The Best of the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross | At Dawn's Light | Season 37 | Episode 3717

Hi, welcome back.

Certainly glad you could join us today.

I thought, today, we'd just do a fantastic little scene that I believe you'll enjoy.

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

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

I have my standard old 18 by 24 inch canvas, but you use whatever size is convenient, and I've just covered the entire thing, today, with a thin, even coat of the liquid white.

So, it's already to go, so shoot, let's just do a happy little painting.

I thought today we'd do the painting that you see at the beginning of the show, the little winter scene, where the little painter man runs into it.

So, I'll show you how that one's made.

Let's start out today, we'll use the old two inch brush with a little bit of the bright red, and just a small amount of cad yellow.

I want to make a nice orange color.

So, we have bright red, and just a little cad yellow, something about like so, and you can mix these on the brush.

Alright, let's go right up in here.

And maybe, somewhere about along in here, we'll just start and make a little orangey circle.

Something about like so.

About like so.

And we might even reflect a little of that down into the water.

Don't want too much.

Now, take a little yellow ochre and bright red and mix that together, just so it changes the flavor a little bit.

Yellow ochre and bright red, and we go back up here, and we'll add just a little bit of that, right around in here.

See, that just sort of changes the flavor.

There.

Okay.

Now then, I'm going to wash the old brush because that's the fun part, put a a little of that right there.

Let's wash her off.

And we just wash our brushes with odorless paint thinner.

And as you've heard me say before, I really, really recommend that it's odorless.

[chuckles] And then just beat the devil out of it.

Now then, let's go right into a little bit of the alizarin crimson.

Just a little crimson.

And we'll just use the same old two inch brush.

And let's go right up in here.

And we'll just drop in a little bit of the crimson color.

And I'm using little criss-cross strokes, little Xs.

That makes it much easier to blend later on.

We'll come back and we'll blend this entire sky.

Just crimson.

There.

Now then, without washing the brush, I'll take a little alizarin crimson and Prussian blue, and once again, just mix them right on the brush, no big deal.

Make a nice lavender color.

And we can go up in here and add a little bit of that.

And we'll pull a little of that down in here, in what's eventually going to be water.

There.

A little touch more for the other side, Prussian blue, alizarin crimson.

Something like that.

And then a little bit more of the Prussian blue, alizarin crimson, and then I'm going to add a small amount of black to it.

All were doing is making this progressively darker as it works out.

That's all we're trying to do, so we have black, crimson and blue now, but we want to make it quite a bit darker.

There, okay, and we'll just fill up the rest of the sky with that.

Something like so.

Add a little touch right in there.

And, maybe, a little touch where our water's going to be too.

Hmm, that's quite pretty already.

It's just got very nice colors in there.

Now then, let me wash the old brush again.

[chuckles] I just like to wash the brush.

There, and off we go.

And that really dries the brush quite dry.

There, now then.

I just want to start in the center and begin blending outward.

Just blend it outward.

But, try not to start over here and bring it back, it'll just destroy your nice light area, and we want to keep it dark on the outside and lighter on the center.

There we go.

Right on out.

All the way to the outside of the canvas.

Now then.

Wash the old brush one more time.

Just one more time.

[chuckles] Kicked the bucket there.

Now then, I'm going to take that same brush and go into a little bit of the titanium white.

This is just pure titanium white.

And we'll go right up into the center area, because we want it to be the brightest, and start with this white, and begin working outward, outward, outward, and it'll create a beautiful glow in the sky.

There, that's all there is to it, and you can do this several times to achieve a desired lightness, so don't be afraid to go back in and do it again if it's not as bright as you want it to be.

There, or if it's too bright, just do the opposite, pull the dark color in a little bit, and you can make it go away.

Okay.

Something about like that.

That's really all we need, and down here, just very gently go across the entire canvas, and that'll sort of bring it together.

We'll work on it a little more as we get into the painting.

Very nice.

And that's all we need right now.

Let's have some fun today, I tell you what, let's take a big gob of black.

I'm going to use this color continually, continually through this painting, so I'm going to mix up a bunch, black, alizarin crimson, and a little bit of Prussian blue.

Not much blue, black and crimson are about equal amounts, and a little bit of blue.

I want this to have sort of a lavender hue to it, but the black and crimson will give you just about all you need.

There.

Now then.

I'm going to take a little bit of it and put over here and mix with some white.

I don't want to mix the entire pile, just a little bit out in here.

There we go, something like that.

