[Music] Hi.

Welcome back to the painting studio.

I'm Nicholas Hankins.

Are you ready to paint a misty mountaintop with me?

Come on up to the canvas, I'll tell you what's going on.

I have an 18 by 24 pre-stretched, double primed canvas.

I took an inexpensive foam applicator and some water based black gesso just kind of blacked out the bottom and faked some little tree shapes back there with the, with the foam brush, just kind of squashed up on it like that.

Once that was dry, I applied a thin, very thin even coat of liquid clear to the bottom portion of the canvas and a little liquid white to the top portion and just kind of let them mix.

And then on the very bottom, I have applied a very thin even coating, I don't know if you can see that or not, very thin even coating of a mixture of midnight black and phthalo green.

So just a little bit.

Just touch it.

Make sure you can see a little on your finger.

That's, that's all you're concerned with so.

I'll wipe my finger off and we'll get started with a, with a two inch brush.

Let's go right into some Prussian blue, maybe even a little touch of the midnight black.

There we go.

Just tap that into the brush.

Don't need much.

In fact, I'll tap a little and kind of wipe it back out just to, just to make sure this doesn't get too dark.

I want a, I want a very misty, misty, foggy look.

This is the top of a mountain that I hiked to several years ago, back in Tennessee, back in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Took the camera up there and just enjoyed the view.

But it was real foggy that day.

When we got to the top, we were just enveloped in fog.

It was, it was like walking around in a, in a movie or something or in a, in a wonderland, didn't, didn't seem real.

There we go.

Something like.

I'll just kind of wipe that brush out a little bit and then come back and soften it, make sure we don't have anything unsightly happening.

That ought to be all right, something like that.

And just to sort of accelerate or, or really convey that feeling of mist and fog, I'm going to take a little, little one inch brush and just pull some titanium white out here on the palette.

Not very much, you won't need much.

I'm going to take a little titanium white, just a dusting, that's all.

A matter of fact, that's another instance where I might load it and then kind of wipe it back out.

And I'm just going to come back here and sort of push some fog in front of these trees because they are black gesso because they're locked down with a water based paint and it's already dry, we can paint right over the top of them and just sort of push them into the background like that.

Isn't that sneaky?

Isn't that sneaky?

It's a neat little trick, but it works.

It's a neat little trick.

So you can have denser fog in some spots, a little lighter, in others just like it's really, really wafting through there.

And that's what it was doing that day.

Just, just so pretty.

And then it's going to pick up some of that nice green.

Sort of feels like you can, you can sense that color through the fog.

It's such a unique, such a unique feeling being on top of a mountain.

And the fog's really moving.

That's a high mountain, so the clouds are just, just rolling by at a, at a good clip.

And it's so neat.

And I have to tell you, putting it on canvas, painting it on canvas, I think is much easier than actually making the climb up there.

That was a, that was an all day hike, but it was worth it.

It was worth it.

Hiked up there with a good friend of mine.

I hope he, I hope he sees this, hope he's watching.

Maybe, Sam, if you're watching this one, this one's for you, buddy.

This one's dedicated to you.

We had a good old time that day.

There we go.

Something like that.

It's a pretty simple background, but it's effective.

It's effective.

That's what's so neat about it.

All right, let's come on, bring this, this show into the foreground.

Let's mix up a little, we'll mix up a little sap green, and Van Dyke Brown.

I think that'd be a fine combination.

A little sap green, Van Dyke Brown.

Take a little round brush today.

Just tap the top corner of that brush.

There we go.

Get it where you can see it.

Just tap the top corner of that brush into some of that color and let's come back here and just begin to create some distant little ground foliage and vegetation that's growing back here.

Just tapping that, tapping that top corner into the canvas.

You basically load it up excuse me, load it up and unload it the same way just with that top corner.

That's all there is to it.

That's an, that's an easy brush to use.

