Mountain Ridge Lake

[Music] Hi, welcome back.

Certainly glad to see you today.

It's a fantastic day here and I hope it is wherever you're at.

So I tell you what, let's start out today and have em run all the colors across the screen that you need to paint with us.

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

Have my standard old pre-stretched canvas up here and I've covered it with just a thin even coat of liquid white.

And the liquid white just makes the canvas wet and slick and so we're all ready to go.

So let's do a fantastic little painting day.

Today I want to, I want to show you a very simple little painting that really works well.

Just, let's do something easy.

Start with the old two-inch brush and let's go right into a little touch of the phthalo blue.

And just touch a little and pull it out.

And then tap the bristles, that gets us a nice even distribution of color.

See all the way through the bristles.

Okay, let's go up here.

Because we have the liquid white on here, the color is continually mixing.

So you start at the top, making little x's.

Little criss-cross strokes, just like so.

But see how it blends with that liquid white.

If you had a dry canvas, [chuckles] ooh!

This just, it just doesn't work like that.

The liquid white really allows you to blend color.

It makes life easy when you're painting.

There we are.

And as we work down toward the horizon we want it to get lighter and lighter in value.

And that will happen automatically, because once again the paint's mixing with the liquid white that's on the canvas.

And so it gets lighter in value automatically.

You don't even have to do a thing.

Something about like so.

Now maybe, I want to darken the edges a little.

So I'm going to add just a touch of the Prussian blue.

Prussian blue is much stronger than the phthalo blue, so just a little bit, don't want much.

I'm going go right up here, right on the edges, and I want to darken those, so when the painting's finished your eye's going to go up in this area.

The light area will lead your eye right into it.

And a little touch maybe on the other side.

What the heck, we don't want him left out.

There.

And just very gently go right across.

That just takes out the brush strokes and brings everything together.

Okay now, while we have that old brush going here, we'll take a little more of the blues.

I'll use both blues, what the heck.

Let's start with phthalo like we did on the sky.

Let's go up in here, maybe there's a little water in here.

You know me, shoot I love water.

Now still water is always level, always level.

So try to keep your strokes as straight as possible.

There, a little more of the blue over on the other side.

And pull from the outside in.

That way this is a nice feathered edge here.

You don't have a distinct line that you have to try to work out.

Just pull from the outside in.

And don't worry about it this time.

Anything that we don't want to be water, shoot we'll just cover it up.

Just cover it up.

There we go.

Now the fun time.

[chuckles] Let me wash the old brush.

If you've painted with me before you know this is the highlight of the whole painting.

There we go, just shake it off.

[laughs] And just cover the entire studio.

You should see our camera crew.

Now then, I just want to brighten this a little.

So I'm going to take the least little, least little touch of cad yellow and just put right in here, just a little yellow highlight.

Not much, not much.

And then we'll work that in.

There.

And when that touches blue it'll just make us a nice greenish color and we don't mind it in the water.

All right.

And that easy, we have sky and water.

See, I told you this was going to be a very simple little painting that's easy enough that even if you've never painted before you can do this one.

You can do it.

And you can clean the brush.

Now then, let's build us a little cloud.

Everybody likes to have clouds in the painting, so I'll show you a very simple way.

We'll use the old one inch brush and just pull it through some color, titanium white.

Just pull it through and let's go up in here.

Maybe, maybe our cloud lives right here, little tiny circles.

Little tiny circles, there you go.

And just let that brush dance and play.

But think about a basic cloud shape.

Don't just throw it up there and think that a cloud will appear.

You have to have a basic shape to work with.

Something about like that, what the heck, we don't care.

Clouds are very free.

Very, very free.

Now with a good clean, dry, two inch brush, gently, gently, gently just using the top corner of the brush, blend the base of the cloud very gently.

I'm just beating the brush to knock off the excess paint, then we'll fluff it a little, like so.

And very gently, one hair and some air, whew, whisper light.

Just go right over it, tell you what, shoot that was so much fun let's get crazy.

Maybe in our world there's several little clouds.

I'm going to add the least little touch of the bright red to that.

And let me say "least" one more time because it's a very small amount.

And once again pull it in one direction.

See, got a little color there.

Alright, let's go up in here.

You probably noticed that we put tape on the ferrules of these brushes and stuff just so they don't shine too much.

There.

I get letters sometimes that say, "the equipment that you "use looks different than what I have."

It's no different, it really is no different.

All we do, is we have to dull it.

