[Music] Hi.

Welcome back to the painting studio.

I'm Nicholas Hankins, and I want you to join me for a little back porch scene from East Tennessee.

So come on up to the canvas and let's get started up here.

I have an 18 by 24 inch pre-stretched, double-primed canvas on the easel today.

And I've covered the top with a little liquid white and the bottom with some liquid black and I've just picked up a little phthalo green on my old two inch brush.

We'll get started and put a little, a little cool horizon color in here.

Nothing, nothing like a little back porch scene from East Tennessee.

Something relaxing, something happy.

Just take that same dirty brush now, we'll go into a little, a little phthalo blue and I'm picking up just a touch of bright red.

So I've got phthalo blue and bright red.

That might sound like sort of a strange combination, but it makes a nice rich blue.

Give us, give us a nice, pretty summertime blue up here.

Just using my little crisscross strokes.

Starting at the top and then I'm going to work down, down, down, down and let this get lighter and lighter and lighter as the paint mixes with the liquid white we already have on the canvas.

And of course, that's, that's just what we want in a landscape.

Let that work right into the green.

Down here, I'm just going to kind of clean my brush off a little bit.

Something like that.

I'll park that one for just a minute.

Let's grab a little, little one inch brush.

I'm going to tell you what, we should probably clean a brush shouldn't we?

I don't want these stacking up on me.

Let me, let me clean that first brush in a little paint thinner.

And as you know, we wash our brushes with odorless thinner.

Shake them out.

There you go.

And you beat the devil out of it.

Okay, I'm going to grab a nice, clean, dry brush here.

And just make sure this is blended.

Soften together.

Something like that.

It was, it was pretty well blended anyway but a little, little extra never hurt anybody.

Right?

Okay.

Now let's take a little, little one inch brush and I'm just going to pick up some titanium white, a little touch of the, the midnight black, maybe even a little touch of our blue and red combo.

I just want a nice gray.

Okay.

Let's come up here.

I'm going to put a little, a little shadow in for some clouds.

I want to have some clouds that have a kind of a dark bottom edge on them here so I'm just going to use my, my little circular type strokes with the corner of the brush.

Be right back.

Just grabbing a little more paint.

Just some little circular strokes like that.

Another, another little one right here.

Maybe they're kind of stacked up.

Stacked up over Tennessee.

There we go.

Beauty of a little scene like this, though, is it could, it could be anywhere.

It could be in Tennessee.

It could be in Pennsylvania, it could be just wherever you want it to be.

Taking a little fan brush now with some titanium white.

Let's come back up here and we'll just add a little highlight to these clouds.

There we go.

Still using the corner of the brush and little circular strokes.

Basically the same thing I was doing with my little one inch brush.

You can make clouds with any brush that you want, as long as you're using the right kind of motion and you're sort of, sort of thinking like a cloud.

That's the trick.

That's the trick.

There we go.

Now, that looks a little funny at first with that color just sort of slapped on top of my, of my shadow.

But I'll show you the magical thing that happens here in just, just a moment.

Just wiping my brush off in between loadings.

I don't want it to get too polluted with that, that shadowy gray or blue.

I want to keep those things kind of light and loose and free.

Go back to my little two inch brush, now we'll take the top corner of that brush and just sort of stir those together.

The light and the shadow will stir them together, and it all becomes sort of one thing, and we'll give it a little fluff and a little sweep and a little lift and then I'm going to brush gently across with just two hairs and some air.

That's where you want to be very, very light in your touch.

Otherwise it just, it'll all go away and leave you.

That wouldn't be any good, now would it?

[chuckles] All right, go back to my little fan brush.

I don't want to, I don't want to forget my little bottom cloud down here.

Again, just some little circular strokes.

Something like that.

We might even, we might even have just a few incidental little clouds down here.

Maybe these are farther away or just little skinnies that kind of work their way into, into the inner workings up there, kind of in between and they're sneaking between the big ones and trying not to get caught.

At least that's the story we'll go with for now.

Brush across those two.

Okay.

There we go.

We've got a little start of something going here.

Let me go back to my, actually let me grab my knife here.

I need to make a little mixture for what's coming next.

We're going to have some little, little footyhills back here so I'm going to mix some phthalo blue, a little dark sienna, maybe even a little touch of the Van Dyke brown.

And I'm going to pick up some of that titanium white and add in there with it.

Yeah.

Makes kind of, sounds sort of like a strange combination, but it makes it real pretty green.

Real pretty bluish green.

It's great for far away hills and stuff like that.

