[Music] Hello, I'm Nicholas Hankins.

Welcome back to the painting studio for a special little painting I want to share with you.

This is a view from my childhood home.

So let's come up to the canvas and I'll tell you what I've got going on.

This is an 18 by 24 inch pre-stretched, double-primed canvas.

I've coated the top portion with a nice thin, even coat of liquid white, as usual.

And on the bottom I just took a little liquid black and then I kind of rubbed them together just a little crisscross strokes and brushed it out so it's got a nice little, nice little foggy area in there.

So we'll paint a little, a little sunrise from, from back home in Tennessee.

We'll take a little...

It's actually a photograph my mother sent me.

So we'll take a little Indian yellow and get started here.

Just put a nice bright spot up here in the sky with some little crisscross strokes.

Sunshine starting to break through there.

There we go.

Be right back.

I'm going to pick up just a little touch of bright red on the same dirty brush.

Tap it in there just a little bit.

Let's come back and make a nice little orangey glow surrounding that.

I think I want just a little more of that color, make it a little stronger.

There we go.

Yeah, that's better.

That's better.

Come on over here.

Just kind of box in that yellow a bit.

Yeah, this is looking right out our, out our front door.

I kind of grew up out amongst the trees, and the woods, and the mountains and really beautiful place.

All right, let's wash the brush.

I'm going to need a clean one in a minute anyway so I'll come down here and wash our brush out in our good odorless paint thinner.

Shake out the excess.

Give it a little clean up on the easel leg and we're back on our way.

Now, let's do... well, I tell you what.

Before we get into clouds, let's put a little, let's put a little touch of phthalo blue up at the top.

Actually, we'll mix them.

We'll take a little bit of both.

I'm making changes on the fly.

Am I allowed to do that?

I hope so.

[chuckles] No, that's the wonderful thing about this method, if you do change your mind midstream, you can certainly do it.

And just roll with it because we don't make mistakes and you learn very quickly to learn with, just to, to roll with just about anything that happens on the canvas.

That's wonderful.

That's the wonderful part.

Uh, let's grab... tell you what.

I'm going to mix up a little, a little batch of color here.

Let's take some titanium white and a little bit of alizarin crimson.

A little touch bright red in there too.

Makes a real pretty pink color.

Both of those reds in there, I like that.

And I'll take my little fan brush, pick up just a touch of that color, and I want to add some little sweeping clouds.

Just, they just kind of drift right in here.

Maybe they, maybe they cross over into the, into the sunshine area.

There we go.

And you can even change this color a bit as you go.

Maybe you want to pick up a little more red or a little more crimson and just, just flavor it a little differently.

See?

It's up to you.

It is up to you.

And finally, I think I'm going to grab just a little touch... Let's take a little midnight black and add to that.

Gray it down.

There we go.

And then I'm going to have, I'm going to have this cloud kind of reach on up into the sky a little further.

It gets grayer.

Just kind of wander off the top up there somewhere.

All right.

Back to a clean dry brush.

Now, let's just, let's just blend all this and bring it together.

Every so often, I'll just stop and kind of take some of that excess paint off the brush, because you'll pick some up as you go.

There we go.

And I'm going to grab a little one inch brush.

And I want to put just a little bright spot right there.

That's, that's the brightest spot, the sunshine peeking through the clouds.

About to burst through.

Just about to burst through.

Sometimes it's even [chuckles] fun to take a little bit of white on your brush and just kind of, just kind of pull a little, pull a little sunshine, sun ray down.

I know that's probably hard to see.

You might not be able to see it very well, but when it's all finished you can kind of, kind of tell what we did there.

Isn't that pretty?

Once again, take our big brush and just, just kind of settle that in a bit.

All right.

It's a sky I'd like to see in the morning.

Isn't that pretty?

Be fun to wake up and see that out the window.

Wouldn't it?

Didn't, didn't know how good we had it [chuckles] back in Tennessee.

Not that it's not pretty in Florida too, but my goodness it's hard to, it's hard to beat the little hills and valleys and... Oh lovely, lovely part of the country.

I'm just carrying on with that same little fan brush.

I added some, some phthalo blue to my color and I'm going to paint a little, little distant mountain range back here.

