Bob Ross Oil Painting Technique For Capturing The Beauty of a Sunset

Oh yes, yes, I think that'll go down a treat, won't it? Smashing! Sunset Oval? Oh, that won't do. No, that won't do at all. There, Sunset Oblong. A Bob Ross classic. Tell him it was a typo. So welcome back to the studio. As you saw from my little opening skit, sometimes the name of these paintings can cause me a few problems. Of course, this is Sunset Oval, but without the oval. And it means that you can paint this painting in whatever format you like, with or without border, with or without the oval. Whatever you do, you suit yourself. And that's what painting is really about, giving you the chance to put in or take out the different elements of a painting which you want to include or to leave out. If you think something looks a little bit on the tricky side or hard, maybe do just a section of it. Just pick a part of the painting. Every painting is designed for a beginner at whatever level. You decide which bits you paint to satisfy your own needs. Having said that, let's push on with the painting. And I'll try and get these teeth in. I appear to be breaking them in for someone else. A horse, maybe. Happy painting, people. So here's my canvas, 16 by 20. And I've decided to put a board on it, but it's very much optional. This is a wet on wet oil painting technique, and I'll be starting out with some Bob Ross liquid white oil paint. I keep some in a small airtight container for ease of application, and I use an old Bob Ross landscape brush to apply a thin even coat to my canvas. I start off with just a small amount, hold on to the canvas tightly and scrub it in very well. But take care near this masking tape. We don't want to force that liquid white under the tape. I always brush in from the edge if I can. And finish off with some long flat strokes to even out the surface. One of the most important things you can do for your canvas is to test it. I like to use my fingertips, I'm looking for a nice clear fingerprint. As you see, just enough, but not too much. We want to make it wet enough to be able to blend, but not so wet that we can't make paint stick. Don't forget, brush out those fingerprints as well. And finally, give that 1-inch brush a nice dry clean, so I can use it again, preferably without getting it all over your hands. Those of you with keen eyesight will have spotted these matte pins on either side. This will be my horizon line. I use my 1-inch brush to measure the distance from the base of the canvas. Here's my palette, just a few colours to start with. As I mentioned, I'm going to use that old 1-inch brush again. My first colour is Indian Yellow, a slightly transparent colour, so I'll put a little bit extra on my brush. I want a nice bright yellow centre to my painting. As the title indicates, this is a sunset painting, but one thing to bear in mind, where are we going to put a mountain? Right, so you can see that yellow needs to be extended a little further out, up to this left hand corner, and maybe down here in the water. I want some for a reflection. Without cleaning the brush, I jump straight into some Yellow Ochre. These two colours like each other and make a lovely warm egg yolk yellow colour. I'll put some above the Indian Yellow and maybe a little bit down below it as well. Of course, I'll reflect this in the water as well. My next colour is Alizarin Crimson. Once again, I didn't bother dry cleaning the brush. This makes a lovely warm orangey-peachy colour. One of my favourites. As you can see, I'm overlapping into the edge of the Yellow Ochre. So every time I add a colour, it sort of nibbles away at the previous colour. So you have to allow a little extra of each of them. I'll leave the extreme corners alone because I want to add some nice lavender tones there. My painting looks a little bit patchy and that old brush, well, it's not perfect for blending, so I've got a nice clean fresh new brush. As you can see, I don't want any hard edges. This all wants to look very smooth. For my lavender colour, I'm going to be using some Alizarin Crimson and some Phthalo Blue. Much more of the Crimson though, about 5 to 1. I'll take just a little bit of the Phthalo Blue first of all. As you see, as I blend it in, the colour slowly changes. But a little bit too much and well, it becomes bright blue, so take it steady. Time for a top tip. Use a fresh brush to keep your colours fresh, particularly true when it comes to lavenders. A dirty brush tends to make everything go sort of brown or even green, so take care. Another favourite trick is never to use this colour in the sky straight away. I'll use it down here in the corner. If it goes green, it doesn't matter because that's where the water is. I want to see exactly how much blue there is in this colour. Not too much, it looks fairly safe. I'll just put a