Now then, let me grab an old fan brush.

Thought maybe today, back here in the background, let's put us a few little, few little evergreens.

Now this will not be an exact duplicate of what you saw in the little opening, but it'll be very close.

It'll show you how we made that.

It only takes a few minutes to paint that little opening.

But it takes a lot of fantastic people, nearly all day, to produce that little 30 second thing that you see.

That was the brain child of Jerry Morton, one of our engineers here.

There.

Okay, but see that's all there is to making little trees.

And we'll give him a little friend, right here.

And when you do this, you put as many or as few little trees as you want in your world.

Just want to show you how to make a tree, and then you decide where you want them, how many you want them.

How many that you want.

There we are.

Maybe, another one there.

But use the corner of the brush and as you work down the tree, push harder and harder, forcing the bristles to push downward.

Now then, we can take... we can take... Let's find a little round brush.

Maybe there's some little things that grow right along in here, and we can just tap those right on, just using a little round brush.

Something like so.

There, got a little hair, just take the corner and lift it off, and we're in business.

And we'll sort of just push those right back in there.

I'm going to let a little of that color work down in here, so it'll be reflections.

And we'll have a little reflection in the water.

I want this to be very soft up in here though.

We can take a two inch brush, decide where water and land meet, grab and pull straight down, and we have instant reflections.

That quick, that quick.

It never stops to amaze me how well reflections work in this technique.

Use to drive me crazy when I was a traditional painter trying to put reflections in and now it's one of the easiest things that we do.

A little land area right back in here.

And we'll use that same color, and just tap.

Just tap in basic shapes, something like so.

Maybe it goes all the way across there.

Then we can just go into a little bit of the titanium white.

I'm going to add the least little touch of liquid white to my brush, and all that does is thin the paint so it'll stick to this thicker paint, a little titanium white, and make it look like there's little snow covered things back here.

Maybe, maybe Jack Frost touched it.

There.

See there, but that easy, you can just create the illusion of all kinds of things in there.

And we can take the knife, a little touch, a little touch of the liquid white.

I'm going to put the least little amount of the bright red into it, just enough to warm it up a little, cut across, we go up here.

And with that, we can just put the indication of a little water line in.

There we go.

Little things happening all through there.

Mm, I like these little winter scenes that have a lot of color in them.

Sometimes, winter scenes can be so cold that they're almost unpleasant.

I really like these.

But when you do yours, you might want a very cold scene.

If you do, use predominately blue.

Blue is a very cold color, and I guarantee you, it will make your painting look chilly.

[chuckles] You'll have to wear your coat when you paint it.

Now then, let's start, let's start having some fun.

I'll go right back in to some of those same colors.

I'm going to darken it a little bit, because I want each layer, as it comes toward us, to get a little darker.

Take some of that base color and put it right into this other.

Okay, let's go up in here.

We have a little tree that lives right here.

All kinds of little bushes and stuff.

They live right out here, and they watch this beautiful area back in here, there we go.

There he comes.

This old round brush is something else.

It just really makes little trees like this better than anything that I've found, I think.

There we go.

Just drop them in.

And we need a few reflections under that, so, at the same time, just let a little of that color come underneath.

As I say reflections might be one of the easiest things that we do here.

Pull it straight down, but it's important that it go straight down, and then come across, and that easy, [chuckles] that easy, we have instant reflections.

Now, let's have us a little, little tree trunk in there.

We need something to hold up all the little things that are happening back in here.

I'm going to take a little of that same color, add some paint thinner to it on the liner brush, and just put in the indication here and there of a few little trunks.

We're not going to see many of them.

Just a few, here and there.

And I'm going to grab one of the small round brushes, this is the new brush we introduced in this series.

It's just like the big round brush, only it's about half the size, and it's just really nice for sneaking into all those little areas there.

Put a little white on it, then get some of my darker color.

There we go.

Something about like that.

But all you do is just tap it to load it.

Just tap it.

We can come right back up in here, and begin putting in some distant highlights on some of these.

I don't want this one to be too bright.

It's too far away.

It's in the background.

There we are.

Something like so.

Maybe a few little, few little doers right in there.

There we go.

Ooh, there's a nice little one.

Don't over do, don't kill all the dark.

If you kill all the dark, then this is just not going to show up very well.

That dark is what makes it really show up, makes it spectacular.

And this is a beautiful little scene when it's done.

Isn't that cute, though, the way they, they have the little painter man walk off into that scene?