Otherwise when all these lights in the studio hit it, it would shine and make big glares on the TV and this mean old director would yell at me.

So we just, we just put a little bit of tape on there.

And the knife, I spray paint it with just black paint.

There, shoot.

Tell you what, [chuckles] that's such a nice little cloud, maybe, maybe it's got another little friend right there.

But do it in layers, finishing one cloud at a time.

Don't, dont get greedy.

Sometimes it gets feeling good and you just, mm, get sort of carried away and try to do them all at once.

Just do one little cloud at a time, one little cloud at a time.

Blend it in, fluff it, tease it.

There, very lightly.

One hair and some air.

Oh maybe.

Shoot we're having so much fun with clouds.

I tell you what, I'm going to put another one right here.

Now when you're doing your painting you decide, you decide, wherever you want to put a cloud, then that's the right place to put one.

Don't put one here just because I did.

Put one in your painting because you want it there, and then it's strictly yours.

I just want to show you how to make a cloud.

How many clouds you make or where you put them, strictly up to you.

Painting should be very free.

Maybe, sometime you can just take and spin the brush a little bit and put in some little wispy clouds, little floaters.

Just sort of spin the brush and let these little rascals just float in there.

See how easy that is?

[chuckles] Now, same thing again.

Just blend the base of the cloud.

And use the top corner of the brush.

See, if you use the bottom corner you can't tell where that's hitting.

You use a top corner and you can see exactly where it's hitting.

See, if you hold it that way you can't tell where it's hitting, you're just guessing.

And you want to be able to control this rascal and where it goes.

Over here, these little wispy's, I'm not even going to do anything but just, just blend right over them.

These are little soft floaters that live way back in the distance somewhere far away.

Far, far away.

Okay.

[loud banging] All right, and that easy, we have some happy little clouds.

Now then.

I tell you what let's do.

Let's build us a little mountain.

We'll take some black with van dyke brown.

Least little touch of Prussian blue, I don't want much blue in this.

I want mostly black with a little brown and blue.

Just to change the flavor.

Cut across and we get a little roll of paint, lives right out there on the edge of the knife.

See him out there?

Now, come right up in here.

Let's have a nice mountain that lives right here, see.

Now I've had some people say that it's hard to make mountains.

I'm going to show you the easiest way imaginable.

All we do is just put in a basic shape.

And you decide the shape of your mountain, you decide.

If you don't live some place there's mountains and you want to paint a mountain, there are books and video tapes and all kind of stuff that show you all different shapes of mountains.

Or just make one up, just make it up.

There.

Be creative when you paint.

Just let your imagination take you to worlds that exist only in your mind.

But you can put them on canvas.

There, I think I've mentioned some other series.

That's probably what initially got me interested in painting, is that I could create any kind of world that I wanted, any kind of world I wanted.

No bad stuff here.

That's why we have happy little trees and everything's happy here.

Okay, now I'm just going to sort of pull that down.

Grab it and sort of pull it down.

Just like we would normally do to make a mountain.

See it's getting lighter down at the base.

And over here we'll just go in this direction.

And all we're doing is just, just pulling the color out so the next thing sticks easier.

There, get rid of that excess paint more than anything else.

All right.

Now let's take a little touch of the, oh we'll take some titanium white, least little touch of dark sienna.

Maybe just a touch more than that.

Ooh that's nice, that's nice.

Little roll of paint once again.

But a very small roll of paint.

Now then, go up in here and just barely touch, barely touch.

And just let it sort of float down the mountain.

See there?

Okay, see how easy that is?

Now if you do it fast it works better than just barely doing it.

For some reason it works better.

But no pressure, you want this paint to break.

And by break, I mean have all these little holes here in it.

See there?

Now maybe a little touch right in here.

[Bob makes "sshoom" sound] Gotta make those little noises.

And sometimes those little noises really do help.

For some reason they just sort of [chuckles] make things work better.

There, all right.

We'll just use that same old brush.

Shoot, we don't care.

Take a little bit of cad and yellow ochre.

Be right back.

Get a little touch of black, a little bit of sap green.

There we go.

But mix these colors on the brush so you have a multitude of things happening on the brush.

A little Indian yellow here and there.

And, here and there, I'm going to touch the least little touch of bright red.

All on one brush though, look at all the colors that are in that one brush.

And we're touching and pushing.

Okay, let's go up here.

Now then, I'm going to make little grassy areas that flow right up the hill.

So all we do is touch and tap.

Follow the angles, always follow those angles.

There, see them?

But isn't that simple?

All you're doing is just tapping.