little in the top, allow it to blend with some of the yellow colours and see if we get green. If we don't, I know we're safe. So, let's add a little bit more Crimson to my sky. We know there's going to be a mountain, and I want this colour to be just above and to the right of it. As you see, I think this will help my clouds show up a little more. Time for some planning. If you've watched any of my videos, you know I like to know where I'm going with my paintings. I don't like it to be too random. I like some sort of idea of where the structure is going to be. Knowing where the peak of this mountain is going to be is essential. It will determine where I put trees and clouds. I'm going to have a nice tall tree on this side and some pine trees on this side, so my mountain peak is in just the right area. In Bob Ross's original painting, he used a one-inch brush for his clouds, but I think it's probably a bit big for my painting. So, I'm going to try using a filbert brush. It's a little bit smaller, a bit more manageable. So, I start off with some Titanium White and a tiny drop of some Alizarin Crimson. I just want to make my white colour off-white, a pinkish glow to it. I think about my clouds as being small bubbles, little curls of colour, one overlapping another. Try to make a nice irregular shape with a flattish base to it. It's a bit of a classic shape for a cloud. Now, let's use a one-inch brush to reduce some of the brightness. At the base of the cloud, notice how I just tap gently and squash that paint down into the canvas, but leave the bright edge. It's the silver lining. Against the shadowy area, we can add another cloud. In fact, I can borrow the edge of the cloud behind and bring it forwards. Sometimes clouds paint themselves. You just want more of a passenger. Just sit back and have fun with them. Now, as Bob would say, two hairs and some air just lightly flatten down the paint. Whilst I'm at it, I'll add another lovely cloud in the top left corner. But how about this for a nice touch? Take some pure Titanium White paint now and really reinforce those lovely bright edges. Now you can see why I tinted my clouds with a little bit of Alizarin Crimson, so you can come back and add these little extra details. I'll give this one a little bit of an extra bright edge too. But I'm feeling mischievous and now it's pickle time. That's right. I'm going to do something, well, a little bit mad. I'm going to put a cloud right where I know my mountain's going to live. It's something we sometimes do. We just stray into an area where we think, oh, it'll be okay. I'll just plant a mountain on top and it'll all work out. So let's see if it does. I've put a nice cloud right here. Blend it out and soften it in, just like the other clouds. Time to paint a mountain. I've got my original lavender colour into which I'm going to add some black. I want a good strong dark colour for the base colour of my mountain. I'm going to take a small roll of colour and just where the peak of my mountain is, I'm going to just press the paint in. There we are. And we know where the mountain was originally going to be. And it's going to go right here. Firm pressure on the back of the knife and just press the paint down into the canvas. It's the same technique I've used often, so I know it works. I'll carry on adding paint and putting in the peaks of this mountain, aiming for the edges of my canvas. Scraping off the surplus paint as I go. So let's just take a moment to look and see what happened to my mountain then. Well, I let my clouds drift out a little further than I'd expected and put my mountain directly on top. No problem with that. I quite like this effect of having one overlapping the other. But the mistake I made is I didn't scrape away some of the cloud first. You can see what happens here is that the cloud colour gets into the edge of the mountain and stops being a lovely dark sticky dry colour. It starts becoming this sort of sloppy grey tone. Firstly, this is going to be hard to make some lovely fresh snow show up against. But secondly, the oily white paint, which although firm, has actually affected the colour and the consistency of the paint. Trying to get a tanning white stick on top of a contaminated colour like that can be very difficult. I know from my own mistakes in the past. So take care when you're doing your own sort of combos of clouds and mountains. Scrape away the excess cloud first. Now there's another pick of potential coming up over here though. I'm going to try and paint a lovely search on top of this cloud. I think I'm in for a little bit of challenging. A challenging? I can't say the words again. So let's scrape off this contaminated dark base colour. I'll also scrape off the liquid white underneath it which would affect the consistency of the paint as well. I want a good dry dark colour