm just going to pick up some bright red and yellow ochre.

Mix them together on the brush, bright red, yellow ochre.

Just a little bit of both.

Let's come back up here.

And then just sort of using the edge of my brush like this just swing in a little, little cloudy shapes like big, big humid clouds that just sort of stretch across the sky.

Upper, upper atmosphere type clouds, upper level, upper level humidity.

Limited ceiling today, I guess we'd say.

Let's add little bit of that into the water, too.

This is just the bright red.

And I'm going to use a level stroke in the water.

I'm kind of using shallow crisscross strokes up in the sky and level strokes down in the water like this.

How about some alizarin crimson on that same brush, a little darker red, a little deeper, darker, richer, red.

Let's come back up here.

Same idea.

Just using the edge of the brush.

Sweeping in that color gives our sky some movement, which is pretty.

Better than an old boring sky for sure.

A little more crimson.

Add some of that to our water.

Just nice level strokes, something like that.

And lastly, we'll pick up some alizarin crimson, a little phthalo blue.

Just mix them together, maybe a little touch of black in there as well.

Got crimson, blue, and black.

And I'm just mixing these colors on the brush.

Just mixing them all on the brush.

All right, let's come back up here.

Ooh, that's pretty.

I like that.

I like purple.

It's a pretty color.

I don't put enough purple in my paintings.

I like it a lot.

And then down in the water, a little more of the same.

I might even add a little touch of the phthalo green to this that goes into the water.

Blue and then phthalo green and then into the crimson and black.

Just darken up, darken up the edges.

I don't want to kill all of that nice light area.

Something like so.

All right, let's wash brush.

Come on down here.

As you well know, we wash these brushes in odorless paint thinner because they don't like water.

Shake out the excess.

And like Bob says, you just have to beat the devil out of them.

All right, so we got a nice little start there.

Let's make sure we've got a nice, clean, dry brush and we'll come back.

And I'm just going to soften, soften all of this out.

Blend them together until we really can't tell where one color stops and the next color starts.

There we go.

Something about like so.

Just knock out that excess color that I picked up.

And we'll come into the water.

I'm going to blend through the light area first and then go all the way across.

Maybe pull a little more in from the edges.

Just soften it down and then go gently all the way across.

All right.

Good enough.

That's good enough.

Okay, let's have a little fun.

We'll go back into the, back into the background back here.

This is a, this is a scene pretty reminiscent of my territory up in East Tennessee.

I'll take a little blue and black and alizarin crimson.

And I'm adding all of this into some white, maybe even a little Prussian blue.

Just mix all that together, make a nice sort of a grayish lavender color.

Blue, alizarin crimson, a little black.

Wipe off my knife, let's find a, let's find a little one inch brush and load it with some of that purple, purple lavender gray hue.

Can't quite put my finger on exactly what that is, but purple, lavender, gray.

If I just see all of that, if I say that mouthful, it kind of covers everything.

There we go.

Best to cover your bases right now.

Put a little distant hill in there and then take my big brush and just kind of, just kind of soften it.

Maybe pull a little reflection into the water so I have a little misty area down at the base.

And then I can come back and have another little hill that sits in front of that hill.

Just tapping.

Just tap, tap, tap, tap tapping.

And again, a little reflection under there.

This is kind of, in my mind, this is kind of beside a lake and I can see the, the hills far away.

A little mist at the base.

Brush across that reflection.

If you want, as these get a little closer, if you want, you can take your brush and just sort of pop up.

Just take that existing paint on your canvas and pull it up and it makes the impression of little trees.

Maybe there's a few on the distant one too.

I was going to leave it alone, but maybe we have a little impression of all that stuff going on.

Let's change the flavor a little.

Let's add some Van Dyke brown and alizarin crimson.

I'm just picking those up on the brush.

We'll make this next batch a little, a little redder, a little darker.

We'll have a bigger, we'll have a bigger hill here.

It comes on down.

Maybe there's another little bump in it right there.

Just little rolling hills far away.

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

Kind of create the form and the shape in this little hill.

Let it come right on down toward the water.

And again, I'm going to add a little reflection of that into the water.

Sits right on that lake.

I'll soften the base pretty firmly.

Just tap it, tap away, all of that distinct color at the base.

You can even lift it up a little bit and we'll pull our reflection down, soften it and brush across very gently.

Plant some little trees at the top of this hill.

[Nic makes "tck, tck, tck" sounds] That's such a neat effect.

Just taking that paint and popping it up you can create thousands of little trees that live so far away.

We'll just litter the hillside with trees.

All right, let's change that color one more time.

Let's pick up a little Prussian blue, maybe a little more brown, maybe a little touch of sap green this time.

It's getting closer so maybe we can start to see, we can start to see some of the, the local color.

I can see that those little trees are green.

There we go.

As you look through things in the atmosphere, they, they look like they're farther and farther away.

Mostly because you're looking through more atmosphere and it changes the color and it changes the value a little bit.

Things tend to take on the color of the sky the farther away they get and the closer they get, the more you can tell what color the item actually is.