And it's, it's very, it's very indicative of, of Bob's old saying that "The little trees just, they live in that brush and all you've got to do is push them out."

That's especially true with this brush.

So just, just that quickly, you've got a whole little range of trees back there.

I'm going to grab, now I'm going to take the small round brush.

Just the little one, we'll take a little bit of that base color and then tap into our yellows.

Just any combination of the yellows is fine.

Maybe even just a little pure sap green.

Keep it from, keep it from becoming too bright.

And, let's come back here.

We'll just begin to pick out some little highlights, each brush load I'm going to try to change the flavor, just slightly.

Adding a little yellow ochre, Indian yellow, sap green.

Can add a little, you can take a little midnight black and add, add to the color.

Makes a nice, nice highlighting green.

Just all sorts of delicate little bushes back here in the distance.

Whew, I like that.

I like that Midnight black and yellow combination.

It's, that's nice.

That's nice.

There we go.

A little on these others over here on the other side.

I feel like they'd be a little more hidden, so maybe they're just a little darker.

They're not in, in as much direct light.

I can even jazz it up with a little bright red.

Just change the, change the perception a little bit.

There we go.

A lot of this is probably going to be hidden over here, so I'm not going to take too much time with that.

We'll take a little liner brush now, though, with some dark sienna and a little white.

Just mix them up on the brush.

Drop in a couple of little, little sticks and twigs in here.

Again, a lot of that will get lost.

But I do want, I do want a little hint of it just in case.

Just in case it were to show.

There we go.

Now, I have in mind representing that little hiking path that, that comes around in the painting.

So I'm going to go ahead and get an idea of where that's going to live, too.

I'm going to take a little Van Dyke Brown and dark sienna on a, on a small fan brush, and let's come back here and just kind of get an idea where, I know that's hard to see right now, but we're going to make more of this momentarily.

As the painting unfolds, I just kind of want to know where our, where our path lives.

It's going to wind around and it's going to get much wider in the front.

Gets real wide in the front, as a matter of fact.

So now that I know, and it's going to, and it's going to twist around and kind of just disappear around the corner back there.

Like that.

Let's go ahead and take a little titanium white and dark sienna and we'll put some instance of highlight on there just so, just so you can see it.

We can be aware of where it lives.

I'm going to, I'm going to make this kind of a work in progress.

It's, I'm going to keep coming back and playing with that path throughout the painting.

We're just going to add more to it and more to it.

We'll pretty it up with some little stones and etc.

There we go.

Now you can kind of tell where it lives.

And we'll, we'll make more of that later.

Okay, let's jump back to our, let's jump back to our little round brush.

Let's have maybe, maybe, maybe, before we jump in with the round brush, let's, let's just decide.

Yeah, right there.

There's a little, little tree stands up out of there.

This is just Van Dyke Brown and a little paint thinner on my liner brush.

I'll put a couple of old gnarly arms on him.

Kind of, kind of figure out the, the bones, the structure of the tree first.

There we go.

Now, let's take our, let's take our little round brush here, and then I'm just going to adorn him with some leaves and some foliage like this.

He's a little sparse, though.

Living up, living up on top of the mountain is a hard life.

So those trees are kind of scraggly.

In fact, a lot of them were all sort of bent in just one direction.

The wind pushed them over in one direction.

It looked like, if you've ever been out by the ocean and looked at trees that lived near the ocean, they all kind of bend in one direction.

Same thing on top of the mountain.

It's wild, it's wild looking.

Some of the stuff you could paint in nature people, people wouldn't even believe it was real.

And sometimes I paint that stuff and people say "Aw, that's not real", but it is.

Although I did have a teacher tell me one time that if you have to send a note along with the painting to explain what you painted, maybe we shouldn't paint it that way.

So [chuckles] he's right.

Now back to my little round brush.

We're going to put some high lights on that little tree, too.

Just a little, just a little taste.

Just a little taste.

There we go.

Let's not, let's not get carried away here.