[chuckles] That's what we call that little character is the Little Painter Man.

There we are.

Just take the point of the knife, scrape in a few sticks, twigs, all kinds of little things that you want in there.

Now, we can take some, let's take a little of the titanium white and come right in here, and let's put us in a little bit of snow right down here at the base, something about like so, and angles are most important here, most important, be sure to bring something like that.

And if you want to make it look like there's a little bank here, just take a little dark color, and come right underneath, and pull it down.

And usually I just use a small edge of the knife for the small areas, and big edge for the large areas.

But it puts a little depth underneath it.

Then when you come along, we put your water line in here, you just clean it all up, bring it together.

That easy.

Okay.

And we're in business.

And sometimes it's nice, get a little bit of the liquid white, a little touch of titanium white.

I'm just mixing them together, and the liquid white is in there once again, just to make it a little thinner.

Put a little touch of the bright red in there.

You can just pop in a few little, a few little, grassy things right along here, just to sort of break up that edge and bring it all together.

It looks like those little grassy things that grow right down on the bank.

And Jack Frost has touched them also.

There we go.

Now, let's take - I'll just use a fan brush.

I'm going to go right into Van Dyke brown, and the dark sienna, just mix them together, Van Dyke, dark sienna, mostly Van Dyke though.

I want it to be quite dark.

We had a couple of little trees here.

Our little tree's going to live...

There's one, [Bob makes "sssshooo" sound].

There he is.

If you don't make that little noise, it won't work though.

[chuckles] There we are.

And we'll give him a little friend that lives right in there.

Okay.

A little bit of the titanium white.

Our light source is right in here, [Bob makes "tsoo" sound] so the light's going to hit and just zing right along like that.

Excuse my arm right there a minute.

Just a little highlight right along there.

[Bob makes "tchoo, too, too" sounds] And we can take our little liner brush, paint thinner on it, We want to thin this paint down till it's thin as ink, very, very thin.

If you have trouble making it flow, chances are, it's just not thin enough.

Then let's go right up in here, and just put in an indication here and there of a little leaf or a little... Oh, I've got it mixed up here, [chuckles] a little arm sticking out here and there, just limbs and twigs.

I'm going to put some leaves up here, or the indication of some.

So we're not worried about getting it just right here.

Just a few little things.

Okay.

Now then, let me find my little round brush.

And I'll show you a little trick.

Let's take a little bit of the liquid clear.

And we'll put it up here, and to that, I'm going to mix just titanium white.

I want it to be very thin.

Very thin.

This is liquid clear and titanium white.

But see how thin it is?

It almost runs right off the palette.

Alright.

Now, we'll take our small round brush, put a little bit of the dark color on it.

Wipe off some of that.

There, a little bit of the dark color, and then just the tip of the bristles, I'll bring it to you.

Just the tip, we're going to put into that very thin color.

So, then we can go up here and just come around like this, and that's how all those highlights were made on those beautiful little trees there.

Just a little touch of that.

Mm, isn't that neat?

It works so well.

This little half-sized brush is just absolutely wonderful for doing these little details.

That's the reason we've made that one.

Now, any place you put this liquid clear, when it dries, it'll have sort of a shine to it, almost like the painting is glazed.

Alright.

Let's go over here in the other side and have some fun now.

We'll go back to our big round brush, so we can do some big areas.

Maybe right in there.

And we'll just start tapping in all kinds of little things.

Put the indication of some great big trees that live in here.

Like so.

And all we're doing here is just tapping.

That's really all that's happening, is just tapping.

Just tapping.

There.

A little bit over in here.

I like these kind of scenes.

The colors are very, very appealing to me.

Very appealing.

And they certainly...

If you put them in a room, they certainly brighten up a room.

And then, like that, over in here we had another little tree, and he lives right there.

Just sort of stands right there and watches everything happen.

Alright.

Then, we need a little reflection under that.

Put our reflection in.

Take our two inch brush, grab it, pull straight down.

Once again, straight down.

Go across, and that easy we have our reflection, then we can come forward and begin putting in all these little areas, but see it's important that you put that reflection in before you do this because it's hard to sneak back and put it in.

There.

All we're doing now is putting in some dark, so our light areas will show.

There, a little bit over here on the other side.

See the big brush just fills in these areas much faster than the little one.

There.

Of course, that makes sense.

Okay, right along to about there.

About there.

And we can take our little liner brush, a little bit of the lavender color on it, same color that we made that out of, thin it down, and we can just come in here and begin putting the indication of all kinds of little sticks and twigs that live back in here.