If I take my little one inch brush again, just load it on both sides and give it a little tap like that.

I can come back in here and I'm just going to use the corner of the brush and kind of touch and sweep down, just touch and sweep down.

Make a little, little ridge that lives far, far away back there.

In the inside area, I'm just going to keep sort of touching and sweeping, touching and sweeping.

Come from this side, touch and sweep down, just holding that brush on an angle so it doesn't make perfectly little square shapes.

There we go.

Come back to my big brush here.

Now I'm just going to kind of hit this with a, with the corner of the brush.

Tap it firmly.

Put a little atmosphere in here.

Make that feel like there's some haze in the, in the distance.

You can even sweep gently over those, push them even further back into the distance.

But you've got to be careful if you do.

Tell you what, I've got that brush in my hand, I'm just going to keep going with it.

Let me pick up a little bit of that same green color, and we'll come down here and just in front of those, those distant hills, I'm going to paint a closer hill.

So we can slide very little paint on the brush and I'm just kind of following the lay of the land.

And I'm going to allow that to sort of slope over.

And I don't really want to see where those disappear back there.

We'll further hide them in just a moment.

I've got, got an idea here how I'm going to do that.

But first I've got a, first I've got to get a general sense of the ground under there.

Kind of like that.

Okay.

Now, let's have a little fun.

I've still got my ... we'll grab, we'll grab a bigger brush.

I need a bigger brush for a bigger job now.

So let's take a little number six fan brush, load it with a little more of that sort of teal green color.

And we'll come way back in the distance back here and just at the, at the base of the, the little foothills, there's some clumps of trees that are growing on these closer hills.

And I'm just going to kind of, kind of create the impression of that by taking the corner of the brush and just sort of wiggling up, see?

Just kind of punch it up.

And I want to, I want to feel like that's a big cluster of leafy trees way, way far away.

We don't make out a lot of detail, but we can sort of we can sort of see their general shape.

Maybe there's another one right there.

just in case it shows.

Just kind of crunching that, that corner of the fan brush up and into the, into the canvas.

Then I'll come back with my little two inch brush and just, just kind of sink them into the hill like that.

Just sort of lose that bottom edge.

Kind of, kind of make them one with the ground there.

Puts a little shadow out there.

And just keeping that same brush in my hand, I'm going to come up to some cadmium yellow.

Actually, we can take a little of all three of the yellows: Indian yellow, yellow ochre.

Load both sides of the brush.

Now let's come back and again with the corner of the brush I'm just going to punch a little highlight on those trees.

Again not too descript.

These, these little guys are quiet back here and in the background.

They're supporting cast.

But they play an important part so you know we've got to, we've got to have them.

There we go.

And I think even, even on our, even on our little hillside here, if I take just a little bit of that, that highlight color and just a little smattering of that on my hillside back here.

Again, I don't want too much detail.

Want that to feel far, far away.

But we would see a little color back there.

Okay, now let's get serious.

Let's get serious.

I'm going to clean my knife off.

Just get that teal color out of the way for now.

Now I'm going to mix a big batch of oh, we'll use phthalo blue, midnight black, Van Dyke brown, a little of the sienna again.

Going to add crimson and sap green to this.

So we have a very, very, very dark green mixture now.

Big old batch of it.

Lots of paint.

Okay.

Get my knife out of the way there.

I'm going to take a little round brush, little, little half size round brush and just tap the top corner of that into my dark.

There you go.

Get that top corner loaded and let's come back here and now we've got some closer trees and bushes and weeds and whatever.

A little bit of everything.

This is probably an old fence or something.

And things, things have kind of grown up around that fence.

That tends to happen if you don't get out there and keep them trimmed all the time.

The old fence row grows up with all sorts of vegetation.

If you've ever worked on a farm or lived near a farm and looked at it, you know that can be a, that can be a job cleaning out an old fence row that's overgrown.

I'll tell you what, let's take that same brush and now I'm going to load it a different way.

I'm going to kind of pull it, pull it through the paint, pull it through on both sides and wiggle it and then sharpen it.

I can actually load this brush to a, to a little chiseled edge like that.

See?

Now I can take this, let's come up here and just touch it like this and we'll make some little cedar trees.

How about that?

Just touch it and give it a little, little push.

Isn't that neat?

Make all kinds of little tree impressions there.

Just want to make sure they kind of vary in size a little bit.

Let's see.

There's another one.

Maybe there.

These things grow wild just all over the place.

There we go.

Now let's find, let's find another one here.

