- Hi, I'm glad to see you today.

I thought today we'd do a painting that has some nice mountains in it.

That's still the number one most requested thing that I get letters about is people wanting to do mountains and the fact that they're having some problems with them, so I thought we'd devote this show to some beautiful mountains and we'll work on those.

So let's start out and have 'em run all the colors across the screen that you need to paint along with me.

As they're doing that, let's go on up here and let me tell you what I've done.

Have my standard old 18-by-24-inch canvas up here.

It's been covered with a nice, thin, even coat of liquid white and it's all ready to go.

So, let's just do a quick little happy sky here and then we'll spend most of our time working on mountains today.

I'm'a start with a little touch of the phthalo blue.

We'll use the old two-inch brush and just pull it through a little of the color like so and tap.

That gets a nice, even distribution of color all the way through the bristles.

Now then, let's go up here and we'll start right at the top, making our little crisscross strokes, little X's.

But start at the top, work all the way across and then go downward, then automatically, automatically, your color will get lighter and lighter toward the horizon.

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

'Kay, and you can always make it a little darker, if you want it a little darker you can add a little more blue.

But I'd suggest you start at the top and work downward.

There we go.

'Kay.

But by using these little crisscross strokes, your color will blend together much better than if you just come across like that.

And you get little things happening up here, it's not just a flat old dead sky.

There.

'Kay, and maybe we'll have a little water underneath our mountains, I love water.

I think it's so pretty.

And in this technique it's one of the nicest things to paint.

So without cleaning the brush, we'll go right into the phthalo blue.

And I'll reach over here and get a small amount of the phthalo green.

The phthalo green is very strong, be careful with it.

Eat up your whole world in just a heartbeat.

'Kay, now then, let's have a little water here.

Now, to make water, if it's still water, then it's gonna be level.

So pull from the outside in.

And try to keep these strokes as straight as you can.

There.

OK, a little more of the paint.

We'll go on the other side, do the same thing, but I'm pulling from the outside in.

Outside in.

And then I wanna leave a little area here in the center.

If everything works just right, when we're finished that'll look like a little sheen of light coming across here.

But by starting at the bottom and working upward, this should be a little darker than here.

Everything in a landscape toward the horizon should be lighter in value.

Let's wash our old brush off.

And as you know, we wash our brushes with odorless paint thinner.

(smacking sound) (chuckles) I just beat the devil out of it.

Now, with a clean, dry brush, you can just very gently go all the way across this and bring it all together.

That light area still remains in here.

But you can pull it and move it any way that you wanted, because the canvas is wet with the liquid white, you can move color.

Now then.

All right, that gives us a nice, nice little sky and water area.

And today, as I mentioned earlier, we're gonna spend most of this show working on mountains, so I'm not gonna even put any clouds in the sky today.

Let's take a little black, midnight black, a little bit of the Prussian blue, and some Alizarin crimson.

Maybe even a little Van Dyke brown.

There we go, something like so.

We're looking for a very dark color.

Very dark, it should look black.

Pull the paint out as flat as you can get it, get tough with it, and go straight down, cut off our little roll of paint, so you have a little roll of paint that lays right out on the edge of the knife, that's most important.

Let's go up here.

Now then, first major decision we have to make in this painting is where is our mountains gonna live.

Since we're gonna devote a lot of time to mountains, let's put several different mountains in here.

And all we're worried about when we first start is this nice top edge.

We could care less what's happening in here.

All we're looking for is this edge.

And you can probably hear how hard I'm scraping the canvas.

You wanna remove all the excess paint.

There's actually very little paint on the canvas.

Very little paint.

Don't be afraid to scrape it hard, you're not gonna hurt this canvas, it's tough.

And shoot, who knows, maybe this comes over, maybe there's a big mountain up here.

That'll give us a lot of practice space.

Maybe there's another bump there, I don't know, wherever you want 'em.

When you're doing mountains, just sorta, just sorta make 'em up in your mind.

The one thing that I would suggest, don't make just a bunch of tepees like that.

It ends up looking like wigwam village.

Really put a little shape and some flavor into your mountains.

Little more interesting that way.

Shoot, maybe we'll even put another bump over here.

The other thing that I would recommend, if this is your first time doing mountains or you're just starting to paint with us, I would strongly suggest that you make your initial mountains with just a few peaks on 'em.

It's very easy to jump in here and make about 40 little peaks, but each one of those peaks has to have highlight and it has to have shadow on it.

So start off simple and as you learn and you become familiar with the equipment, then you can get more and more difficult with what you're doing.

Now then, with a large brush, I'm just gonna pull this color.

Once again, because it's wet, you can move color.

If this was a dry canvas, you'd be in agony city when you try to do this.