The most important thing is the angles here.

You don't want your mountain to flow up this way and you put grass that's going in a different direction.

It will disturb you.

I bet you've looked at paintings and your mind says, "something's wrong with that painting."

You might not be able to tell exactly what it is but you know something's wrong with it.

And sometimes it can be something as simple as that.

So these little, llittle things that we talk about all the time like the lay of the land and following the correct angles are most important, most important.

They'll make your painting special, very special.

Watch here.

See, that one sort of went on over.

So all you have to do, we'll take a little touch of black.

Put right there.

See, just give it something to stand on.

Don't want it to just lay out there by itself.

There, and very lightly pull that down.

And I want it to remain a little darker so it looks like it's closer in the foreground.

There, very lightly.

Just let it blend right into nothing.

And you can do that with just the knife, that easy.

Least little bit of color on the knife and you can put the indication here and there of little things that are happening.

But that's just a little black on there.

Just to... See how it makes it look like there's little things happening back there?

And every time you have a little projection here, you need a little shadow underneath it or it won't play with you.

It'll just go home and leave you.

There we are, there.

See, then with a clean brush you can very gently just blend that up a little bit.

But isn't that a neat way of making a mountain?

It really looks like it's far away.

Now we'll go back to our, our brush that has the grassy colors on it.

And we can begin just putting in all kinds of little things.

And once in a while you can hit a least little touch of titanium white and just put a little bright spot here and there.

But don't over do, or it will lose it's effectiveness like there's a little light hitting right there, bing!

Here it comes, going right over.

There it is.

I tell you what, let that go right on out there.

And once in a while you can hit a little sap green just to give it little dark areas here and there so it's not all the same identical color.

There we go.

There.

Okay.

But isn't that a fantastic and very easy way of making a gorgeous little mountain, whew!

Sometimes I get carried away.

I see something here.

Let's do, let's take some black, Prussian blue, a little crimson... And sap green.

We'll just mix all those together.

Okay, let me wipe my knife off.

We just wipe the old knife on a paper towel.

Use a number three fan brush and I'm going to put some of that dark color on there.

Both sides loaded full.

And maybe right up in here, lives... Yep, maybe there's a little, little stand of evergreens that lives right in here.

I think that's what you call a whole group.

I know it's not a herd of evergreens, so I think it's a stand of evergreen.

A whole family, what the heck.

A bunch.

There.

Now, back to our brush we were making the little grassy areas with.

Put a little grass right there in front.

And see that dark color will make an instant shadow underneath it.

You don't even have to worry about it.

There we go.

Now then... Let's get crazy, [chuckles] you know me.

You know me, I like to play.

Let's see, we had black, a little van dyke, a little Prussian.

Mix that same color again.

Once again our little roll of paint, there it is.

Maybe over here on this side, yep.

Let's have another one that lives right here.

Another big old mountain.

It comes down right there.

Certainly does now.

Maybe, I don't know, maybe this one's got a little bump right here too.

And then comes right on out like that somewhere.

There we go.

But mostly black.

I'm using a very dark color here, mostly black.

All right.

Now, grab that and once again just pull it out.

Just like we did the other one.

This is just a repeat of the other side.

You'll do it twice and that'll give you a lot of practice.

A lot of practice.

There.

Okay.

And once again, we take a little white, put a little touch of dark sienna in it.

Maybe a least little touch of black into that one, just so it has some variations.

Come right up here, barely touch, whisper.

Just whisper light, let it go.

Let it go, no pressure.

I think I mentioned before, when I was teaching my son Steve to paint.

I used to tell him just to pretend he was a whisper that floated right across the mountain.

And he understood that.

Made him understand what a gentle touch this is.

A lot of times I just, I absolutely drop the knife because I'm holding it so gently.

All right.

Now we'll go back to our brush that had the little grassy colors on it.

And let's just sort of bring all that together.

There it comes.

See, just let that grass float right up there though.

Just sort of let it work its way right up there.

And you have to decide how far up the mountain it lives.

Since this is your world, you make that decision.

There we go.

Wherever, wherever.

There.

Okay, maybe there and there I'm going to touch a little tiny, tiny bit of the bright red.

But not much, not too much bright red.

But once again, and I know you get tired of hearing it, but pay attention to these angles.

They're so, so important.

These angles are what make it work.

They make it work.

There.

Something about like that.

And you can make this as bright or as dark as you want it depending on your mood and what you see in your painting.

Anyway that you want it.