Another little half round brush.

And I'm going to take a little taste of that color but then I'm going to load it with lots of the yellows: cad yellow, yellow ochre, Indian yellow, maybe even a little touch of the liquid white because as you know, if you painted with me or Bob before, you know, a thin paint stick to a thick paint.

So we've got to have a nice soft, thin color to highlight because we've, we've applied a very nice thick base coat, nice dark, thick base coat.

And now I'm just going to let the sun kind of kiss these little, these little whatever they are.

I don't know what kind of bushes these are.

I don't know that we have to know what kind they are.

Just that they're pretty and they're happy.

Got to be happy, right?

Got to be some happy little bushes and happy little trees back here.

Just, just wouldn't be right otherwise.

So this is, this is kind of an actual place I'm, I'm painting - at least painting it from my, from my memory, from my mind's eye.

If this were a, if you were really here with me, you can hear the train rumbling along the tracks.

There's a little train track behind this row of trees back here.

And it's, it's right about there, if I just keep that same brush in my hand, I'm going to pick up a little titanium white... again, some of all the yellows, a little touch of sap green.

Just really load this brush heavy on both sides.

And now we'll get, we'll get [chuckles] a little crazy here.

Watch this.

We're going to have a little field of grass down here.

So I'm just going to take it kind of play my canvas like a drum.

Just save a little dark right here.

You don't want to lose all of that.

This is about the quickest way I can figure out to create some big, tall grasses.

Big, big, big field full of just wild, wild growing grass.

There's just all sorts of different little impressions in there.

Ooh, this is where you can take out your hostilities, flustrations.

Right?

Have a little fun with that.

I'm going to go back to my, my other, my other half round brush here.

This one's got the dark color on it.

Now I'm going to kind of blend those together a little bit.

And I'm literally just slapping the side of the brush in there.

Something like that.

Okay.

Now, let's reach for a little, little liner brush and some paint thinner, maybe even a little touch of my liquid white here.

Make sure it's nice and light.

There we go.

And I'm just going to soften this up so it's like, it's like liquid, it's like water ink or whatever.

Nice thin paint.

We'll come back here and just here and there now, I'm going to begin to give ourselves the impression of some closer, even closer, more detailed little grasses up here and I'm just kind of taking the tip of the brush and sweeping it, sweeping it quickly across the field there so it feels like that's come way forward.

And as you go, ever so often, we want to vary the color a little bit.

Maybe I'll pick up a little phthalo green, make it a little darker.

You can even use your, you can even use some of your little teal color that we used on the, the foothills a long time ago.

It makes a nice color, especially as you kind of walk it over into the shadow area.

There we go.

That's good enough for a minute.

We may come back and put a few more.

We'll, we'll decide.

We'll decide what we think.

Way, way back here, you can take a little fan brush if you want.

Just take the corner of it and sweep it.

I can grab that paint, kind of sweep it up.

That'll give even further impression of little grasses growing.

Just all sorts of neat little tricks you can... all sorts of neat little tricks you can work on.

I'll show you another one.

Show me another one.

Let me rinse that brush out a little bit.

Doesn't have to be perfectly clean, but I want a little bit of that paint thinner in there.

And again just a little touch of the liquid white.

Swirl that around.

Get some nice, thin loose paint on my brush.

Set my palette down for just a moment.

You can take your, take your brush and kind of flick some little, little wildflower impressions back there.

There's usually stuff that grows on this, on this sort of over seeding grass.

I have little flowers of all types, so we'll put some of that in there just for, just for a little, little fun texture.

What the heck.

Why not.

Right.

We're sort of, we're sort of going crazy today so we'll have some fun with it.

Alright.

Going back and finding a big brush.

Now I'm going to get serious again.

Got to get serious again.

I'm going to pick up a lot of that dark color.

Might even make a little more on the fly here.

A little more blue and black, brown, a little sap green, I think we had crimson in there also, all those good dark colors.

And then I'm going to just kind of pounce it in there and push up a little ridge of paint on the end of the brush like that.

Okay.

Now let's come up here and we're going to have a big, big, big shade tree living right here.

You see the brush going, going away I'm just picking up more paint.

I've got to have plenty of, plenty of paint on my brush to make this as dark as I want.

And then as I work down, I'm just thinking about it, thinking about a tree shape.

I'm trying to think like a tree, here.

How do those little, how do those little branches hang out and hang over?

Maybe it kind of scoots back in there.

Maybe there's a little break in the action and it comes back out here.