We can see far away.

There we go.

Just sort of form the, form the outside shape, the top shape that you want.

You have to decide where the ridges live and where the high peaks are.

And then I, I'll fill it in just a little bit like that so we've got something to work with.

And we'll come back and grab our, our little one inch brush.

Just grab this and sweep it out.

And then I want this to be nice and misty at the base.

Very soft.

There we go.

Get a little loose hair there you can just, just pick it off with your brush.

Sometimes your brushes will shed a little bit.

They're natural bristle brushes and they, they drop a hair every once in a while but that's alright.

No big deal to get them off of there.

I'm adding a little touch of black and Prussian blue to my color, so it's a little darker.

And let's come back once more.

Another little range.

Another little range lives right in there.

Just trying to vary the shape a little bit.

Make sure I don't, I don't mirror it exactly.

Sometimes that's the hardest part of painting, is just making sure that everything looks natural and not contrived.

There we go.

Give that one a little, a little odd bump there.

More of a bluff.

There we go.

Fill that one in just a touch.

Once again, I'm back to my little one inch brush, and then we'll sweep that one out.

Extend it down.

I'm just following the angles in my little, in my little hill there.

In reality.

it's kind of a big hill, but it looks, looks little because we're far away from it here.

All right.

Now, all of this stuff is far enough away that we won't see much detail whatsoever down here so I'm just going to carry on with that brush.

Actually, first I'm going to take the, the small brush then we're going to go back to that brush, I promise.

[chuckles] I'm kind of, kind of editing my... Actually there's, there's a little story behind this painting.

I painted this painting for my mother for Christmas one year, and I put a whole lot in it so I'm kind of editing the scene just a little bit, but I'm going to give you at least an idea of how I, how I painted it.

I'm going to take the little, little fan brush now and just kind of scrub in some little distant trees, little distant tree line.

A bunch of them all clustered together down here at the base of the mountain.

Just taking the corner and kind of pushing it up into the, into the canvas like that.

And like I say, I don't want a, I don't want a lot of detail.

So now I'm going to come back with this one and just kind of, kind of borrow a little bit of that color.

Make that, make that bottom edge nice and soft.

Let it drift off into just nothing over there.

Same on this side.

It's going to kind of shrink down and disappear off into nothing.

Now, let's pick up on that same dirty brush.

I'm going to pick up a little bit of the cad yellow, maybe a little Indian yellow, a little touch of sap green, a little bit of titanium white.

And let's come back and just begin to lay in a little distant, little distant hilltop.

It's a very, very spring time color painting.

And if I remember correctly, this, this photograph was taken in the spring time, early one morning.

There we go.

A nice little pasture land, sort of stretches out there.

It's a pastoral landscape.

[chuckles] And we'll come, we'll come a little, little closer forward.

Same idea.

Taking the same brush once again, little, little fan brush.

Just adding to my original mixture here some Prussian blue, sap green and Van Dyke brown.

Beginning to get darker.

We're going to have bigger, taller trees.

This make some really nifty looking little trees, I have to say.

But all I'm doing is just popping that corner into the canvas.

Just push, push, push.

And then I'm watching the overall outside shape.

I'm watching the height.

I'm watching the expansiveness.

Watching how dense the foliage gets.

It's just, all those little considerations you want to have in mind when you're painting.

See, maybe they kind of, it kind of shrinks down and there's another big tree here.

This is probably growing along an old fence row.

It's what we called it back home, when somebody built a fence and it kind of got out of, out of repair, and it was on a distant part of the property, all the vegetation start to grow up around the fence row.

All manner of different things would grow.

Little cedar trees and scrub brush bushes and just everything.

If you, if you weren't careful and didn't maintain it.

I'm going to switch over and get the big brush now.

We're close enough.

We'll take a big two inch brush and start to borrow a little bit of that, a little bit of that color, soften the base just a little bit.

And since this one is a little closer, we're going to spend a little more time on it.

I want to see some more detail here.

Maybe, maybe, for example, we'll take a little, little paint thinner on our liner brush and pick up some Van Dyke brown and let's come back and add just a, just a few little, little sticks and twigs that stick up out here.

These are, maybe it's early in the season and these haven't gotten their, their growth back just yet.

