Graceful Waterfall

[Music] Hi, welcome back.

I'm certainly glad you could join us today.

I thought today we'd just do a painting that's a lot of fun, so let's start out and have them run all the colors across the screen that you need to paint along with us.

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

Today, I have my standard old canvas, and I've taken a little black gesso on a paper towel, and I've just sort of gobbed it all over, except right in here and there, I've just sort of pulled it.

I want to have a big waterfall today, so just a basic idea.

We let the black gesso dry completely.

Then we go back, and I've covered the entire canvas with a very, very thin coat of Liquid Clear, and over the Clear, I've taken a little Phthalo Blue and Phthalo Green mixed together, and painted up to here.

Then here, I've just used a little Phthalo Blue and black, and very little paint on top of the Liquid Clear.

I just want enough so it sort of stains the canvas a little.

That's really all we're looking for.

So, we have the black gesso, the Clear, and then a little bit of color on top.

So let's go and just have some fun.

I'll show you how fantastic this can be.

Let's start with our old two-inch brush today, and a small amount of the Titanium White.

Now right up here above the waterfall, I want to have a nice little soft, light area coming out, so we take the white and we go right up in here.

We just begin making little Xs, little criss-cross strokes right above the waterfall.

Something about like so.

And just let it blend back into what's going to end up being big trees and stuff back in here, like that.

See all the little black gesso things still show through, and it looks like you've worked yourself to death, and you've done very, very little.

That's the beauty of this black gesso.

It may be one of the neatest things that we've ever come up with.

There.

And you can make that as bright as you want it.

Maybe you even it a little brighter right in there.

You can take and several times.

It's up to you.

You can add just a little more of the Titanium White and work it out, something like so, to whatever degree that you want.

There.

Now then.

Tell you what.

The fun part of this painting is the old waterfall, so why don't we, why don't we jump right in and do that one?

Let's do that right off.

Okay, let me wash the old brush.

That's the fun part of this.

It also keeps our crew on its toes.

There.

Shake it off.

[laughter] In one of the earlier shows, I, I showed you the cameraman over here, that he wears a raincoat behind the camera.

That way we, we're sure not to get him too wet.

Okay now, let's do the waterfall.

And for that today, I'm going to just use the old fan brush and I'm going to dip the fan brush into a little bit of the Liquid Clear.

I don't need a great deal.

And then, with the Clear on the brush, go right into a little Titanium White.

Don't go away, I'll be right back.

I'm going to get the least little touch of Phthalo Blue and put in there, just to flavor it a little.

So, we have a little Liquid Clear, white, and the least little touch of Phthalo Blue.

Let's go up here.

Now, I want to make a, a stroke that comes across and then down.

It'll give the impression that the water's sort of flowing, and then somebody pulled the stopper out, and [Bob makes "sshoop" sound] down it went.

So, we go over and we go [Bob makes "fshoom" sound].

Try to do it fast.

If you do it slow, your hand's going to wiggle and you get a waterfall that... do it fast.

It really works better if you do it fast.

And you decide how big you want that waterfall to be.

Maybe like that.

Now, we have this nice waterfall.

Now, we're going to push it way back into the background.

You can also... let's do it with a two-inch brush.

Take the two-inch brush and pull upward and blend it in.

And it'll soften and bring all that together.

See, you can look right through that waterfall and see stones and rocks that are behind it.

There.

That's sort of sneaky, isn't it?

All right, let's mix up, let's mix up some black, a little bit of the Prussian Blue, a little Van Dyke Brown, Alizarin Crimson, maybe a little Sap Green, too.

What the heck.

Whatever good dark color you can come up with.

Okay, let me wipe off the old knife.

Now, we'll just continue to use the old two-inch brush.

I'm going to load a little bit of this color into the two-inch brush by just pushing.

See how that brush is sort of sliding?

See, there's a little ridge of paint.

There's one just like it on the brush, and that's what we paint with.

Okay.

Now then, maybe in our world, there's some big trees.

Here they come.

There they come.

Just use the corner of the brush, and begin forming some basic shapes for some nice big trees that are just, they just sort of hang out here, just sort of hang out here, like that.

There.

All right.

And right along in here...

I don't know.

Maybe on this side over here, here comes some big old doers hanging out.

And all I'm looking for right now is some basic shapes to give me some ideas of where all these trees will end up being.

We're not committed yet.

All we're looking for are just basic shapes, just little basic shapes, so don't be too concerned.

There.

You can even take the black gesso and, and mix it with white gesso and make all kinds of gorgeous effects before you ever paint the first stroke.

