Back Country Path

[Music] Hi, welcome back.

Certainly glad you could join us today, and I, I thought today we'd maybe do something just a little different, and I really believe you'll enjoy it.

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

and they'll come across right there.

While they're doing that, let me show you what I've, what you caught me [chuckles] doing up here.

I have my standard old 18 by 24 inch pre-stretched canvas.

And I took a little black gesso and a paper towel, and I just sort of daubed.

I know I want a big tree here and here, and other than that, I really don't care.

I've allowed the black gesso to dry completely.

Now, on top of that, I'm adding a mixture of liquid clear, midnight black, and a little bit of titanium white.

In other words, I want a very thin gray color.

And I'm going to cover most of this with just this very thin gray color.

And I'll just finish doing that here real quick.

And all we do is just sort of scrub it in.

Like so, but this is an extremely thin paint.

Liquid clear with gray.

Just black and, and a little bit of titanium white.

About like that.

That's really all I'm looking for.

Okay, and the whole canvas has been covered with that mixture.

So that just gives us a little background color to play with.

Sometimes we, we use liquid clear by itself.

Sometimes we mix color with it, and today that's what we're going to do.

So let me wash the old brush.

That's the fun part of this whole technique.

We wash it with odorless thinner, shake off the excess, [laughs] and then just beat the devil out of it.

Now then, I want to add a few little hints of color here and there, and I tell you what, first I'm going to take the thin paint off my palette, and lay it aside somewhere because I don't want to thin any of my other paints out with it.

We put the thin paint on there just so everything's nice and slick and, and color blends on the canvas.

And the gray will help us mute or dull all the colors in this particular painting.

Take a small, very small amount of alizarin crimson.

Really be stingy with it, I don't want but a tiny, little bit.

Here and there, and there and here, I just want to change the flavor of this gray a little bit.

Just to make the painting a little more interesting.

Little crimson here and there, like so.

Maybe like there's a little nice warm little splotch shining through there.

I don't know, whatever you want.

And you can use any color that makes you feel good.

There.

Mm, maybe, tell you what, even maybe the least little bit of the sap green.

It really doesn't matter, but a very small amount.

Just want some little splotches of color here and there.

All right.

Maybe something about like that.

And, I'm even going to touch the least, least little bit of the phthalo blue once in a while.

And we just sort of blend that.

But once again, the gray color that we put on at first will tone all of that down.

There.

And we just have a lot of little colors happening in, in various parts of the painting.

There we go.

Maybe even a little crimson over in here.

It's really up to you.

You make the big decisions, what you want and where you want it.

Now then, a little titanium white right on the same brush.

And take the white, and I'll put right in here.

I want to create the illusion of soft, very soft misty area back behind these trees.

So the white will mix with that gray, and you can see what's happening already.

It gives that illusion.

And you could use the liquid black and do this.

But it would work probably just as well, I just happen to have this handy, and that's what I'm using today.

But the liquid black would work just as well.

Might even be easier, who knows?

Try it and see.

There we are.

Something like that.

Maybe a little bit over in here, I want that mist just to sort of float behind these trees.

There.

I like very soft little misty paintings.

They, they just do nice things for you.

Okay.

Kind of brighten that a little bit more right in there.

Right in there.

I want that to be the softest area here.

And it'll also have a tendency to bring your eye right there when you look at the finished painting.

And that's where we want you to look, so that's that we put that in there.

Now see, some of these things with the black gesso.

See the little spots and stuff?

They will show right through that paint, and just transparent enough to allow it to show.

When the painting's done, people with think you spent tremendous amounts of time painting each one of these little details in there.

[chuckles] And you don't have to tell them you did it just with a paper towel, just gobbing it like that.

That's our secret.

Okay.

Enough of that.

Now then, let me grab one of the, the little half size round brushes.

And I'm going to take, I'm going to take some Prussian blue, very strong blue.

Don't take much.

Some alizarin crimson, make sort of a lavender color.

Much, much more crimson than blue, proportionately.

Much, much more.

Like so.

There.

Okay, let me wipe off the old knife here.

And we just wipe the knife on a paper towel, just to clean it off or a soft rag.

Whatever you happen to have.

I'm going to load this little round brush by just tapping it right into the color.

Just tap it.

And let's go right back in here.

Let's start, let's start with this tree.

Okay, now I don't want to, I don't want to kill all of these, I want some of those to remain in the painting.

So, they're very special.

Take care of those.

I want to save, save some of them, retain some of those.

There we go.

And let's just tap in a very, very basic little tree shape.

This is just sort of a lavender-like color, very dark, it could almost be black.

