- Hello, I'm Bob Ross, and I'd like to welcome you to the 18th Joy of Painting series.

First of all, let me thank you for inviting me back for another series of painting shows.

And if this is your first time with us, allow me to extend a personal invitation for you to drag out your big brushes and a few colors and paint along with us each week as we put some of nature's masterpieces on canvas.

Tell you what, I'm gonna start out today and have 'em run all the color across the screen that you need to paint along with me.

And while they're doing that, let me tell you what I've already done up here.

Today I have my standard old 18 by 24 inch double-primed canvas, and onto that, I've taken a piece of contact paper and sort of cut like a half an oval shape, and I just stuck it on.

And we've covered the entire canvas with a thin, even coat of liquid white.

This is a wet-on-wet painting technique, so then what normally the first thing that we'll do is we cover the canvas with something to make it wet and slick.

Today we've used liquid white, and all that does is allow us to actually blend color right on the canvas rather than working ourselves to death on the palette.

Tell you what, let's go ahead and get started.

Today let's start off with the old two-inch brush, and let's go right up here and get this least little amount of phthalo blue, it's a very strong color, you need very little, just pull it out, and then tap the bristles into the color.

That assures that we get a nice, even distribution of color all the way through the bristles.

And that's exactly what we're looking for.

Okay, let's go right up here.

Thought today we'd do just a happy little scene.

I wanna show you a very simple little scene that you can do even if you've never painted before.

This is a very easy, very nice little scene, and I think you'll find it very enjoyable and rewarding.

There we go, all we're doing here is just using little crisscross strokes, little x's.

That's really all it amounts to, little tiny x's.

And the color, the blue color, is always blending with the liquid white that's on the canvas.

And automatically, automatically the sky gets lighter and lighter toward the horizon.

And that's what we're looking for in a landscape.

We just blend it together here a little.

Okay, then very lightly we can just go across.

All this does is just removes all the brush strokes and sorta pulls everything together just like so.

There.

Maybe we'll have a little bit of water in this painting.

If you've painted with me before, you know I'm an absolute nut for water.

I think it's so beautiful, and in this technique, it's one of the nicest, easiest things to paint.

So you'll find water very enjoyable to do.

So we'll just take a small amount of that phthalo blue again back on the same old brush.

Let's go right up here, and you have to make a decision here, where does your water live?

Maybe... maybe it's right in here, just take and pull from the outside in.

That's all there is to it.

Very lightly.

Now then, we'll take it up to, oh, about there.

Doesn't matter, doesn't matter, wherever you want it.

On this piece of canvas, you have absolute and total power.

You can do anything that you wanna do here.

You have unbelievable power.

You can move mighty rivers, push trees around, and mountains.

Anything that you want to do on this piece of canvas.

There, okay, and that'll end up being our water.

Let's wash our old brush.

We wash our brush with odorless thinner.

Let me say that again, odorless thinner.

If you don't use odorless thinner, you're gonna find yourself, (banging) (chuckling) you're gonna find yourself working alone very, very quickly.

Really recommend you use odorless thinner.

Tell you what, let's take a fan brush today, and let's build us a happy little cloud.

And for that, we'll go right into titanium white.

Be right back, gonna get the least little touch of the bright red, least, least little touch, though.

It goes a long way.

Load a lot of color into the bristles.

See, both sides are full of color.

Very good, now then, we have to make some big decision.

Maybe there's some happy little clouds that live in our world, so take the corner of the brush and very gently begin making all these tiny little circles.

Tiny little circles, add a little more paint.

There we go.

And just begin forming your basic cloud shapes.

That's all we're looking for at this point are very basic little shapes.

It's all we're looking for.

Okay, just apply a little color.

Now then, I'm gonna take a two-inch brush that's nice and clean and dry, and I have several of each brush going here.

And very gently, very gently, just blend the base of this mountain, or cloud.

Son of a gun, I done called this a mountain.

There we are, now, very lightly, lift upward.

See, that just sort of fluffs it.

Then gently, gently, two hairs and some air, just blend it a little bit, and we have a cloud.

Now when you're painting clouds, work in layers doing the cloud that you think's the farthest away first.

And then we'll come back and reload the brush, and we can go back in here and make another one.

Now sometimes we use a very firm paint.

Sometimes you'll find the paint maybe is a little too thick.

If that ever happens, add the least little touch of liquid white along with the titanium white.

Least little amount because when you add liquid white here, your blending ability drops drastically.

So don't add any more than you have to to get the paint to come off your brush onto the canvas.

And we can put another happy little cloud that lives right here.

And in your world, you have to make these decisions.

You have to decide how many clouds live in your painting.

There, see, I think there's one lives right there.

Right there, maybe up in here there's a little stringy one.

It just sorta floats along, he just lays up here and has a good time, watches everything happen.