There.

And people, they'll go crazy trying to figure out how you made some of these effects.

Shh, that's our secret.

Now then, we need something to contain our waterfall.

We've got an idea where the trees are going to be, so let's take... we'll use old Van Dyke Brown, a little Dark Sienna mixed together.

Pull it out flat, cut across, and we get our little row of paint that lives right on the edge of the knife.

Now, I'm going to put a big, big old rock that lives right there.

See?

That gives, gives us some boundaries on that waterfall so it doesn't just hang there.

There we go.

And this rock is in front of that rock, because I want that rock there to be behind, back behind the waterfall.

There.

Something about like that.

[chuckles] There we are, all right.

All right, now we'll take a little touch of white, a little bit of Dark Sienna, Van Dyke Brown into it, maybe even the least little touch of Yellow ochre.

Whew ooh that's... maybe a little more, I like that, just enough to flavor it a little.

Cut across, our little row of paint.

Then we'll come right up here, on the top of this big stone, rock, cliff, whatever you want to call it, and just barely touching.

You want to make this look flat on top because this is where maybe there's a little fox that lives out here in these woods and he sits right here, and he watches everything, so he needs a little flat spot.

And it doesn't hurt to make up little stories like that, to give a reason for things being the way they are.

There, now, no paint, just grab the edges and pull down.

I want this to remain quite dark.

Maybe the least little, there we go, the least little touch of paint, almost no paint.

There.

I'm going to put a lot of grassy things in here that's going to cover that and push it back, so don't worry about it at this point.

Don't even worry about it.

Maybe a little will show through here and there, so we'll just put some spots here and there that, maybe, maybe some of the little grassy areas will show through.

All right, see there.

It looks like little stones showing through already.

As I say, this black gesso is so neat, and it makes your painting life so much easier.

Now then, let's go back to our old two-inch brush.

Maybe over here, let's decide where these big branches hang.

Maybe they hang right over in front of the waterfall.

That's scary, isn't it, after you do such a waterfall that's, that's so nice?

Then, you start dragging all these big tree limbs right over the front of it.

But, that's all right, you know it's back there, and if you learn, your time is not wasted.

There.

It also helps create that illusion of distance, because it looks like the waterfall is way back behind these trees, and that's what we want to do.

There.

It takes very little paint.

Once again, the black gesso has done most of the work for you.

Let it work for you.

Shoot, be lazy.

Maybe there's something that comes out over here even, wherever you think it should be.

Okay.

I don't want to cover up all these little areas here.

I want to, I want to leave some of them showing through, so when it's done, it'll look like you can look through there and once again, see some of the little stones.

Of course, it you cover them up, we can always go back and add them right back in very easy.

Okay.

Now then, I'm going to grab another clean two-inch brush.

I have several of them going.

I want to take the least, least little bit of Titanium White, tapped right on, right on the corner, just a little teeny, teeny, teeny bit right there.

Now down here at the base of the waterfall, if water fell this far, it would it would churn and create a tremendous amount of mist.

So let's just do the same thing.

We'll take the top corner of that brush and begin tapping, just tap.

It's just basically Titanium White, and you start tapping here.

I want to create a nice misty effect, right down here.

There, something about like so.

All right, just by tapping, and you can fluff it a little bit.

Very gently.

Now, the water hits, and you have that nice area down in there.

All right.

Back to my brush with the old tree color on it, tree limb color because I want some of these limbs to be in front of the mist.

Now, think about what's in the foreground and what's behind.

Try to paint the thing that's the farthest away first and work forward.

And I know, you say that sounds logical, and it is.

It's really just common sense painting.

You paint the thing that's farthest away first and work forward.

There, wherever.

Now, let's take our little liner brush, little liner brush, little liner brush, little liner brush.

We'll use that same color.

And I want to make this paint thin like ink, very thin.

Turn the bristles into the paint.

That brings it to a nice sharp point.

We'll go up in here, and here and there, and there and here, we'll just put the indication of a few little sticks and twigs, and all kinds of little things that we can see sticking out through there.

There, see there?

Already, it gives the impression that there's all kinds of little limbs and things happening, and you've done very, very little, very little.

There, wherever, wherever, wherever.

Maybe on the other side, we'll put a couple, so we don't want him left out.

He'll get mad at you.

There.

Maybe there's even some old wiggledy ones that hang right over here.

There they are.

[Bob makes "tchoo, tchoo" sounds] If you have trouble making the paint flow, just add a little more paint thinner to it.

It just means that it's not quite thin enough.

There.

Sometimes there's some, there he is, right out over the waterfall.

