- Hi, I'm Bob Ross,
and for the next 13 weeks, I'll be your host,
as we experience The Joy of Painting.
I think each of us, sometime during our life,
has wanted to paint a picture.
I think there's an artist
hidden in the bottom of every single one of us.
And here we will try to show you
how to bring that artist out,
to put it on canvas.
Because you too, can paint almighty pictures.
You know, we have avoided painting for so long
because I think, all of our lives, we've been told
that you have to go to school half of your life,
maybe even have to be blessed by Michelangelo at birth
to ever be able to paint a picture.
And here we want to show you that that's not true.
That you can paint a picture right along with us.
Each week we'll use the same colors,
we'll use the same equipment,
so if you have your brush and pallet ready next week,
you can paint right along with us.
I'd like to go over some of the equipment
that we'll use before we start.
The brushes that we use.
I'll be using very large, two and a half inch,
and one inch, natural bristle brushes.
Now these are natural bristle.
Be sure you don't start with a nylon brush.
We'll use an almighty palette knife.
And this is much different
than the traditional palette knife.
It is not thin and flimsy, it's a firm palette knife.
And with this we can make fantastic things happen.
Let's go over the colors that we'll use.
We're gonna start out here with Titanium white,
Phthalo green,
Prussian blue,
Van Dyke brown,
Alizarin crimson,
Sap green,
Cad yellow,
and Permanent red.
Now these eight colors, we'll use each and every week,
for every picture that we do.
So you don't have to go out
and buy 1500 different kinds of colors and brushes.
You need very little equipment to paint with this.
Another thing, we'll do no tracing of patterns on here.
We start with the vision in our heart,
and we put it on canvas.
And we're here to teach you to be able to do this too.
So, let's do it.
Let's paint a picture right here.
We're gonna to start with a big brush,
and were gonna cover the canvas
with a thin layer of magic white.
Now this is a wet-on-wet technique,
so the first thing were going to do is get the canvas wet.
And all we want is a nice, even coat of paint here.
There we go.
Just cover it nice and even.
You also need an almighty easel when you're doing this.
You need an easel that will hold your canvas very firm,
and allow you to use these big brushes.
Okay.
When you're using a large brush like this,
it really doesn't take too long to cover your canvas.
And if you get a hair like that,
just pop it off with the corner of your brush,
flip it away.
Okay.
Now after you get your canvas covered with a magic white,
we'll take and make long strokes back and forth
to get a nice even distribution of paint on here.
Okay.
Up and down one time.
That assures that the magic white's
nice and even all the way across the canvas.
Okay, let's wash the brush out here.
We wash our brushes with odorless paint thinner.
Okay, we'll wash them out.
And I beat the brush just to dry the bristles.
Now let's take a little bit of Cad yellow here,
and I think today we'll do a picture that's,
maybe like were walking through the woods.
And so let's start right here
with a little bit of Cad yellow,
with just the least little touch of Phalo green in it.
And we'll out a little bit more of the green color,
and we'll begin making little X's,
just like so.
Just work that around.
Okay.
Now without cleaning the brush,
we'll go right into some Prussian blue.
Just add it right onto the brush here.
We'll just go out here.
And were making the crisscross strokes, little X strokes.
There.
Already we're beginning to have a light source
in this painting.
Okay, now we'll clean the brush again.
Once again, this is odorless paint thinner.
We do not use turpentine.
Now with a nice clean brush,
I'm gonna take and add just a little bit of Titanium white,
right here in the center.
Just a little.
And we'll begin working outward.
There.
By now maybe you have recognized
some of the equipment we're using
as something you've seen before.
And I learned this fantastic technique wonderful man
that I think all of us have enjoyed
for many many years on TV,
Bill Alexander.
And Bill taught me this many years ago.
It is the most fantastic way to paint
that you've ever seen.
So join us.
Have some fun.
And we'll just blend this out a little bit more here.
Until we have a nice blue sky.
There we go.
Okay, we'll clean the brush one more time.
Now let's start putting in some almighty trees here.
We're gonna start with a little bit of Alizarin crimson,
and a touch of Prussian blue.
Now the Prussian blue is 100 times stronger than
the Crimson, so use just a little blue and a lot of Crimson.
And here we're going to begin pushing in basic tree shapes.
So just bend the brush.
Bend the brush.
Make those little leaves and branches
just pop right out at you.
There he comes.
These little son of a guns hide in your brush
and you just have to push them out.
This is your world, your creation.
Let's put a little one right here.
And maybe we'll just put some little grassy areas
coming down through here.
And right there, there is one.
You're pushing quite firm here.
This is why I say you need an almighty easel
when you're doing this, an easel that's strong.
Okay.
Maybe over here on this side now,
we'll add another one.