After all, this is a, a foggy scene.

I just want a little, little accent on there so we can see the shape.

Kind of like that.

Lots of paint and a very light touch.

Just loading up the top, top corner of that little round brush.

There we go.

All right.

Maybe, maybe there's even a little tree, maybe there was a little evergreen that was standing right there and it has expired.

Maybe, maybe it's just a little [Nic makes "psshht" sound] just a little remnant, just a little skeleton of a tree still standing there.

We can see some little, little branches still sort of hanging around there.

But it's, it's, it's seen better days.

All right.

Shoot, you know what?

I like that tree so much, let's do, let's do another one.

Let's do another one on the other side.

Let's have a little, let's have one that kind of bends out right there.

Yeah, out right there.

A couple little branches on that one.

He's a, he's a little more gnarled.

Wind got a hold of that one, a little more of that one, I guess.

The prevailing direction must be that way.

Just little, little touches.

Little touches like that.

Plenty of air still in that tree.

Birds can fly through there and not break their neck.

That's a good rule to remember when you paint trees.

You don't want the little birds to break their neck when they, when they try to fly through your tree.

A little highlight on that one, too.

There we go.

All right, let's come on around our, come on round our path here.

I'm about to run out of dark color, too.

Make a little more of that brown, sap green combination.

Matter of fact, coming forward, I'm going to add just a little touch Prussian blue and make it even darker.

There we go.

There we go.

That should work.

Wipe off my knife here.

Now, let's go ahead and sort of push this path a little further around the corner.

Same on this side.

I just want to sneak a few little bushes, I know that again, that's hard to see, I know.

It's on a dark canvas and this dark paint, but just wait till we, we flick some highlights on there.

There we go.

There we go.

Matter of fact, as these get closer, let's do this.

We'll take our, we'll take our little one inch brush we were using for fog earlier.

I'm just going to dip in into some of the liquid white and then pull it in one direction and one direction only through some of the yellows, a little touch of sap green in there with it.

Whew.

There we go.

Get a lot of paint on that brush.

Hang on, I'll show you at the end of it there.

See how, how loaded that brush is.

Let's bring this up here and now that these are getting a little closer, we can see a little more definition and detail.

Whew, whew, whew, whew.

Isn't that pretty?

That works so good.

That works so good.

You can paint gorgeous little brushes with that brush.

Both of them work well.

They're slightly different.

They give you a slightly different look, but they're both great for this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's even add, let's even add a little bit of that phthalo green.

I am a sucker for the phthalo green.

A little on the other side maybe.

Just every brush load, I'm, I'm varying a bit.

Just so we get a slightly different feel, slightly different color, slightly different mood.

Maybe there's a little bright red in this, in this next batch of highlights.

So you have slightly different types of plants in there as well.

It's all about, it's all about having some variation in there.

That's the important part.

A few more over here.

And I'm just letting them kind of trickle over the path.

Now let's have a little more fun with that path.

I said would come back to it.

We're going to come back to it right now.

Let's take a little white, midnight black.

Actually, I think I like just that a little white, a little midnight black.

I want to add a little touch of liquid white to that so it's a little softer.

A little softer and I'll take a little fan brush, I'm going to dip a little fan brush in some paint thinner.

Watch here.

This is going to be very, very wet.

Very, very wet paint.

Now, I'm going to park my palette board for just a second and grab a palette knife.

Let's come up here to this little path, and I'm just going to take it, flick that little brush and put some, put some little rocks, little pebbles on the path.

I think they call that chat or something like that.

Little tiny rocks and pebbles that they put on the path.

Just kind of, just kind of gives it some texture, gives it some, gives it some life.

And in amongst the, the little bitty rocks we'll paint some, some bigger rocks, too.

We'll paint some bigger rocks too.

I think I'll need more paint than that, though.

Make a little more of that highlight color.

I'll even throw some sienna in there with it.

It's a little bit softer because it has liquid white and a, and a touch of the paint thinner left over.