Like trees are actually green, so that's what you'd call the local color of the trees.

Now I'm just going to pop up a little indication of trees on that hill, the greener hill, the closer hill areas.

I can do that throughout.

A little bit of reflection in my water.

While we've got that color on the brush, might as well do it while we're working.

I heard someone say one time, that as you, a nice way to think about how to, how to treat your color as things move back into the distance, as you, as you move back into the distance, it's like you, you place a blue pane of glass every, every 30 yards or so, and the item just looks bluer and bluer as it goes back.

I hope that makes sense.

I thought that was a great little analogy for how to, how to think about the way color and value changes as you, as you move back into the distance.

You just look through more and more atmosphere and it, and it breaks up and diffuses the light.

That's why it takes on that particular color.

There we go.

A little ripple down at the shoreline of all these little, little foothills.

Just make sure your knife stays nice and level and straight.

Or as straight as you can, anyway.

We don't want to intentionally turn it one direction or the other.

All right.

Now, let's clean up a little spot to work here.

Move some of my distance color out of the way.

Now, let's make up a big batch of blue and blue and black, Van Dyke brown, some alizarin, and some sap green.

Just mix all that stuff together.

Great big pile of nice dark color.

Great big gobs of greasy, grimy tree color.

All right, let's find a little fan brush here.

Make sure I've got him clean and we'll go right into that dark color.

Load both sides real full.

And we'll plant some little... Maybe, there's a little island out here in the, in the lake, so sit him, sit him down right about there.

And we'll just kind of work our way back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

There's a little tree and there's a little friend for him.

Three little trees sitting out on the lake.

But they wouldn't be floating, so we've got to put something under, got to put something under to hold them up.

[chuckles] I'll put a little bit land in there in just a second.

Let's take some white and dark sienna and Van Dyke brown, all mixed together on the knife.

Just put a little indication of tree trunk two in there.

Then I'm going to go back to my, back to my one inch brush I was painting those little distant hills with.

And we'll add, we'll add some proper vegetation down here, under their, under their feet.

And we'll need a little reflection of all that.

Now, where the trees live, I'm going to pull down a little farther, so it feels sort of accurate as far as the perspective goes.

Brush across real gently.

And let's find, actually that little fan brush will work just fine.

Let's pick up some liquid white.

We're going to soften our, soften our color just a bit.

I'm going to pick up some liquid white and add a touch of both yellows, Indian yellow, cad yellow, some of that base color in there.

Make a nice little highlight color.

Let's come back and sprinkle a little bit of this bright, sunshiny sun, sunlight, sunset, sunset highlight.

It's going to be pretty intense because that's a pretty intense color in the sky.

And I don't want to lose all the darks in the trees.

That wouldn't be good.

Want to preserve those as much as I can.

And then same with the other vegetation so I've dipped my, my little one inch brush into some liquid white, pulling it in one direction through all those yellows.

And we'll add a little highlight down here.

Same way, I'm just going to vary the yellows as I go.

Here's a little ochre still with some of that base color in there, too.

It mixes with the yellows and it keeps it from becoming too bright and sort of, sort of odd looking.

Maybe we see a little bit of that highlight color in the water as well.

And tell you what's fun.

Let's take a, let's take a filbert, I'm going to load both sides of the filbert just full of this dark color and I'm actually going to take my palette knife here and let's take, I saved some of that lavender.

This would be a good use for it.

I saved some of that lavender and white.

So I'm going to add a little black to that, a little black, maybe a little sienna and some liquid white.

Mix up a little, a little softer version of my highlight color here.

Just park that to the side.

We'll use it a minute.

Let's take some of that dark color on the filbert and pull one side [Nic makes "whhht" sound] through the light color.

So now I have dark on one side of the brush and then light on the other side.

Dark on one side, light on the other side.

There you go.

Now let's come up here and just use that little filbert brush and we'll paint some little rocks that live down at the, the edge of this little tree island that we've established out here.

Looks like the type of island that should have a name, like it should be somebody's, somebody's island.

Old man so and so's island.

A little water ripple around there.

Old man Crenshaw set those trees out a long time ago.

[chuckles] It's silly, isn't it?

Got to make up stories when you paint.

Bob said it.

Bob said it, you've got to make up little stories when you paint, makes it more fun.

Let's have, let's have some foreground stuff down here.

Just taking some of that same dark tree color using my two inch brush.

Now, I'm drawing the two inch brush through the paint in one direction, in one direction only.

Like that.

And I'll turn the brush up so that rounded corner is to the top.

Then we'll come in and put a nice little silhouette in there.

And then down here I don't have to be too careful.

We can just kind of hit it any old way and fill it up with dark.

That's one of those areas that Bob used to say, "Oh, you could, you could just about paint that in with a paint roller."

[chuckles] Tongue in cheek, of course, but point being, the important part of that is just that we make it dark.

We'll kind of cut off this edge over here.

Frame it in with some nice, pretty darks there.

And now, now let's gather up some of that dark.

I've sort of spread it out there.

Might even need a little more.