Now then, back to our clean, dry two-inch brush, and be sure it's dry.

It really needs to be dry.

Blend the base of it, fluff it just like we did before.

And that easy, you have another happy little cloud.

And you can put as many or as few as you want in your world.

Maybe we'll do one more, it's good practice.

Good practice, and the more you practice, the better you get, no matter what you're doing, whether it's painting or anything else.

But if there's a secret to this or any other style of painting, it's simply practice.

There we go, now very gently, once again, we just wanna blend the base of this, just the base.

Lift it, fluff it, there.

Very lightly, very lightly, just go across.

And so now see, we have all these layers of clouds now.

And you can come along in here and, you know, maybe once again, maybe you wanna put some little stringy clouds in here, little floaters.

And those are very easy, all you have to do is just sorta lay 'em in.

Blend 'em the least little amount.

And then very lightly just go over 'em.

Isn't that something?

Okay, maybe we'll have a little mountain that lives way, way back in the distance here.

Very simple little mountain, one that's very quiet, very subdued.

We'll take some black, a little van dyke brown, little touch of alizarin crimson in there.

Like so.

Maybe the least little touch of prussian blue, there.

Okay, now then pull the paint out as flat as you can get it.

Really get tough with it.

Go down with the knife, touch, and just cut across, that way you get a small roll of paint, lives right on the edge of the knife.

Okay, let's go up here.

Now then, we have to make a big decision.

Where does our little mountain live?

And we want this to be a far away, very distant little mountain.

So we don't want it to get too big on us.

These rascals will grow on you very quickly.

They'll take over your whole world.

And you have to make some decisions, where you want little bumps, little tops.

All you have to do is just put 'em on just like so.

Now the only thing that we're worried about at this point is a nice top edge up here.

We could care less what's happening in here.

Doesn't make any difference to us at this point.

Now then, once again, take a two-inch brush, grab this, and pull it.

Because the liquid white's on the canvas, you can move this color.

It's wet, and it'll slip and slide.

There we go, grab it and pull.

Maybe we'll just let this blend right on out to nothing, just sort of float away out here.

Just like so.

Now then, just by using brush strokes, if you wanna make a little mountain that's far away, just by using the little brush strokes here, you can make the indication of highlights and shadows, all kinds of little things.

I hope you can see those.

If you can't, when you're painting, I guarantee, you'll understand what I'm saying there because they'll show up, it'll look like all kinds of beautiful little things that are just happening out there automatically, and you don't have to work at all.

And this is a lazy man's way of painting.

Shoot, I'll tell you what, let's take some white, little bit of phthalo blue, a little of that mountain color just to gray it down some.

There, maybe in our world, way back in the distance there, there lives a little foothill.

Now push, see, hit it and give it a little push.

Make it slide a little, that loads paint right out at the end of the bristles.

Let's go ahead up here.

Okay, now we have a little foothill, maybe it lives, yep, you're right, you're right, there it is.

Little foothill lives right out there, see?

We'll just let it disappear into nothing.

Very soft, quiet, gentle little thing.

It lives down here at the base of this big mountain, and he just watches everything that goes on.

There we are.

Okay, now then, while we have that color on the brush, maybe we wanna make the indication of a little reflection down here.

To do that, just pull straight down with a little bit of the color, but straight down, that's important.

And gently across.

Now that'll give us an indication of a little reflection.

Other thing we can do, lift upward, very short little strokes.

That'll make it look like little distant trees that live way back there, far, far away.

Very subdued, though.

All right, now one thing that gives a painting a lot of depth and distance is different planes or layers in it.

So let's make several different layers in here.

We'll just use that old mountain color here.

I think that was just black, a little prussian blue, little van dyke brown, alizarin crimson, and to that, I'm gonna add the least little touch of sap green.

Not much, just a little.

Once again, tap the brush just to load it.

Now then.

Let's begin putting in all different layers or planes.

Maybe there's one that lives right here, and it comes right down like that.

Let your imagination go and decide where you want all these little things to live.

There, okay, now then, each time you put one of these little peninsulas out here though, we need a reflection under it, it's very important.

Pull straight down, go gently across.

And then you can make a decision where the next one lives.

Maybe the next one is right here.

Now see, you may, it's almost a natural tendency to want to put all of these in and then put the reflections, but when you pull these down, it would destroy the top of that one.

Hope all that makes sense, so do 'em one at a time.

Don't be in too big a hurry.

Speed will come automatically with practice.

There.

Right now, we're just trying to learn the basic technique.

Maybe, shoot, maybe there's another one right here.

I don't know.

Just let it go, that's the beauty of this, you really don't have to set and plan every little detail out.

Have a general idea in your mind of where you wanna go with this painting and what you want it to look like.

So basically, all you have to do is figure out the time of year and the time of day.

And other than that, you're free.