Maybe a bigger one over here.
There he is.
And there's no secret to this, anybody can paint.
Anybody can paint.
All you need is a dream in your heart, a little practice.
There, already we have the beginning of a beautiful picture.
We have the tree shapes, the light source.
Looks to me like it's early in the morning.
Okay.
Now, let's put some trunks on these trees.
And for that will take a little bit of Van Dyke brown,
and let's just lay in some basic trunks here.
There we go.
And maybe we'll put a little limb right here, like so.
Maybe a little something right there.
There we are.
Okay, now this little fellow over here,
he needs a trunk too.
So we'll put one right in here.
And maybe some limbs up in here.
Right through here, there we go.
Just some indications here and there,
and some little sticks and twigs.
Maybe over here.
There we are.
Okay.
Now we'll highlight these,
and we'll take a little bit of white,
and a touch of brown mixed together.
And remember where your light source is.
So this tree, we'll highlight right here.
Like so.
There we are.
Now over on this side,
the light's coming through here,
so we'll highlight this side of it.
Maybe a few little indications up through here.
Now comes the fun.
Now we can begin putting all the beautiful leaves
and stuff on this, and just really make it come alive.
So here, we'll take a little bit of the magic white,
to thin our paint.
One of the golden rules in this,
this is a thin paint, we'll stick to a thick paint.
So anytime you're painting over the top of paint,
you need to have a paint that's just a little bit thinner.
We'll take a little bit of Phalo green
and a little bit of yellow,
and we load the brush full of paint.
And out light's coming through here,
so we want the side of the tree
to be a little brighter than the other side.
All right.
And then we begin pushing
thousands of little leaves on here.
They hide in your brush.
There they come.
Just a little on this side over here,
because not as much light's gonna strike.
A little's come through, but not as much.
And look at that.
In just a matter of a few minutes,
we have a beautiful tree.
Now maybe, this little tree over here,
we'll put a little highlight on him.
And once again, we're using a paint
that's a little bit thinner, so that it sticks.
First thing that you have to do when you're doing this
is start with an oil paint that's very, very firm.
Your base paint has to be extremely firm.
If you start with a thin, loose paint,
your gonna become a mud mixer.
You have to have a thick paint on the base coat
in order to get this thinner paint to stick.
Now let's begin building some bushes and stuff in here.
All right, look at that.
You can do it, I know you can.
There, look there.
Okay let's move to this big tree in the front here
and let's put some nice little leaves up here on him.
You have to bend that brush.
If the brush doesn't bend, you're not gonna get all these
beautiful little leaves, these little actions that happen.
Okay, maybe there's a nice little bush
that lives right here.
You know if you've ever walked through the woods
early in the morning, all the little creatures are out here.
They're all playing in the bushes and stuff.
This is where they live.
In all these bushes.
Okay, let's put something on this side now.
Nice little bush here.
Just let your imagination run wild.
Let your heart be your guide.
In the time you sit around worrying about it,
trying to plan out painting,
you could have completed a painting already.
Let it happen, let it happen.
You know for so many years I was a traditional painter,
and I would spend sometimes weeks just working on a picture,
drawing it out, getting all the little sketches and stuff.
And then I'd go back and spend maybe a month
trying to fill in the blocks.
And here, we let it happen.
It comes right out of here, it's in you.
And you put it on the canvas.
Okay, let's see.
Let's try this big ole tree here,
put some nice little leaves on him.
There we go.
Yeah.
Mmm.
Okay, let's try, I've added a little permanent red with
my color now, just to give us a little different value.
Okay, and you know if we're going to walk through the woods,
we need a little path.
So let's take a little bit of Van Dyke brown here,
and let's build us a happy little path.
We're just gonna take the knife and let this path
sort of just wander right down through here.
There we go, just let it wander 'round, play and have fun.
Okay, there we got us a nice little path.
Now we need to highlight that path so I'll take
just a little bit of white,
and we'll just take it and barely touch the canvas here.
Just enough so we can highlight
where the sun's sparkling through here.
There, see how easy that is?
Let the paint break.
And now in order to set the path down into the painting,
we'll add some bushes that project up over the path
here and there.
Push 'em in.
There we go.
And you can see how that makes it literally drop
right into the painting.
Okay, let's put some more land aries in here.
Maybe this nice little area's coming down through here.
Just like so.
Maybe we'll have some over here.
Follow the angle of your land.
There we go, there we go.
There, now maybe, maybe, maybe,
as we're walking through the woods here,
maybe it rained last night.
Maybe it came a nice little rain.
There's little puddles.
You know after it rains you always have little rain puddles.
So let's take a little touch of the Prussian blue here,
and we'll just make us a little puddle.
And we put some Prussian blue on the brush,
and we take here and pull downward.