But you can literally move color, and when you're painting mountains, mountains should always be more distinct on the top than they are on the bottom.

And by doing this blending, it does two things, it creates that illusion that it's lighter down here than up here, plus it removes excess paint.

So you're next layer, or your highlights, will stick much, much easier.

There.

For years Annette and I taught classes all over the country and this was always the most popular thing for people to do.

And we liked it because it teaches people to use the old palette knife here.

And I want you to make friends with this knife.

It's unreal what you can do with it.

I remember one of the earlier series, we painted an entire scene, the entire painting, using only the knife.

And that's how versatile it is if you'll just give it a chance.

Let's highlight this with just titanium white today.

Pull it out very flat, flat as you can get it.

And cut across, once again we need that little roll of paint.

Let's do that again so you can see it.

Flat, then just cut across.

Little roll of paint, right out on the edge of the knife.

It's very important.

Now then, let's make a decision, where's your light source?

Normally, if you're right-handed, it's easier to have the light coming from the right.

If you're left-handed, it will vary because left-handed people have been forced to do right-handed things their entire life, so it will vary.

If you're left-handed, try it both ways and see which way works well for you.

Now then, let's go right up here.

Take the point of the knife, put it right up here at the point of this mountain and just come right down, following the angles in the mountain, applying no pressure.

Absolutely no pressure at all.

No pressure.

If you apply a lot of pressure, you're gonna end up with paint here that looks like you've iced a cake.

And you can put shape in here, change things, move 'em, anything that you want, you can do here.

Let's put in some highlights, then we'll come back and do some shadows, maybe we'll go over here.

Let's put a few highlights right here on this great big old mountain.

Follow the angles, though.

Follow the angles that you've put in here.

There we go, see?

Those angles are very, very important.

Very important.

They're your best friend when you're doing mountains.

The little peak here, maybe there's a little light that just bounces right up here, zing, that has fun.

Maybe for practice purposes, let's just bring this all the way down.

Now, when I was first learning this, what I would do was get a huge canvas, maybe 30-by-40 inches, and start at the top and paint mountains all the way down to the bottom.

And when I got to the bottom, I had a big putty knife, it was about six inches across, take the putty knife and go whhhhttt!

Zip it all off.

I know it sounds horrible, but that's the best way to learn is by repetition, doing things over and over.

So, devote a little time to practicing like that, it will pay you tremendous dividends.

OK, let's take a little, we'll just use a little blue, little phthalo blue and white, that's fine for today.

You can very these colors any way you want them to make mountains the way that you see them.

Our little roll of paint, once again.

Now then, you notice all these angles of highlight color going basically the same angle.

Now, all of the shadows will go in the opposing or the opposite.

See, just follow right down.

You're still following the basic angles.

No pressure, you want that paint to break.

Let it break.

Now, this is one of the simplest types of mountains there is to make.

If this is your first painting or two, I would suggest you do these type of mountains to become familiar with the equipment and what happens in the paints.

And, as we mentioned earlier, once you become confident with this, then you can begin making all kinds of beautiful, beautiful mountains.

There.

See, just sorta let these blend together.

Maybe, watch right here, this is neat.

You have to make big decisions.

Is this peak on this side or on the back side?

Let's put it on the back side.

To do that, put that shadow in first, like so.

Now, this shadow, you wanna bring distinctly through it.

Here it comes, here it comes.

Look at that, see how it pushed that one right back?

You didn't know you had such power, did you?

You can move mountains, you really can move mountains.

At least on this canvas.

On canvas, you can do anything that you wanna do.

And you can do it.

'Kay, now, this one over here, same thing, it needs a shadow.

Every highlight needs it's own private shadow.

There we go.

Now, sometimes it's fun to make like little areas in here.

Little recessed areas.

All you have to do is put a shadow in.

And they just, watch, if you want one right here, just put a shadow.

But notice the angles, all the angles of the shadows are basically the same direction.

All the angles of the highlight are basically the same.

'Cause light's only gonna strike at a given angle when it comes through here.

Now, maybe in your world, you decide, hey, I think there should be a peak right here.

Watch here.

Watch here.

See here?

No pressure, though, on the knife.

This breaking, or the holes left in here, are what really, really create beautiful effects.

Look at that.

See?

Let it float through there.

And you can make it wider, any way that you want it.

But now, see what it looks like?

It doesn't look right until you come back up here and add this shadow in.

Look at the difference.

Look at the difference, just by putting that little shadow in.

And you can carry this on through the whole canvas and make just all kinds of little things.

Now, maybe we'll strengthen this line here and that'll pull it in front.

There.

And pay attention to what's happening, sometimes a beautiful thing will happen.