There we go.

I mentioned something about little cedar trees.

I'll show you how to paint a little cedar tree back there along the, along the old fence row.

This is kind of neat.

I'll take some blue and black, a little crimson and sap green.

Make a nice dark mixture here.

I want quite a bit of paint for this, though.

Just grabbing all those darks.

I added a little Van Dyke brown even to it.

Just anything dark on the palette.

I kind of threw it in there.

Okay, take a little one inch brush.

I got just a drop of paint thinner on it, and we'll wiggle that old brush through that dark color.

Just like that.

Wiggle it.

Wiggle it.

That's coating the inside bristles.

And then I'll sharpen it.

Pull it through, sharpen it just like you'd sharpen a knife on a stone and it'll come to a, a beautiful, sharp, chiseled edge there.

Maybe you can see that.

Ooh, there you go.

All right, let's bring this up here.

If you want a little, little cedar tree, you just kind of push that brush in there, and then you kind of start working from side to side.

Makes a little, little tiny evergreen type shapes.

And I have to re sharpen the brush every time I want one.

There's another one right there.

And I'll kind of work it from side to side.

It's like a little windshield wiper affect.

You just sort of push left push right and work your way down.

Wig wag down.

There's another one right there.

They need to be a little darker because those old cedar trees are usually a little darker.

Now, go back to the, back to the little fan brush.

Same dirty one I was using earlier.

Just take a little touch of all those yellows, a little bit of green with it, and we'll come back and start picking out some little highlights on these, on these little trees along the fence row there.

Just important as always, to not cover up all the dark.

We've got to save the dark in there so it looks nice and dimensional.

Maybe we'll even add a little touch of liquid white to it.

Just, just help it stick.

And the technique is no different here.

I'm just taking the corner of the brush and popping it in there.

There we go.

Generally, I want to make the top of the trees a little, little lighter and just let them get darker as they work down.

Getting over here in the, in more the path of the sun so I added just a little, little titanium white to make it even brighter.

Maybe this next batch will have some yellow ochre and I don't know we can throw a little phthalo blue in there just, just to have a little, little different shade.

Not quite as bright.

a little different variety of tree there.

And you can kind of let them reach over your little cedar trees and it sets them back into the, into the painting a little bit more.

All right.

Looks like a pretty good little fence row we built.

Okey dokey.

Let's come on back with the big brush again.

Now, we're going to pick up a little touch of all our yellows again, a little bit of sap green.

Give it a little push.

Load both sides of your brush and then give it a little push like that and push up a little ridge of paint on the end of the brush.

Okay, let's come back up here and we'll start to pick out, we'll start to pick out the closer little valley here.

All the grass growing in the valley.

And this can change color as you go.

It can vary.

See, I'll pick up a little dark and work that in there.

[Nic makes "tchooka, tchooka, tchooka" sounds] Got to make the noises.

[chuckles] Got to make the noises you all.

It works better.

You may not believe me until you try it.

Pick up a little touch of the liquid white.

Make it brighter.

Make it just a touch softer and we'll come back and pick out some sun sparkles on this.

All very subtle, very subtle.

Very quiet.

And we're just about to the point here that it's going to, we're going to really, we're going to really feel the aid of having some liquid black down here on the bottom.

Have all that dark in there taken care of already so when we come through here and we pop a little, pop a little bright color on it, I'm going to add a little bright red even here.

Whew, it's pretty.

Just sort of sprinkle some of this within the, within the little field there.

But adding that, adding that black makes this really come alive.

And this whole meadow just kind of slopes in this direction here.

There.

See it?

Like I say, every brush load can vary just a little bit.

I'm even picking up, picking up a little blue once in a while to kind of cool it down.

Just all kinds of wild grasses grow out here.

I'll let it wander on down into the bottom.

Sometimes you can even take a little bit of your dark color and come back and pop it around up here if you want to.

Up to you.

Totally and completely up to you.

Now, when you're standing out looking out our, in our living room, looking out the front door, down in the valley down here, there's a little, honestly, I don't know what it is.

It's some type of little cabin, little shack.

I don't know if somebody lived there or if it was used for storage on a farm.

Not sure what the story behind it is, but it's a neat looking little shack, so we're going to paint it.