Because trees grow just however makes them happy as you know, as you well know.

[chuckles] Maybe, maybe a little branch comes, oooh, all the way out here.

Kind of, kind of ate up part of my background trees back there, but that's okay.

Like Bob always said, we know they're back there.

And we learned something, and we learned something by making them.

That's the most important part.

That one's going to come, this big tree is going to come, golly, all the way down here and just kind of merge right into those shadows like that.

Okay.

Back to my little liner brush again.

I'm picking up paint thinner, a little Van Dyke brown.

Soften that up nice and thin and peeking through some of these little open spots, we might see a few little sticks and twigs.

Maybe, maybe the trunk itself is just, just off frame, just out of the, just out of the picture.

We don't quite see it.

But we do see some of these branches that are reaching out to hold all this stuff up.

Something's got to hold all this stuff up.

There we go.

Just a, just a little peek once in a while in those little open areas that adds a lot to your painting.

You'd be amazed at the extra feel, the detail you get by adding to something as simple as that.

Okay, I'm going back to my little round brush again, and I just dipped it in some liquid white and I'm picking up a combination of all the yellows once more, a little bit of green.

And I'm again going to... Now I'm going to tap this one into my paint, sort of push up a little ridge of paint like that.

There you go.

And we're going to come back up here and add a little... and a little highlight, especially to the, the ends of the, of the branches of the tree, the tips out here where the sunshine would really sort of glint across.

And as you do this, you just kind of have to just kind of have to imagine the architecture or each little branch.

You want to treat them individually.

Don't run up here and just kind of start socking the canvas at random.

It won't really look like anything if you just kind of hit at random.

But if we think about, we think about each of these as an individual, we just sort of, sort of treat it that way, treat it carefully... then it starts to take shape.

And I'm paying close attention to my darks in between the branches as I do this.

I don't want to cover up all that dark.

That's probably as important as the highlights themselves.

There we go.

Maybe, maybe right there at the bottom, I'll add just a little extra, a little extra touch of bright white.

Sort of separate it from the background a little more.

There we go.

As those, as those colors sort of find their way back toward the side of the canvas here, I'm going to add a little, little phthalo green phthalo blue combo to my yellows so they sort of feel like accents that are back in the shadows a little more here.

That way I'm still seeing some shape, but not as bright as out in the sunshine.

There we go.

All right, let's return to our little meadow down here.

I want to play, I want to play in the grass just a little longer.

Is that okay?

We got time for a little extra playing around in the grass?

Pull some more of these little detailed things in here.

I love messing with the... those little last minute touches.

A lot of times the, the last 2 or 3 things you add to the, to a painting are the first things that somebody looking at your painting will notice so it's good to, good to spend a minute or two if you can.

Just give it a little extra touch of flare, a little extra detail.

I'm moving again into blue or darker colors off that side as it sort of disappears into the shade over here.

There we go.

Show you another fun thing to do.

Maybe, back here in the background, before we sign off, maybe we do see some little sticks and twigs and trunks and... got to have something holding all these trees up so just a little impression of that stuff back there's nice.

And this is a lot of fun, too.

I'm going to, I'm going to grab a filbert brush, clean off a little spot on my palette here.

I made a big mess.

I'm going to grab a little filbert brush and a little touch of liquid white and then pull it through the titanium white.

Might even, might even flavor it with just a little touch of bright red so it's not pure white.

It's a little warmer that way.

All right, let's come back up here.

Picking up a little, picking up a little ridge of paint on this brush, too.

Now we're going to get some closer, closer Little flowers in our meadow.

This is probably Queen Anne's Lace.

It grows wild in the field, but it's pretty.

I think it's pretty.

Just some little touches like that.

As you get, again, as you move into the shadowed area, I'm going to cool it down.

I'm going to add a little blue, just a little touch of blue to my color.

Load both sides of that brush again.

Give it a little push.

There, yeah.

All right.

Let's come back and we'll drop a few of these into the, into the shadow area.

And then as these get real close, you can turn your brush on its side and kind of make closer impressions.

See?

These are, these are right up in our face here.

That way it kind of feels like they're going back, back, back, back, back through the meadow.

Shoot, I think we've about got a finished painting here.

Let's take a little bright red on our old liner brush, soften that down until it's nice and loose, like ink or water.

We'll come to the corner and we'll sign this little painting.

I hope you've enjoyed this one.

I hope you've enjoyed a little, a little visit to the Tennessee countryside with me.

And I hope you will come back and paint with us again so until next time, happy painting and we'll see you soon.

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