for the base colour of my mountain. It'll make highlighting so much easier. You can see as I scrape away all the surplus excess dark colour a before and after photograph. The original version so much paler and wetter. This one dark and dry. I'll finish off my mountain with a one inch brush. This removes any last of the surplus paint and gives me a nice misty lower edge. For the mountain's snowy highlights, once again I'm taking a tiny dot of bright red into my titanium white. But like those clouds, I don't want to use a pure colour just yet. I always like to leave the option for pure white till later. Take note how small a roll of paint I'm using. About as big as a fat cocktail stick. Here's another top tip coming up. Notice where I start that knife stroke. A light stroke but I left a dark edge. Something which I know shouldn't really be there. So when you start your first stroke, make sure you start right against the edge of the sky. Touch, gentle stroke and let the knife travel and the paint break. This takes a little practice. But as you see, by starting with the knife held slightly high and allowing the blade to flatten as I go across the canvas, my paint breaks. I'm not fighting my way through a lot of wet, soggy, oily underpaint. The dark dry colour takes what it wants and gives you back what it doesn't need. I'm paying particular attention not to put too much paint at this end of my mountain. You'll see why a little later on. For my shadow side on the left, I'm going to use titanium white with a little phthalo blue. Make sure you've got a decent strong blue colour, not too wishy-washy and pale. We want this to be a lovely contrast against the snow on the right and of course the dark undercolour. Also take note how I bump against the snowy bright side. This neat little touch gives you the chance to sculpt the edge of the mountain and also to drag a little bit of highlight over the edge. Just come up and bump and slide away but don't cover everything up. Notice I have left a little dark area. I have something in mind for that area. I'll carry on adding some shadows to the left sides of all of my peaks. I'll use that little cut-off edge of my palette knife for any really tricky areas. There. Now, what about that dark area in here? Well, I fancy to extend this peak a little further forwards. And because I haven't got a lot of shadow colour there, my paint sticks easily. I planned this a little in advance but sometimes, well, happy accidents. You can look at a painting and see an opportunity to add a little detail. If you're enjoying my tutorials, don't forget, subscribe to the channel and when you do, ring the little bell icon. It means every time I do a new video, you get a little message in your inbox and the more people watching, the bigger the channel will grow. Thank you! The final step for my mountain is to take a nice soft one-inch brush and just tap out any little knife marks. I want to aim for the sides of my canvas towards the pins. This will give me a nice misty layer against which I can paint some trees. I want to paint some small evergreens. And for this, I'm using the original dark base mixture for the mountain, which was lavender and black, into which I'm going to add some van dyke brown and a good amount of sap green. I want a sort of olive tone colour for these background trees. Let's start with a fan brush. Load the brush very well, especially the corners. You want to group your brush to a chiselled edge, so all the bristles are nicely matted together. I'm going to put a little bit of a line here. This is the base of the trees, far enough down the mountain so that it won't bump into all the snowy areas. Otherwise, I don't want to lose all of the misty areas I created. So pick your points carefully. I want four or five different sizes. Now, turn your brush on one corner and just gently press slightly downward. Don't let the brush slide. As you see, it creates a lovely little sort of fir tree shape. I'll try that again. Now, if you find this difficult, and I know some people don't get on with a fan brush, I've got an idea. I'm going to try using a different brush. I dry clean the filbert brush I used to make my clouds and I load it well with that same dark green colour. Angle the brush slightly down and just press. As you see, it gives you a nice sort of fir tree shape and it's small enough that you can actually sneak in and do some really tiny little background trees. I find this sometimes easier than using the corner of a fan brush. While I'm here, I might as well add a little bit more vegetation to the base of these trees. Just tap it on. About three quarters of the way across the canvas. As you see, you can even do quite large fir trees using that same filbert brush. I think I want some slightly bigger bushes and trees. Maybe I'll just add one or two more. Here we