There.

But all these little things that are in front of the waterfall help give that illusion that it's behind.

That's what we're trying to do.

We want to make it way back in there today.

I'll just use that same old brush, and go right into a little Cad Yellow, Indian yellow, Yellow ochre.

Once in a while, I'm going to bump a little of that Bright Red.

Let me grab a little black on the brush.

There.

Okay, just tap, push.

See how that brush pushes that little ridge of paint up?

That's what we're looking for.

Let's go up in here.

Now, let's begin putting in the sparkles, the icing on the cake right here.

This is it, all the little highlights.

Think about shape and form, and how all these little limbs grow in clumps, little branches.

It's just, these are just a collection of bushes that got together and grew big to make a big tree.

Think about little individual bushes that live in here.

There we go.

There, a little more color.

There they go.

See, you can do fantastic things with a great big old two-inch brush, if you just give it a little chance.

That's all it needs, a little chance.

Okay, right on over our waterfall.

All right, there.

Maybe here's another happy little tree.

He lives right there.

Boy, he has some view, doesn't he?

Wouldn't that be a nice place if you were a tree to live?

It would always be nice and damp.

You'd have plenty of water.

Mm.

I'd like to have a little house here.

I think a waterfall is one of the most beautiful sounds.

There we go.

My mother used to love to listen to the waterfalls.

That was one of her favorite things.

You might have noticed on the shows, I dedicated this series to her.

Since the last show, I, I lost my mother, and my brother Jim and I miss her very much.

But this is the kind of scenes that she liked.

There.

All right.

All kinds of gooders.

We have to decide what's going to be down here at the bottom.

We can get crazy [chuckles] and just keep going.

Let's put a little bit on the, just a few little things on the other side over here, too.

There we go.

Mm, mm.

I really like these kind of paintings.

I really like them.

And they're so easy to do with the black gesso.

Before we had the black gesso, this was, this was something that I wanted to paint but I couldn't figure out how to do it in the time frame that they give us for television, because actual painting time is only about 26-and-a-half minutes or something like that, and I have a mean old director.

Boy, if I don't stop right on the money, she gets mad and comes out here and yells and screams, and treats me rough.

Not really, not really.

I made that up.

There we go.

See all those little things?

You can just make layer after layer after layer.

And each one of these will help push that waterfall farther and farther back into the background.

There we are.

Okay.

There.

A little bit right in there.

We better make some decisions what's down at the bottom of this waterfall pretty soon, or I'm going to fill the whole canvas up full of beautiful little trees, because I like to do these little trees like this.

Make them darker and darker down in here.

It's a nice shadow area down here.

You don't want a lot of light down in there.

Okay, let's make some decisions.

Let's go with Van Dyke Brown and a little Dark Sienna mixed together.

Maybe in our world, there lives, there lives, maybe there's a stone right there.

I don't know.

So you just sort of look, and everybody's painting will be different.

Don't just try to copy what we've done here.

Look at your painting.

Painting should not just be copying.

It should be doing your own thing.

That's really what makes it fun.

And that's the person you need to please is yourself.

If you're happy with what you've done, that's what's important.

That's really what's important.

It's not what somebody else tells you should be done, not in painting, anyway.

Maybe there's a big cliff over here [Bob makes "tchoo" sound].

Okay.

There, just fill all of that.

Because it's dark there, we don't have to put much color.

Now.

We'll take some of our brown and white, a little tiny row of paint on the knife, and just sort of let it bounce along here and play.

There, wherever we want him.

And clean your knife off and you can come back and just sort of bring all that together.

There.

Make a big old mean stone right there, and all kinds of little things that live back in here.

Okay, mix up a little touch of color.

I almost ran out of color.

There we go.

Just take our other colors and bounce them around.

Let the knife just touch, bounce, jump, move, carry on like that.

and that's...

It'll make all of these beautiful rough, rough places.

That's what my doggie says is "Rough."

There.

Bounce it across there, just bounce it.

Put a spring on the end of your knife.

Just let it play.

[Bob makes "zzoom" sound] Over here, there, same, same old ... maybe there's a big cliff that comes right out through here.

We don't know where it goes.

And comes down.

Maybe this is sort of washed out underneath.

There we go.

See how you can see things, though.

Maybe it's sort of washed out.

Light's just zinging through there.

[Bob makes "tchoo" sound] There.

Okay, good.

Now, let's get crazy.

I'm going to take my fan brush.

I'll take my fan brush and a little bit of the Liquid Clear, go back into Titanium White, and get a little Phthalo Blue and Phthalo Green on there.