When that happens, try to remember how you did it.

And the next time that you want that effect, then you'll know how to do it.

There we go.

See there?

But you can create all kinds of little valleys and hills and you're never limited, you can continually change these.

You can add to 'em or subtract.

Anything that you wanna do.

'Cause if you've painted with me before you know we don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents.

You learn to work with everything that happens and that's when you get over any fear of painting and it really becomes fun.

Now then, we wanna create the illusion of mist down here at the base.

So we take a clean, dry two-inch brush and we just tap.

But pay very close attention to angles.

If this comes in this angle, you don't wanna tap it like that.

Follow the angles.

I know that sounds sorta silly to say, but sometimes we get carried away and we just go across the bottom and hit like that and it looks like somebody took a big ax and whacked the bottom of it off.

Follow the angles.

Over on this side, you go in this direction.

See?

Wherever they go.

Like here, you could blend these two together a little bit, but the angles are very important.

Just softly bring 'em together.

Now lift upward, once again following the angles.

That removes all the little tap marks, brings everything together.

There.

Isn't that a fantastic way, though, to make some very effective little mountains.

And it'll work for you.

It will work for you.

There we go.

Now let's have some fun.

Tell you what, let's do, let's take, we'll just use that old mountain color that we had and add some sap green to it.

Just whatever, we're just looking basically for a dark color.

We'll put a little bit of white in it.

There we go, just to sparkle it up some.

A little bit of white.

There.

Don't over-mix your color, look at all the different things that are happening in there.

Let me wipe my knife off.

There.

Now then, we can just use the old two-inch brush, it doesn't matter.

Just tap a little of that right in there.

See, just get a little color right on that two-inch brush.

And we'll make some little footie hills that live way back here.

There.

Now maybe in our world, maybe there's a little area back in here where there's all kinds of little trees growing down at the base of these big mountains.

And we don't know where they go, don't know that we care.

Just wanna put all these little shapes in here.

There.

And you can do this with a fan brush, one-inch brush, any old thing.

All we're doing, though, is using just the corner.

Now, if we wanna create mist in here, once again, we take the two-inch brush, a clean, dry one, I'm not using the same brush, and tapping very firmly on the base only.

But only on the base.

Now, another little thing that's fun, if you wanna make it look like little trees back here, I'll just use the one-inch brush today 'cause I picked that up, two-inch'll work just as well, lift gently upward in little, short, tiny strokes.

Tiny little strokes.

Tiny little strokes.

There we go.

There we go.

Just the other day there was a letter in our newsletter, somebody had written, saying they were having problems with this, and usually the problem comes from making big strokes, you go from bottom all the way up.

Make tiny little strokes and work in layers.

OK, now then, let's go back, same old brush, and let's come right in here and drop in a little thing that lives right there.

Like so.

There.

Maybe it comes right on up here.

There we go.

OK, maybe it comes right over here.

Like so.

Wherever you want 'em, just let 'em go.

But you can make layer after layer after layer of these little foothills.

The only thing, that little misty area is all that separates 'em.

So it's very important, don't let that little misty area get away from ya.

There we go.

Now, while we have that color on the brush, maybe there's some reflections into the water here.

And all we gotta do is touch and pull down.

Just touch it and pull down.

See there.

There.

Now, let me find a relatively clean brush here.

Pull it down.

Now then, it's important that these come straight down.

Now we'll go across.

And you can moves those.

You can push 'em.

'Cause the canvas is wet, you can move this anywhere you want it to go.

And you can make those little lines wiggle and jiggle.

And it gives the feeling of water, that easy.

Maybe one of the nicest things that happened in this technique is making reflections.

When I was a traditional painter, reflections used to drive me crazy.

I can remember even taking and turning the canvas upside down and repainting the picture over and then try to make it go wiggle-wiggle and all that and tshhh!

Take a little bit of the liquid white, a little touch of titanium white, I put the liquid white in there only to thin the titanium white.

Now, I'll be right back, get a little touch of the brown, little touch of dark sienna.

Now, this paint is thinner than what we would normally use, so it'll slide on easier.

I'm gonna get a tiny little roll of paint, right on the edge.

Now then, let's go up in here and put the indication, and I'm scrubbing quite hard, the indication here of a little sand, little sand bars and all that that happen, right here at the water's edge.

There we go.

But you can probably hear how hard I'm scrubbing.

Really get in there and work on it.

See, maybe there's a little recessed are in there.

That sorta happens.

There it comes, see it?

Now, that's where that big trout lives, right up in there.

So when you're out in your canoe fishing, this is where you wanna go.

I love to fish.

Love to fish.

I'm not a very good fisherman, though.