You can do anything here that you want.

Let's take a little cad yellow, be right back, grab a little of the sap green.

We'll just use a fan brush today, doesn't matter.

Little touch of yellow ochre.

There, maybe a little more of the green here.

There, that's a beautiful green.

But by mixing color on the fan brush like this, you have a multitude of color happening in the bristles.

Look at all the different values and colors.

My gosh, you'd work forever to do that if you were trying to mix each one of those separate colors.

This way, it happens automatically.

Then we can go back up in here and we can just begin pushing in some highlights.

We need that dark underneath, though, so this nice green color will show.

There.

You know what?

Let me grab another fan brush.

I see something here I'd like to do.

Let's take another fan brush.

We'll go right into some black, brown, same old colors again.

Crimson, sap green.

Little bit of the prussian blue.

Very dark color.

In my mind, see how you can change your mind?

I see little trees, maybe there's little evergreens that live way back here.

Just take the top corner of this fan brush, and we'll put in the indication of little trees that are far away, we don't want too much detail there.

If you put too much detail in trees this far away, you'll lose that illusion of distance.

So just a little, there.

There we go, let 'em just come right on down and disappear into nothing.

There we are.

Now then.

Back to our fan brush.

And we can put in all those beautiful little green areas.

There we are, isn't that fantastic?

Now work in layers, though, watch here, watch here.

See, here comes another one out here on this little peninsula that sticks out into the water.

That easy.

That easy, and you can just put layer after layer after layer.

Now then, let's take a little touch of the liquid white.

A little liquid white.

I'll put the least little touch of the bright red into the color.

Pull it out as flat as you can get it, and then cut across like that, okay?

Now then, let's go up here.

And let's just cut in a little water line.

Now even though this water line is dropping down, down, down, you want to keep these lines basically straight, otherwise it'll look like, it'll look like the water's gonna run right out of your painting and get your floor all wet.

So you can go anywhere you wanna go with these, but try to keep 'em as straight as possible.

There.

And maybe here and there, maybe you want to put the indication of a little ripple here and there.

Those too need to be as straight as possible.

Try to keep those straight.

Tell you what, let's get crazy.

We'll go right back to the old fan brush that I had that had the black and the prussian blue and the brown and green, crimson.

Load a lot of color into the bristles.

And maybe in our world there lives... Maybe there's a nice evergreen tree that lives right here, just touch.

Give yourself sort of a little center line.

Now we're gonna use just the corner of the brush, just the corner.

See there, and these little evergreens live right here in these fan brushes.

All you have to do is sorta scare 'em out.

And as you work down the tree, add more and more pressure.

We're still using the corner of the brush, but we're just pushing harder and harder.

And automatically your tree will get larger and larger as it works downward, and normally, trees look better if that's the case.

There we go, now then, you know me, I think everybody should have a friend.

So let's go right here and give this little tree a friend.

Same thing, see just use a corner of the brush and work back and forth.

Like so.

There.

And that easy, we got a couple of beautiful little evergreen trees.

Now then, we can take the knife, take a little titanium white, little dark sienna, mix it together.

Pull it out very flat, and we cut across.

Once again, we get our little roll of paint.

Normally, normally, we always load the knife with that little roll of paint, so spend a little time practicing so you can do that without even thinking about it.

Okay, little bit right there.

There we go, and that just gives the indication of some little tree trunks on our trees.

We don't want 'em to be weak and fall over and drop into the water.

We'll take a little bit of black, a little yellow, and make a very dark green.

We'll put that on the fan brush.

A lot of color, just load both sides full of color.

Let's go right up here.

Now then, in my world, maybe the light's coming from the right, so we wanna put more emphasis on the right side of the tree than we do on the left.

There we go, and we'll put some highlights on this tree.

But evergreen trees are normally quite dark, so don't let 'em get too bright on you 'cause them rascals will.

It get to be fun, and next thing you know, you've covered up all your dark areas.

And you need that contrast to make your tree beautiful, make it stand out.

There, darker, darker, darker down here toward the base 'cause trees are darker, there's more shadows down here.

All right, shoot, let's get crazy, get the big brush.

Let's go right into that dark color.

Same old thing, black, blue, van dyke, a little crimson, a little sap green.

We'll use the old two-inch brush.

Pull it in one direction here, load a lot of color into it.

There we go, let's go right up here.

Now then, let's just put something right here, watch here.

Let's just begin, and you have to make some decisions here.

Where do you want all these little bushes and stuff to live?

Here they are, wherever you want 'em, that's exactly where they oughta be.

And we'll just let 'em sort of fade out down here.

But that easy, that easy.

When you use this big old brush, you can cover a lot of space quickly.

There, and this is a two-inch brush.

There, okay, and all we're doing, once again, is just laying in some dark color so when we apply our highlights or our light colors, that they'll stand out and show.