I'm going to take some more blue and black and green and alizarin, kind of fortify my color.

Might even have some phthalo green to that now.

Just get a nice big batch of dark because I still need some.

I'm going to switch over to a, I'm going to switch gears to a big, big, big fan brush.

Make sure he's nice and clean and wiggle it through the paint.

Load it full of lots of paint.

Wiggle it through the paint and sharpen it.

Because these brushes come to a nice chiseled edge there.

I hope you can see that.

Maybe if I hold it up there, that'll register.

Just a nice, chiseled edge.

Okay, let's come up here and we'll have some bigger, closer trees.

Had to have my bigger fan brush for the bigger trees.

Isn't that a striking silhouette against that sunset?

I love to paint dark stuff.

Dark stuff silhouetted against real bright, pretty sunset light.

Shoo, big tree.

Almost needed a one inch or a two inch brush for that one.

That's a big, big, big tree.

But that's all right.

I have another one maybe sitting right there.

Nice and dark.

Evergreens are usually, they tend to be very dark and they're nice to, nice to have on the edges of your painting because they kind of frame everything, which is always cool.

Frame all that pretty bright stuff in the background with dark.

Right on down.

[Nic makes "tchooka, tchooka, tchooka" sounds] Now these little trees need a trunk in them too so I'm going to sharpen the top just a little bit.

Sometimes you can just take your knife and ram it through the paint and it'll make little, little far away tree tops without you really even having to work at it.

It's a nice little bonus.

Let's see, let's take and mix up, I've got to put some liquid white my other color so I need to make sure I have a nice firm white in this.

Cut off a little roll of that color and we'll come up and just touch in a little indication of tree trunk.

[chuckles] Speaking of tree trunk, if you want it... Let me back up and take just a little brown here.

If you wanted, you could have one maybe he's expired.

A little tree that went past his expiration date there.

It's just some Van Dyke Brown.

Then we'll take a little bit of that highlight color and, pardon my arm here put a little highlight on him.

[Nic makes "tk, tk" sounds] Something like that.

Before I get into highlights on those big trees, let me give, let me give that little guy some arms.

I don't want him armless.

I want to have some little little twigs, little branches.

I'm going to extend the top just a bit.

Just put some little, just put some little branches on that one.

This is a little paint thinner and Van Dyke brown.

Make sure you have enough paint thinner in your paint though that it, then it will flow readily off your brush.

There we go.

If you have any trouble getting that paint to come off or you can't draw a nice smooth line, normally it's because you don't have enough paint thinner in your brush so add a little more to it and it'll be just fine.

Be just fine.

Let's grab a clean, well, actually, I'll just stick to my, I'll just stick to my other little fan brush that has the light color in it already.

We'll load it up with some maybe phthalo green, cad yellow.

[Nick makes "pshoo, shoo, shoo" sounds That's pretty.

Let's come up here and put some little highlights on our closer evergreens.

Or accents, I guess.

Truth is, if it's this late at night, these will mostly be in silhouette anyway but we get to use our, we get to use our old artist's license here.

I get to pull out the artist's license and say we can have, we can have light where ever we want it.

I think Bob used to say, "when you buy your first tube of paint, you get your artist's license."

Then you, that says you get to do whatever you want, so long as it feels good and nobody gets hurt.

I'm going to pull a one inch brush, clean one inch brush now through some of that liquid white, all these yellows and we'll add some nice, nice pretty highlights down here.

And I'm just going to vary the flavor of the highlight as I go.

Sometimes I'll have maybe a little more yellow ochre.

Sometimes we'll use a little more cad yellow, sometimes Indian yellow, and I'll probably thump a little bright red here before all is said and done.

But just work on these little bush, bushes in one section at a time.

Just work on one little bush at a time.

Don't get greedy and don't get in too big a hurry.

Of course, when you're at home, you have unlimited time and you can work as much as you want to on all these little things but it's important not to get into big a hurry.

Add a little exposed land down here, a little rock and soil and etc.

Just in a couple of places.

And then we'll take some of our pretty highlight color and just graze it.

[Nic makes "tchoom, shoom" sounds] A little on this side, just barely graze it and let that paint break.

All right.

Back to my, back to my little one inch brush, we'll carry on here.

Pulling it in one direction through that color.

Put some more little springtime type bushes.

This feels like a springtime scene to me.

My favorite time of year.

My absolute favorite time of year.

Of course, I live down in Florida now and it's, it's sort of perpetually summer, but that's all right.

I won't complain too much about that.

Somebody's got to suffer through that kind of weather.

There we go.

All right.

Let's take a little liner brush and some paint thinner, soften up some of that real dark green that we mixed up.

Get it real wet, just link ink or water.

And let's come up here and we'll have a few little, a few little plants growing by the edge of the water.

Give it a little detail against all that pretty silhouette.

All that nice bright light.

It needs some dark silhouettes in there, too.

All right.

Well, I'd say with that, we've just about finished this painting.

I hope you enjoyed it, I hope you'll paint it.

and I hope you come back and see us again.

Thanks for watching.

And until 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]