Just pull downward like so.
There we go.
Okay, see how easy it is to do?
Now.
Very gently, we'll come across this way.
Just to give it a watery effect.
Now if you want to, if you wanna put highlights in here,
maybe you could take just a little touch
of the Titanium white on your brush, and pull down.
It'll give it sort of a sheen.
There and then once again just come across just enough
to give it a nice watery feel.
You can overdo this part very easily.
Okay, wash off the ole brush.
Okay, now we can take a little more of the Van Dyke brown
and we can just make little puddles out of this.
Maybe it comes down like so, right through there.
There we are.
Okay, little puddle.
And we just make this a little separate puddle back here.
Just like that.
Okay, now we take a little bit of brown and white,
and we'll lay a little highlight on there.
There we go.
And in your world, you can do anything
that your heart desires.
My home is in Fairbanks, Alaska, and I spend a lot of time
walking around the woods and talking to trees
and squirrels and little rabbits and stuff.
And I look at a lot of nature.
And if painting teaches you nothing else, it'll teach you
to look at nature with different eyes.
It'll teach you to see things that have been there
all your life, and you've never noticed.
And if it does nothing else but make you enjoy nature,
it's worthwhile.
So look around, look at what we have.
Beauty is everywhere.
You only have to look to see it.
Okay, I talk too much sometimes
so we'll go back to painting here.
Take a little bit of the thin white paint here,
and we'll put some little water lines back in here.
Okay, just like so.
There we go.
There, and maybe some little water lines right here.
This is just a thin white paint and you literally just cut
right into the canvas with it.
And let's smooth that out.
There we go.
Okay, now while I have the knife here, I'm gonna take it
and just cut a few little sticks here and there.
And all we're doing is just literally cutting
right through the paint.
So the canvas shows through and it makes
a multitude of little sticks,
and these little sticks help create the illusion
of distance in a painting.
All different planes.
Okay, now then, let's put some bushes and stuff
right down here on the grass, on this soil area.
There we go.
There they are, there they are.
They just live right here in your brush.
And you just drop 'em right in.
There.
Okay, now let's take and do this.
Let's put some land right down through here.
Back to the Van Dyke brown, little bit of white.
There we go.
We'll add a little highlight on here.
There.
And we'll put a few little bushes and stuff right out here.
See how easy that is?
Okay, a few more little water lines in there.
Just let 'em happen.
Each week, we'll try to do paintings that are designed
to teach you something different, something new,
something exciting.
Just to keep your interest going.
Okay now let's play a little bit here.
Let's have a happy little tree right in here.
So we'll start with the Van Dyke brown, and we'll make
his little trunk here.
There he goes.
Straight Van Dyke brown to start with.
There and we just turn him out to give him little foots
to stand on.
There.
And maybe he needs another little arm out here.
So we'll just give him one.
This is your creation, you can do anything here
that you want to do.
Just let it happen.
There.
Now, and we'll give him some little leaves,
and we'll use some more of the Alizarin crimson,
a touch of Prussian blue.
Okay, and we need dark in order to show light.
So first we'll put some dark on here.
I'll put some happy little leaves here and there.
When we see you next week I hope you have your
almighty easels set up, the colors ready,
your big brushes all primed and ready to go,
and do an almighty painting with us here.
Very quickly while I'm finishing this up I'll go over
the colors, one more time, that we use.
Titanium white, Phthalo green, Prussian blue,
Van Dyke brown, Alizarin crimson, Sap green,
Cad yellow, and Permanent red.
Only eight colors that you need.
Okay now let's put some highlights
on this pretty little tree right here.
Mmm, I used just a little touch more of the Permanent red
on this one so he'll stand out a little more.
See how easy it is to create a tree
right here in your world?
There we go.
And maybe down here, maybe there's some nice little
bushes and stuff happening right in here.
There we go.
All right, maybe right there another one.
Okay, here and there I'm gonna put
just a few little sticks and stuff.
Like that.
Just, once again, to build some distance in here.
We want this to have a lot of depth in it.
Maybe we'll cut in a few little sticks here and there,
like so.
You gettin' excited yet?
You ready to paint with us?
You can do it.
Okay, and I think this painting's far enough along,
we'll just sign this rascal.
And I sign the painting with a script liner brush,
a little bit of oil, and I use red paint, but whatever
color you prefer.
Okay, and we'll just sign that rascal.
I hope you've enjoyed this painting.
Next week we're looking forward to seeing you.
I hope you have your brush ready.
A dream in your heart that you want to put on canvas.
And join us, right here, at The Joy of Painting,
and you too can build fantastic pictures.
You can take 'em from here, and put 'em on there.
Until next week, happy painting, from all of us here.
(slow acoustic guitar)