It's really the only reason we put this in here.

Now then, another thing you can do, you can take just a clean knife and sneak up in here and just scrape in all kinds of little sticks and twig areas.

Now when this is done, it'll look like you spent days and days with your little one-haired brush just going in here and drawing all these.

We're gonna cover up a lot of 'em, but some of 'em will show, and people will think you worked for long periods of time to create all these little things.

And that's our secret, shh, don't tell nobody.

Okay, so I say most of those will disappear, but some of 'em will still be there, and they'll create some very nice effects.

I'm gonna dip the one-inch brush into a little bit of the liquid white.

I do that only to thin the paint, one of our golden rules, a thin paint will stick to a thick paint.

Let me get a little black on there, I'll make a nice green.

Black and yellow make a beautiful green.

Pull this brush in one direction, one direction.

See there, now that loads a lot of paint.

Now look right there, see, when it starts making those little things, Steve, my son who teaches this, he tells his students when little bushes start appearing right here in this pile of paint when you pull it, then the brush is loaded correctly.

And that's an excellent way of checking it.

But you can see how it begins appearing right there.

When your brush begins doing that.

Then let's go up here.

Then make some big decisions in here.

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

Touch, give a gentle push.

You don't have to push hard.

If you have a thinner paint than what's on the canvas and you've loaded a lot of color into the bristles, see there, and make one little bush at a time.

I know sometimes it gets feeling good and you want to make a bunch at once.

Try to make only one bush at a time.

Think about 'em as individuals, give 'em names if necessary.

And that's what makes 'em stand out.

Do the bush that in your mind is the farthest away first, and then work forward, always working forward, and that way there'll be depth and distance in your work.

Little more color, and I'm going through the indian yellow, the yellow ochre, cad yellow.

Here and there, least little touch of the bright red.

Not much, it's very strong, very strong.

It'll take over your whole world in a heartbeat.

But it does make some nice little color changes here and there.

There.

Okay, maybe another little bush right there.

I tell you what, tell you what.

This looks just like a natural place to have a little path, so let's take some, we'll take some van dyke brown, a little dark sienna.

Pull it out very flat, once again, we cut off our little roll of paint.

Now then, where does our path go?

Maybe it goes right up in here.

And all we're doing, once again, is putting some dark color on so our light color will show.

This is just our undercolor, our base color.

And in just a few minutes, we'll come back and we'll highlight that.

We'll just sort let that just sorta dribble out here to nothing, just sorta let it go, we don't know.

Like that.

Now then, we can take some with, a little dark sienna, maybe the least little touch of bright red in it, not much.

Pull it out flat, don't over mix your color.

Get our little roll of paint.

Now barely, barely grazing the canvas, just let the knife just barely, barely caress it.

Just so it hits the high points, and it'll make it look like all those little bumps and rocks and beautiful little things happening automatically.

Automatically, there we go.

Now then, we can come back with our one-inch brush, and we'll just pop in a little bush here and there.

Bring it all together.

Can add a little paint thinner to your brush sometime to thin the paint.

And let's go right over here.

See, we'll have a little bush that lives right here and hangs over the path, that way we don't have to decide where it goes.

We just know it goes somewhere back into the background.

We don't know.

Don't care at this point.

See, just sorta let that go.

Now then, tell you what I wanna do.

I wanna take the little piece of contact paper I have off and let's see what we have here.

We'll just grab that, pull it off, zoop, and there it goes.

Now then, see, we need to get rid of these edges.

So all we'll do is take a little of the dark color, tap a little of that in so it just sorta flows with it.

Just let it flow right on out like that.

But I wanna keep this contoured roundish idea going here, sorta makes it look a little bit better.

Put some dark in, then we can come back and put all kinds of just little bushes and things in here.

See, use the side of the brush, push upward.

But work in layers, always working in layers.

Think about individuals.

There.

Okay, now let's go back to our fan brush that has the white on it for the clouds, and let's go up in here, I'm gonna find a clean two-inch brush, I wanna blend this blue here.

See this little line here, I wanna kill that, so we'll just blend that out and just sorta let it go backwards here.

Now.

That's all you have to do, just blend it back.

And we'll take our cloud and allow it to come right down there.

There it goes, and just let it blend right on back, see?

It's right on into nothing, we don't know where it goes, we don't care.

And this one.

Okay, then a nice clean brush, give it a little blend.

Like so.

Lift it, fluff it, and that brings that whole top section together.

I tell you what, think this old painting is about done.

Let's take a little of the bright red on the liner brush, a little paint thinner, and we'll sign this one right about here.

I hope you've enjoyed this, it'll certainly give you a lot of practice.

It's a beautiful little painting to do if it's your first project.

Think you'll enjoy it.

And from all of us here, happy painting and God bless, my friend.

(light music)