I catch one and I put a Band-Aid on his lip and give him a little CPR and pat him on the tutu, put him back in the water.

Hope I can catch him again some other day.

OK, that gives us a nice mountain and a little background area, very easily.

I hope this has really helped you with mountains if you're having any problems with 'em.

Now then, let's just put something down here to finish up the painting.

Doesn't really matter.

Clean off my palette.

Let's take some black, Prussian blue, a little of the sap green, crimson, any old dark color you got, any old dark color.

Mix 'em up a little bit, let me clean off my knife here.

Now then, today, I'll tell you what, let me find a fan brush here that's clean.

There.

Let's use the old fan brush.

Put a lot of color on, lot of color.

'Kay, let's go right up here.

Now then, the first big decision we have to make, if we're gonna have a tree, for example, here is where's that tree gonna live.

Let's put him right about there.

Start off with just a little line.

And normally when we're making these trees, we push downward with the fan brush so it has little hangy-downs all underneath it.

I think today what I'll do is maybe make a different kind of tree and we'll push it upward and see how that works.

'Kay?

Come right up here.

Give it a little upward push.

Like so.

But this is a nice way of making a very effective little tree.

See, push, and the farther down the tree you work, I'm still using the corner of the brush, I just push harder and harder so that the bristles spread out more and more and automatically your tree will get bigger down toward the base.

There we go.

Super nice easy way of making a little tree.

Now then, let's go on the other side of the canvas over here, we don't want it left out.

Maybe there's a tree that lives over here.

Same thing, give it a little upward push.

And maybe where you live, you want evergreen trees that have limbs that hang down.

All you do is reverse the brush.

Push it downward, any way that you wanna make 'em.

It's completely and totally up to you.

There we go.

All right, we'll just keep on going here.

And you can make this tree as big as you want it.

These are also very nice to make with a one or two-inch brush.

Works just as well, not quite as much detail, but still works.

Now, sometimes when you're going over a lot of thick, white paint like this, it's very difficult to get the paint to stick.

If that should happen, we didn't have any problems this time, but if it should happen, add a little bit, little bit of paint thinner to your paint.

And that'll thin it down enough that it'll stick right in there.

There we go, while we got that old brush going, I'll just go right through a little bit of cad yellow.

And since there's blue in that color, automatically, we'll get a beautiful green.

Maybe we can come back here and just highlight these trees a little.

Don't overdo.

Evergreens are normally quite dark.

Quite dark.

And you can kill that beautiful darkness real easy.

Let's go back on the other side, get that one while we're working.

There we are.

OK. See, and that makes all those little limbs and things that are so pretty in a painting.

OK. Let's get old two-inch brush, we'll go right into that dark color.

Now, under this tree we have a nice collection of bushes.

There they are.

Just drop 'em in.

Just drop 'em in.

See?

Push upward with this brush, though, to make all those things just happen.

There.

And all we're doing is just filling this in, you could do this with your shoe, it doesn't matter.

Whatever.

We're just filling in a lot of area very quickly and a big old brush works very nice.

Now then, let's take, we'll use the old one-inch brush today and dip it into a little of the liquid white, let's go through some of the cad yellow.

Now, maybe you wanna show a spring.

Let's take a little of the phthalo green and mix it right in there.

Lot of paint on the bristles, though, 'kay?

Now then, spring is usually brighter, cheerier.

The phthalo green will make a very bright, shiny green.

Whew!

Hurt your eyes if you're not careful.

There we go.

And work in layers, do one bush at a time, don't get in too big a hurry.

There we are.

See how you can just make layer after layer, though, using just one color.

And I will warn you, though, using one color is much more difficult than using a lot of colors.

Sometimes it's easier to use quite a few colors, and that way color separates as well as differences in values or intensity or dark against light.

There.

'Kay, maybe there's a happy little bush right there.

And you can just bring all these together, it doesn't much matter.

The big thing was we wanted to work on some beautiful little mountains today.

Show you how to do those.

As I say, that still is the number one thing that we get requests for.

It's also the number one thing that I hear that people are having problems with.

So I hope this has really helped you, if you are having problems.

And chances are maybe you're not having the problem.

But if you are, I hope this helps eliminate it.

Here we're just using the side of the brush and dropping in some little bushy areas.

That easy.

Maybe one right here.

And we can take a clean knife, just go around, scrape in a few little sticks, little twigs, happy little things like that.

Shoot, you about have a finished painting.

That's all there is to it.

And I really hope, once again, if you are having any problems with mountains, this has helped cure your problems.

Let me hear from ya, drop me a line sometime.

We're gonna call this one finished.

From all of us, happy painting, and God bless, my friend.

(happy little music)