You could do it in black if you wanted to.

No problem.

There, something about like that.

Okay, now we're looking for here is just general shapes.

Once again, don't, don't look for a lot of detail.

We'll worry about detail in the foreground.

Right here we just want it to look like a big old tree that's hanging out and just having a good time here.

It doesn't take a lot of color, because you have the, the black gesso underneath.

The black gesso may be one of the neatest things that we've ever came up with.

And we originally were going to develop all kinds of color gessos, yellow and all that, but it's very easy to take a little acrylic paint, and put with your white gesso, and make any color gesso that you want.

But it's difficult to take white gesso and try to make black.

So that's the reason we've made black gesso.

Anybody can make gesso in other colors.

Once again, just a little acrylic paint and gesso and you can make anything that you want.

All right, now then.

Take the little liner brush, little paint thinner, and go right into that same color.

And I want this to be thin, almost like ink.

So you can see it's literally running on the palette.

But it's the same identical color.

Let's go up here.

Here and there, and there and here, I just want to put a few, not many, a few little indications of some little tree trunks down the stalks, whatever you want to call them.

Some little things that live in the middle of the tree and they hold it up, keep it from falling over.

Don't want it to fall over, make a big noise.

There, and some back in here that you can't hardly see.

They should be very quiet.

They shouldn't stand out real strong.

I want them to be very subdued.

There we go.

Just all kinds of little things that live back in there.

And you decide how many there are and where they live, and all of that.

Okay, shoot, maybe we'll just use that same old brush.

Probably run into a little, little caddy yellow, Be get right back, I'm going to get a little of the midnight black, I want it darker.

Oh yeah, that's very nice.

Black and yellow make a beautiful green color.

And once again, all you do is tap.

Let me pick up a little yellow ochre and a little Indian yellow.

Just mix all the yellows and the black together, makes a beautiful green, okay.

Now then maybe in our world, maybe, yep, right in here.

But not a great deal of color, it's too far away.

Too far away, maybe there's just all kinds of little bushes that live way back in here.

Maybe there's a bigger one.

But I don't want these very distinct.

Quiet.

Quiet little bushes, shh.

There they come, maybe they just hang right out over here.

See, that sort of looks like a natural place for there to be a, I know, I know, I know, I got it.

You begin seeing things [chuckles] when you do this.

Watch.

Let's, let's make some brown.

Sap green, good old sap green.

And alizarin crimson, in about equal parts.

Makes a gorgeous brown.

There we go, sap green, alizarin crimson.

And you could take it to the red side or the green side, depends on the mood you're in that day or what you're trying to achieve.

There, today I'm going to have it a little touch to the red side.

Cut off a tiny little roll of paint.

And maybe I'll go right in here, maybe there's shoot, maybe there's a little bank right here.

A little bank out here in the woods, a place for all the little creatures to put their money.

There we go.

And I'm just really taking the knife and using it flat and pushing that, and rubbing it in, so it goes right into the fabric.

Really want to grind it in there.

There.

Now, a little titanium white and some of that same color.

And the least little touch of it.

And I want to come right back in here and just touch, and then the more you rub it, the darker it'll become.

I don't want this to be too bright, too distinct, yet.

It's too far in the background.

So you can put it on this very bright, and then you rub it a little with the knife.

And you can just soften it right on down to whatever degree of harshness that you want.

A little dark back in there and it'll look like, there, little indentations, and rocks, and stones, and all kinds of happy little things that live in the, way back in the background.

Add the least little touch of bright red to that.

Just to give it a little pinkish flavor here and there.

Something about like so.

Now, back to my little small round brush.

A little more of the green on it.

Let's add a few little bushes that live right up in here.

Like so.

Okay.

Just tap it, like that.

Let them just come right over here.

They're just, they're just hanging all over just like that.

There, some little doers growing right out in here, wherever you think they should be.

There.

See I want that to look very grassy.

Like there's all kinds of little ferns and stuff that live there.

All right.

And a little more of the brown.

And we'll put a [Bob makes "bloop" sound], there's another little stone.

But just work in layers, doing one little stone at a time.

See, let that just work and play.

Come back with our little round brush.

Bring another one, but work in layers.

That's most important.

and that way you can just push the little stones right back into the bushes.

Okay, back to our little brown color.

Tell you what, this would be a beautiful place to have a little path.

We have to, have to have a way of getting back in there.

So we'll just do something about like that.

And I'm really, really pushing firmly.

There.

I don't, so you can hear, probably, How firm I'm pushing there.

Don't know exactly where this is going to go.