So again, I've got very, very soft paint there.

We'll take an old filbert brush and load it full of, oh, Van Dyke brown, a little dark sienna, nice and fold then I'll pull one side [Nic makes "whht" sound] through there so I've got dark on one side of the brush, light on the other side of the brush, and we're going to come up to the canvas.

There you can see it.

And we're going to come up to the canvas and just paint some little stones on the edge of our path here.

Little, little groupings of stones.

Dark on one side, light on the other.

And you can tuck these little things just wherever you want to put them.

There we go.

We may come back, put a few more in later.

Who knows?

Who knows?

Who knows?

We'll decide what mood we're in later.

Take a little black, Prussian blue.

I'm adding that to my big mixture of dark here.

My big pile of dark color.

And let's have, we've got some very, very distant evergreens back there, but we need a, we need a big close one.

We need a big close up evergreen.

So let's load a big fan brush full of that dark color.

Very, very full to a chiseled edge.

Now, let's come up...

I want this one to be on a little bit of an angle.

So maybe, all those other trees back there are so straight, so maybe that one's kind of leaning in there about like that.

And most of those branches back there are going up, so we'll make a little tree that's got some up, upturned valves like this.

See, you start with just the corner of the brush and then as you work down, you use more and more of it and you push harder and harder to make a bigger, bigger and bigger branch or bough.

Whew, I knew he was going to take a lot of paint.

[chuckles] And when you're painting at home, that's an important thing to remember.

I hope, hopefully you see how often I'm going back to the palette to load the brush.

You have to keep that brush full of paint.

It takes, sounds silly, but it takes paint to paint a painting.

I've seen, I've seen too many students in our classes sort of, they start to struggle a little bit and they're just trying to stretch a little more bush or tree or whatever out of their brush than they have paint for.

And that's when they get a little frustrated.

But as soon as we throw some paint on the situation, it's, it's all good again.

And he needs a little buddy here.

I'm going to try to move him so I don't cover up that one.

I like that little tree, too, so I'm going to tuck in a little friend for this tree right there.

And, yeah, we'll just, we'll just mind the gap there.

There we go.

There we go.

See, I told you that was going to cover up those bushes.

I just had a feeling.

Just had a feeling it was going to happen.

I'm glad I didn't spend too much time on them.

Cut a little sharper trunk in there.

Let's see, we'll take a little, little mixture of the two brands and some white, and we'll leave that very marbled, cut across.

Let's come up here and give it just an indication of some tree trunk.

It kind of shows in a few spots like that.

Come back to our big brush.

We'll dip it in a little liquid, liquid white and then pull it through some of the, oh let's get all the yellows.

Just mix them together and we'll see what happens.

That's the most fun.

Drop some highlight on that big tree.

Make him, make it come to life.

A little on his friend over here.

I want to tell you, when the fog lifts, these trees have, have the primo view.

It's like being on top of the world out there.

There we go.

Throw in a couple of little firecracker bushes here in the front.

There we go.

Sometimes it's nice to take a little, grab a little liquid white, some titanium white... excuse my arm there.

We'll pick up some alizarin crimson and a little bright red.

Maybe it's, sometimes there's a little flowers blooming along the trail and you can kind of sneak those in.

And it's pretty.

It's pretty little... See?

Just little, little things blooming in there amongst all the other stuff.

That's kind of neat.

That's kind of neat.

We'll make these a little darker down here and quiet as they drift off into the shadows.

Then I'm going to go back to my little rock brush.

[Nic makes "sshoo" sound] Going through there.

Kind of seal things off with just a couple more rocks around here.

Some of them are hiding out in the bushes.

Just wherever.

Never know where you'll look and find an old rock.

There we go.

That looks like an inviting little path, doesn't it?

I hope you join me and walk down that little path.

See the beautiful sights in the Great Smoky Mountains.

And until next time, happy painting.

[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]