Get them both, not much.

It's very strong.

A little tiny bit of Liquid Clear, just to soften it up and make it slide across here a little easier.

And back in here, maybe the water's coming along here, [Bob makes "shoo" sound] and goes [Bob makes "ploom" sound].

See there, fell over.

Lookie there.

Maybe there's a little stone back in there, and a little splash [Bob makes "tchoo" sound].

You don't have to make those noises, but it helps.

[laughs] It does help.

Maybe [Bob makes "tchoo" sound] maybe there's another little thing.

There may be stones all over the place here.

See there?

We don't know.

But the color underneath is constantly coming through, also.

We had Phthalo Green and Phthalo Blue underneath, and all that comes through.

Maybe [Bob makes "tchoo" sound], I like all these little watery falls.

There.

Isn't that fantastic that you can make water just move like that, any way that you want it to.

It just pours right out of there, and off it goes on a long journey.

We don't know where it's going to go.

Well, we do know where it's going to go.

It's going to end up in the ocean.

We just don't know which one.

There we go.

Now, tell you what.

This will be a super, yeah, mm hmm.

I think, I think maybe, I don't do this very often, but in nature, you always have old trees that have fell off into the water.

And sometimes, we avoid putting them in here, but why not have one?

Here's an old tree.

I'm just using Van Dyke Brown right now.

A little brown and a little white here, mixed together.

Come right back in here and just touch.

Just touch, put a little highlight on that rascal.

This old tree's just fell off into the water, and it's laying here [Bob makes "tchoo" sound].

Some of the bark's still left on it.

Take our little script liner brush, and go right into our Van Dyke Brown.

Maybe there's a big old limb here.

Put it on with brown.

Maybe there's some little ones out in here, like that.

Wherever.

A little brown and white, so we have a little highlight.

[Bob makes "tchoo, to" sound] I want that old limb to show up.

You never even know, maybe, maybe, maybe this is real low right here, and the water is literally coming over that.

[Bob makes "tchoo" sound] This paint, I thinned it with a little bit of Liquid White, so it's very thin, almost the consistency of Liquid White.

And that way, you can go right over the top of that thick brown, without it all mixing together.

So now, we have a little place where the water just comes right over the old tree that's laying out there.

There.

And maybe...

Shoot, we're having so much fun, let's just, let's get a little crazier here.

Maybe.

[Bob makes "ssssoo" sound] Yep.

Maybe there's a big old tree here.

[Bob makes "ttsoo" sound] [chuckles] Once again, you got to make those little noises.

I'm just using a liner brush, but you can do this with a fan brush or whatever.

It doesn't much matter.

It doesn't much matter, whatever, whatever you're comfortable with.

Put a few little arms on him, just a few little arms.

Somebody wrote a while back, "You've really, you've really lost it now, Bob.

You've given the trees arms."

In the next series, we're going to give them legs.

What the heck?

I think in your world, you can do anything.

If you want your trees to have arms or toes, it doesn't matter.

There.

Now.

Right out here, maybe there's just a little, little grass that grows right around his little foots.

There, see, grass right out, coming on there like that.

Maybe there's a few leaves on that little tree still.

Use a little Yellow ochre.

You just put the indication here and there of just a couple of little highlights.

I don't want a whole bunch on that tree.

Don't want it to cover up all the fantastic things that are behind it, but just a few little things.

There we go.

See there?

Now, dip the brush into the least little amount of the paint thinner.

I just want to thin this.

We're getting quite a few layers of paint now, so we need to keep the last layer the thinnest.

A little green, made by Sap Green and a little, little yellow.

And down in here, we can put the indication of a few little bushes and stuff that live right along here at the water's edge.

They set up here on these big rocks.

There.

Just like that.

See that, and sort of have them hang over.

We can take a little brown and white, and here and there.

You know, if you have something that hangs over like this, there's always little roots and stuff that hang over the edge, and you can make all kinds of little doers that hang off like that.

And it helps give a little realism to your painting.

There we are.

But all kinds of little things.

All right, I think we're about to the point we have a painting that's about finished.

I'm going to take a little paint thinner, a little Bright Red, and I think we'll sign this one.

Once again, when you're signing your painting, make this paint, lookie there, it's literally running.

See, you can see it dripping.

It's that thin.

Over and over, I have letters from people who say it's hard to sign.

Keep it thin.

Let's sign that rascal.

Luckily, I have a very small name, and can do it very quickly.

I hope you've enjoyed this one, and from all of us here, I'd like to wish you happy painting and God bless, my friend.

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