And we don't care at this point, whatever.

Whatever.

Now then.

We'll use a big round brush, what the heck.

We got the big ones and medium size, and little ones here, [chuckles] all kinds.

Actually, there's only two sizes.

Okay, maybe in our world, we need to close that little path in.

Maybe we'll have some happy little bushes that live right here.

And you can use this brush sidewards or up and down, depends on the effect that you want.

You want to make it look like there's little things hanging over, use it sidewards.

You want to make it upstanding, use it like that.

Just up to you.

And if you don't like either one, you can change and use a different brush.

There.

All we're doing is putting in a little dark, so our light will show.

Okay.

That's a little dark area in there.

Now then let's take a little of that color we had, I'm going to add a little yellow ochre to it.

So I got yellow ochre, brown, white, a little touch of red.

All those nice little colors.

And very lightly, barely, barely touching.

Just begin, lookie there.

See that?

Now we got a way to slip back in there.

Little bunny rabbit can run right in there.

Go back in there and hide.

Or maybe he wants to go back and see his brother that lives back around the corner.

There.

His brother's name's Jim.

I met him one time.

No, that's my brother's name, I'm sorry.

All right, there we go.

Okay.

Something about like that, that makes a nice little path.

Then we can begin adding all kinds of little bushes and grassy things.

Maybe I'll finish up this little side right here.

[Bob makes "doot, doot, doot" sounds] See there.

Want that little path just to sort of look like it's going way back in the distance.

There.

All kinds of little things.

Work in layers, though.

Work in layers.

Now, little bit more black into the yellows.

Now then, let's take this nice little green color there.

There we go.

Grab some sap green.

I got sap green up here.

That'll change the flavor again.

Just want to change the flavor continually.

They're all green, but each different green just is a little different.

And in the woods you have all different colors of green.

There.

So don't be afraid to have a lot of greens even though they're close together.

They'll look different when you finish your painting.

Okay, maybe right there, tell you what.

I'm intentionally going to leave that dark right there, because that'll help, you'll see, you'll see.

It'll help set everything off.

There we go, like this big tree up here.

I'm going to leave it dark.

There we go.

Just layer after layer after layer, but darker and darker down here toward the base.

Down toward the base it gets darker and darker.

There's a whole clump of bushes there now.

We're not even sure any more how many bushes live there.

There we go.

Put a few little things there.

Good.

Just decided I needed a little doer right there.

I'm going to take, I'm going to take the old liner brush, find a little bit of brown, a little bit of white, make a light brown.

Light brown color, very thin.

Very thin.

Let's go up in here.

Here and there, I'm going to put the indication of a little stick and a little twig.

There.

There'd be some sticks showing through all this, all this many little bushes and things in here.

There'll be a few little sticks.

We need those.

And it also helps create that illusion of depth and distance in your painting.

There.

Okay.

Now, where's our little path going here?

I'm going to take some more of that brownish color, let's keep it going all over here.

Maybe I'll add a little of that lavender that we had left over.

We'll have him go somewhere like that.

Then back to our little highlight color.

Rub a little of that here and there.

There we go.

And we don't know where this path goes.

It just goes on around the corner, maybe.

On around the corner.

Tell you what.

There's one's that's a little dirty but we'll use it anyway.

Grab an old two-inch brush.

It doesn't matter if it has a little color on it.

Be right back, get a little of that black so I can make some green.

Now then, maybe, let's have some fun.

Maybe, maybe there's a little bush lives right here.

See the difference now, in the way these little bushes look between the big brush and the little round brushes?

And it makes it look like there's all kinds of different things in your, in your world.

Shoot, maybe, tell you what, maybe there's a little grassy bank that comes right down like that, right on down.

And it goes right on up here somewhere, I don't know.

Very soft, but we need nothing underneath.

We have the color that was on the canvas, that grayish color.

And it's just mixing with all kinds of.

I want to put a whole bunch of this in here.

You know while I'm doing this?

I've just sort of put together a couple little segments of film with some of my little creatures on it.

I want to sort of share them with you.

This was my little squirrel when he was just a baby.

Annette's holding there.

Isn't he just the [chuckles] cutest little thing?

And then he gets a little older pretty soon, and this is what they look like.

There.

Aren't they cute?

This is Peapod, you remember Peapod the Pocket Squirrel?

Now you know why we call him a pocket squirrel.

He's just the cutest little thing.

And by the time you get to see this, he'll be free.

[chuckles] He'll be long gone.

Look at that.

That's one of them that I've raised and released, and you see how far he went right out in my backyard.