They're going to grow up and be big trees, too, one day.

But, right now, they're just little babies.

Just little babies.

There we go.

Okay, and you decide how many live in your world, wherever you think they should be.

I'm going to wash off the old brush.

And let's see, let me find another fan brush here.

We'll use that one.

We'll go right into that dark color, load it full of color, a lot of paint on it, and we had one very dark evergreen in there.

So, let's put him in.

He lives right about in there, just like we made the ones in the background.

Touch, use the corner of the brush, and as you work down the tree, push harder and harder, forcing the bristles to bend downward, downward, downward, downward.

And that easy, we have a little tree that lives right there.

Right there.

And you can... Maybe there's another one, there, see?

Just use the liner brush, and that same lavender color, basically, is all I'm doing.

Alright.

Now then, back to my fan brush that had the Van Dyke brown on it and the dark sienna mixed together.

We had two very large trees, and they live, [Bob makes "pzhooo" sound], right there.

This is your bravery test.

There's one, and there's his friend.

[Bob makes "tchoom" sound], right there.

And maybe when you do your painting, you'd like to have three trees, or four or none.

It's really and truly up to you.

You put as many or a few trees as you want in your world.

There we go, now then, here comes the fun.

We'll take a little bit of the titanium white, grab it, and give it sort of a round pull, just [Bob makes "tt, tt,tck" sound], see?

It makes it look like bark on there.

Old rough bark.

A little touch on the other side, but not quite as much, just a little.

Just to give the indication that there's a little there.

We don't want this other tree left out here.

So, we'll put some on him.

Something like that.

There.

A little touch here.

Shoot, we're in business now.

We can take a little touch of our dark color, and just go back and just barely touch, and let the, let the paint grab, let it grab and then sort of lift it, and it'll make it look like real bark, and when it's dry, it'll feel like real bark.

It'll absolutely feel like it.

Now then, we can take our liner brush, a little bit of dark color, and let's just put the indication here and there of a big old limb or two that lives on here.

There they are.

There they are, wherever you think they should be.

There.

Alright.

There comes one.

And this had leaves on it, so we don't have to put too many things in there.

A little doer right in there.

There, we'll just put him another little tree right here in front.

Now then, let's go back and find one of our little round brushes, half-size round brush, and I'm going back to that very thin paint.

This has the liquid clear in it.

It's just titanium white and liquid clear.

And I just want to just highlight this, but let some of these come right across the tree.

But this is a fantastic way of making those little frosty looking things that just live right out in here.

There.

But that paint is very, very thin, and it flows right over this without mixing with it.

If the paint's thick, you have a devil of a time making it stick on there like that.

But, because the paint that we put on the canvas first is extremely, extremely firm, this thin paint will slip right over it, just like so.

There we are.

Want a little bit on this tree.

We don't want him left out.

Shoot, he'd get mad.

There's nothing worse than an old, angry tree.

Now, tell you what we can do, we can go down in here, and we can begin putting in a few little details right around in here, just a few little things that live in there, but work in layers, so there's depth in it.

Do the one, that, in your mind is the furthest away, and work forward, always working forward.

There we go.

And leave some of those little dark areas.

That's your separator.

Your good, good friend.

Take care of it.

Take care of it.

Treat it well.

There.

This is just a little bit of that thin paint, and I've added a little bit of that titanium white.

You want it just thin enough that it sticks.

Over on the other side here, just a few little things like that.

There.

Alright.

We're about ready to put that little path in there that the Little Painter Man ran down.

[chuckles] I think that's so cute when he just disappears back in there.

Few little things there.

Okay, let's take titanium white on the old knife, and we'll just go right in here and just sort of work it back and forth, and that's all we had to do to put our little path in.

There.

Let it get larger and larger as it gets toward you.

The closer it comes to you, the larger it should become, and the path just sort of disappears back right on back there into the background, and that's what we're looking for, so he has a place to go and hide.

A few little finishing touches.

Shoot, I think we got a pretty nice representation of the little painting that you see at the opening.

i hope you've enjoyed it, and from all of us here, happy painting and God bless my friend.

[announcer] To order a 256 page book of 60 Joy of Painting projects or Bob's detailed 3 hour workshop DVD Call 1-800-Bob-Ross or visit BobRoss.com [music] [music]

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7sa7SZ6arn1%2BrtqWxzmiYrWWUlsSvv4yloKCgpGJ9lZPQsW9o