[chuckles] Let's come down here and just get a little idea of where he, of where he where he lives.

That's the back eave.

It has a little roof here that extends [Nic makes "ssssooo" sound] down about like that.

[Nic makes "ssssooo" sound] Here we go.

And of course, he's got little, little walls here.

Just make it nice and dark first.

A little on the front.

Firm up the back edge of the roof there.

There we go.

Now, this little, this little deal is made out of logs.

So I'm going to take some, sorry to change spots on you there.

[chuckles] Needed, needed some open area to mix.

So I'm going to mix up a little titanium white, Van Dyke brown, dark sienna.

And then we're just going to come in here and I'm going to first, I'm going to first take care of the little logs that are coming this way.

Just touch and give it a little tug.

Like that.

And then right about there.

We'll kind of mess them up and then they're going to change direction and come this way.

See that?

Leave a little space in between.

There he is.

Now, let's go a little darker.

On the, on the front side, it's facing away from the light so I'm going to add a little more of that base mixture, the sienna and Van Dyke brown to it.

We'll come back here and just, just catch these little logs coming this way and ideally they wind up sitting in between the ones you put on that side.

We're going to try to get as close as we can here.

There we go.

And, and, and, and let's go just a little lighter.

A little more white in there and I'm going to get just a little touch of paint right on the, right on the very tip of the knife right there.

See, not much, just a little.

Then we can come back and put a little, little ends on the logs.

[Nic makes "tk, tk, tk, tk" sounds] Like that.

You'd see a few over here too.

There we go.

Just kind of button it up.

All right.

Now, up on top there, we'll take some, take a little white, a little black.

Make sort of a gray color.

And we'll throw some little, little shingles up here.

Just kind of let the knife [Nic makes "boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop" sounds] bounce down through there.

Make it look old and rough.

Old and rough and rugged.

Dilapidated.

Definitely seen better days.

All right.

Use just a little light color.

I'm just going to pick out the edge of the roof there so it stands out on that gable end and front part right there.

And give him a little door to get in.

[Nic makes "tk" sound] Right there.

On my to do list, find out more about this little shack and why it was there.

[Nic makes "tchoo" sound] There's a little door.

We'll cut around it.

[Nic makes "tk, tk, tk" sound] And then give him a little shed-ectomy.

All right.

[chuckles] Now, let's come back and just kind of bring some of our grass up against the shed.

Need a little touch of the liquid white there.

Make it stick.

Make it a little bit brighter.

See, this will help us kind of cut it off.

There we go.

Like I say, just a, just a variation of color as it comes on down here.

And that's going to slowly start to fade into the dark.

Right there by the house, I want to come back and actually pick up a little bit of this darker color.

I want to make a darker green even, even some of that color that we made for the cedar trees would be good.

And tap it into the brush.

I'm going to put a little shadow on this side there.

Just kind of, it's blocking the light right around it there.

Okey dokey.

Now I've got a minute or two left here.

Let's take some Van Dyke brown.

Load a little, little fan brush just full of Van Dyke brown and let's come in here and just have a little, there's a little tree that stands way in the foreground.

We actually don't even see the bottom of it.

Just [Nic makes "tchoo" sound] extends right on down like that.

Give him a little arm reaches out here.

[Nic makes "sssssoooooet" sound] Take a little, take a little color and give him, give him some bark.

[Nic makes "tch, tch, tch, tch" sounds] Pardon my arm in the way there for just a minute.

[Nic makes "tch, tch, tch, tch" sounds] Here we go.

Something like that.

Give him, speaking of arms, let's give the tree some arms.

[chuckles] Got to, got to have a few little branches hanging off of there.

There we go.

Just a few little things.

And being, being that it's this time of the year there isn't a whole lot of foliage on it.

Just a, just a few little, little leaves starting to pop out.

Very, very sparse.

There we go.

Just kind of hanging around.

Well, we're going to wrap this painting up.

Hope you've enjoyed it and hope you come back soon.

Happy painting.

Bye bye.

[Music] [announcer] To order Nicholas Hankins' 68 page book with 13 painting projects or his companion DVD set, call 1-800-BOB ROSS or visit BobRoss.com [music] [music]