And he, he thinks foraging for food is running up the old man's leg, and that's, this is what it looks like to him.

[chuckles] When he runs up and finds a peanut.

But he's so cute, that's what it looks like.

But aren't they the most precious little things?

But, as I say, I've raised them since they were just tiny little babies.

But I got a letter a few days ago from someone who thought we were condoning making pets out of these creatures.

And I really don't.

All of these creatures we turn loose back to the wild.

I've worked with several of the rehab ladies around the country.

Here in Muncie, I worked with Diana Shaffer, the bird lady.

And in Orlando I worked with several fantastic people, like Carmen Shaw and Ann Young, she's the bird lady in Orlando.

And I just think these are super people that are doing a job that needs to be done.

And there's somebody in your area that does this too, chances are.

And they need your help.

If you have time, stop by and give them a hand, and you'll find it so rewarding.

Shoot, I, I go over to Ann Young's house whenever I have a few minutes, she just lives a little ways from me and I sit around, feed the birds and... because she raises thousands of birds every year and releases them.

I just put a little brown here.

I get talking, now I'm making a little brown and white.

Make a little bank here.

But I like to go over, set with her and she teaches me about the birds and, and we feed them, and you love them and they just, you really will, I'll pre-warn you though, it's addictive, and you will fall in love with them.

But it's worth it.

It's worth it.

I'm going to just lay a little grassy area right along here.

I talk too much sometime.

I get on my little kicks with the animals, and off I go.

There we are.

Okay.

See I just wanted to make a little bank here and there.

Tell you what, we can take a little of that dark color.

Maybe there's just a big hole right there.

This is just that dark purplish color.

I want to make like a big recessed area.

Place where some of my little creatures can go and hide at night.

Now I'll pull a little grass right over the top of it.

See, now they have a little place they can sneak back in there and hide.

There.

Something like so.

Now then, up here.

Let's take the big round brush.

And we'll just tap in a few basic shapes.

Most of it's done in the black, and we don't need much up here, but just a few basic shapes.

There we go.

Once again, see areas like this I want to leave in there.

I want to leave in there.

Just let the black gesso show through.

There's a big oak tree.

Take a liner brush.

Oh, we'll use a little brown and a little white, whatever.

Doesn't much matter.

Going to cover most of it up.

And this is where, if you got an old wiggly hand, it really, really pays off.

I want an old tree trunk that looks like it's got some character to it.

[Bob makes "tchooka, tchooka, tchooka" sounds] There.

A few little things here and there.

We'll use our, we'll use a little half-size round brush it's already got that color on it.

A little bit of black, yellow, a little sap green.

Mix them together.

And let's just come right up in here.

We'll put the indication of all kinds of little leaves on here.

There we go.

There, brighten it up a little so you can see it a little better.

There.

I have a tendency to paint paintings that are quite subdued and quiet, so sometimes I have to brighten them up a little so they show up a little better on television.

But when you're doing yours at home, you decide what color you want.

How bright, or how subdued that you want it.

It's up to you.

Up to you.

There we go.

As we travel around there, used to travel around and teach, something I did for years.

You learned that everybody has their own idea of what nature looks like, and the way they want to paint it.

I don't do a great deal of teaching anymore, we have a lot of fantastic teachers now that travel around.

I'm getting too old.

[chuckles] We've got some nice young fellows like Dana, Steve, they, they go around and teach and I take life easier.

When you get old you have to.

There we go.

A few little bushes and stuff right along in here.

There.

Just drop them in.

Wherever.

And let me take, let me take, take a little light color, I'm going to put a little, a little touch of paint thinner with it.

And a little bit of dark color, and put some paint thinner with it so it's quite thin.

They're both quite thin.

And take my liner brush, go through the dark color first.

Then just pull one side of it through the light color.

I'm sorry.

Slipped away, on you.

And I just want to make the indication, maybe of a tree that lives right there.

There he is.

There he comes.

Something about like that.

Now we'll put a few little limbs on him.

This is maybe an old dead tree that lives out here.

There we go.

Maybe we'll even give him a friend right there.

There.

Okay, something like that, that gives you an idea.

This is a fantastic little painting.

I hope you'll try it because it'll it'll really pay you great dividends and you'll enjoy it.

Put a little something around his foots.

Shoot, I think this one's about ready for a signature.

Let's take a little paint thinner, a little bit of red, let's just sign this one.

Call him finished.

As I say, I really hope you've enjoyed this.

Give it a try, maybe, maybe you'll send me a photograph of, of your painting, I'd love to see it.

From all of us here, let me wish you happy painting, and God bless, my friend.

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