Sometimes when you're not in such a good mood paintings have a tendency to get a little darker because paintings reflect your mood.

Sometimes you're not even conscious of it, it happens.

Now then, I'm just going to take a clean, dry brush.

And I want to tap the base of this to create the illusion of mist down here, Just the illusion of mist.

There, right down here at the base.

Okay, very gently.

You can also grab and lift upward here and there to make it look like little distant tree shapes.

Little trees that are poking up.

There.

Okay.

Now then.

Let's take... Tell you what, we'll just take that old dark that we had.

Go right into it.

This was an evergreen color so let's go back in here.

Maybe there's a little bit of land lives right here.

There it comes.

Just tap it in.

The big thing I wanted to show in this painting is how to make very simple little mountains.

And I think we've done some pretty nice little mountains there for some quickies.

And you can do that.

There, this is just dark colors so we can put a lighter color on top of it later and it'll stand out.

Absolutely have to have dark in order to have light.

Got to have dark, got to have opposites.

Dark and light, light and dark continually in a painting.

If you have light on light, you have nothing.

If you have dark on dark, you basically have nothing.

There we are.

You know it's like in life.

You've got to have a little sadness once in a while so you know when the good times come.

I'm waiting on the good times now.

There, I'm mixing black, a little sap green, Prussian blue, van dyke brown, alizarin crimson.

Anything that looks dark.

Let me clean off my knife.

Anything that looks dark.

And we'll load up the old fan brush here.

Full of color, a lot of color.

Let's build us a forest.

Maybe back here, and all we're going to do is touch and pull down.

Don't worry much about this, all you're looking for is some very basic little shapes back in here.

Just some basic little shapes wherever you think they should be.

Something like that.

Okay.

Wherever.

There, these little background trees that are far away, far away.

They just live here and they look back at that big old mountain range and have a good time.

Now then here and there, and there and here, there's a few, that are a little more distinct.

There.

So use a corner of the fan brush and put you some little arms and limbs and little hands, whatever.

All kinds of little things out here on these trees.

There we go.

And you just decide how many live in there.

Wherever you want them, there.

Okay, maybe over here they're a little, a little bare.

Maybe a little stronger here.

A little more light hit them.

There we go.

We'll give him another friend, what the heck?

Something like that, all right.

Let's go on the other side, don't want him left out.

We'll give him a nice big strong tree right there.

There he is.

But as you work down, push harder and harder with the fan brush.

It'll force the bristles to bend downward and it'll make all those little hangy downs things underneath the tree limbs.

And evergreens always seem to have those.

Little, little hangy downs, I don't know what you call them.

Little limbs that hang down, so their...

They have to be little hangy downs.

There.

And you put as many or as few of those in there as you want.

Now one of the most fantastic things that happens with this little technique, is reflections, watch here.

When I was a traditional painter I used to agonize over reflections.

In this style of painting it's one of the easiest things that we do.

Just easy, pull straight down and go across.

But it needs to come straight down, straight down.

And very gently go across, like so.

Let me go back to our brush that had the grassy colors on it... sap green, yellows, all the yellows.

Just mix them on the brush though.

Okay, let's go up in here.

Maybe there's a... Lookie there, yep you're right.

Just a nice little area back here.

Something like that.

There and all we're doing is just tapping.

No big surprises here, just tapping.

But follow the lay of the land.

That's most important.

You decide where it's at and how you want it to be.

Okay, maybe over here it comes this direction.

I don't know, it's up to you.

You make the big decision.

We just show you how, but you make the decisions.

When you have this much power you have to make big decisions.

Let's, let's have some fun here.

We'll take a little bit of liquid white.

Let's put in just a little water line right under here.

There.

See, just sort of let that just go right around in there.

Wherever you want it, wherever.

There.

The other side over here.

I have a little one right in here.

But I want this one to look like it sort of curves around.

[Bob makes "tsooo" sound] Just do that like that.

And I'll put in there first and then I'll put the dark so you can see it behind it.

A little reflection down, go across.

Then all we have to do is put a little highlight on there.

There we are.

Then come back, our little water line, drop that in.

Shoot, we'll take our fan brush, put a little dark green on it.

And we can add just a few little highlights on some of these evergreens, not a great deal.

Want to keep them quite dark.

Something like so, just a few.

Let's go on the other side and give it a few.

I think with that, we just about have a finished painting.

I really hope you try this one.

Because as I said at the beginning, this is a very simple painting that you can do even if you've never painted before.

So, from all of us here I'd like to wish you happy painting and God bless my friend.

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