go. Just give it a little push. See what you can create. And suddenly you have a whole little forest of trees in the background. To bring this all together, I want some reflections. So I use a nice, fresh, clean, dry one inch brush. And I pull straight down. I want bigger reflections of these fir trees, so I use more of the corner of that brush. Just think about the sizes. The bigger the tree, the bigger the reflection. I give the brush a little dry clean and then just gently drag across. But mind, only once. You don't want to overdo this because everything will just blur together. Time for some waterlines. Again, not pure white paint. I like it to be tinted with a bit of blue or some other colour. I don't want it to be too bright. Hold your knife nice and firmly and press and let the knife slide along and leave a little imprint of the blade. Still water lays nice and flat, so make sure your knife is nice and level. I know, the camera angle makes my waterlines look like they're going, well, uphill slightly. As you see, that looks a bit better, doesn't it? Straight ahead, you can see I'm quite level for a change, although I do tend to paint things slightly wonky. Time for some more planning. I want to think about another row of vegetation. Think about the size of some bushes. I need to think about this a little more. I don't want to crowd the background too much, so I've come down a little lower, about a good couple of inches. And as you see, I'm thinking about tapering away at the sides, so your eye is drawn to the back of the painting. Now, for some bigger fir trees, I start off with my fan brush and I want to just mark the centre lines. Now, let's see if I can paint fir trees over clouds. Now, we might be in a bit more of a pickle, but we'll see. As before, load the fan brush with lots of colour and use just the corner of the fan brush to press down. I might have to go over this tree a couple of times. Now, you can see why I didn't put too much snow on that mountain. Painting a nice dark fir tree over the top of all that thick white paint would have been a challenge. Let's see how I do painting a fir tree over the top of the titanium white we put in the sky. As you can see, well, it's not too bad. It's a bit patchy, but the titanium white paint really does get in the way a bit. So once again, if I painted those clouds again, I probably wouldn't put too much white paint there. I would just be a little bit more sort of, well, eager with it. I can go back over it a couple of times though and finally darken up my tree. Time to mix another new colour. Lavender, black, sap green, now alizarin crimson and van dyke brown. I want to create a lovely chocolate brown colour as an underpainting for some bushes. Pay special attention. I'm using an old one-inch brush here and I have a crimped edge and a rounded edge. I'm going to pull the brush one direction through that chocolatey brown colour. Rounded edge first. It's just a habit I've gotten into. So here you see my brush fully loaded and with a bit of a curve to the front edge. It matches the curve to the edge of the brush so I always know which way to hold the brush. Straight into the canvas and press. I want to leave a lovely textured surface. We nickname these turkey bushes because, well, they look like a prairie turkey. They're tail sticking up. We don't want to flick the brush though. It gives sort of, well, more of a sort of a soft grassy effect but no texture. That's what we need. The little bush on the right. I'll go over this and correct it. I'll add a whole bunch more of this textured paint across the base of my canvas. Paint one little bush at a time. Different sizes and different shapes. Now, let's think about putting in a few reflections. I'm using the same nice one inch brush that I use for my background trees. Just grab a little bit of paint and pull down. And then gently across from edge to centre. Try not to start in the centre and pull out. You might leave a brush mark. There. Now, for my highlights, I want to add a tiny drop of titanium white for these highlighting colours. I want these colours to be nice and bright and adding a drop of liquid white will give them that little extra pop. Now, I'm using that nice brush we just did the reflections with. I'm going to dry clean it and I'm going to load it with colour. Again, rounded side through the paint first. Don't go into the liquid white. Go into some colour first and then slowly introduce the liquid white. This way, you blend the colours on the palette. If you go into the liquid white first, well, it'll just disappear up the brush. You'll never see it again. I brush mix my colours. Cad Yellow, Indian Yellow and Yellow Ochre. As you see, I press into the palette, get some texture. Now, let's have a good look at the end of this brush. Notice how open and lacy it is. The paint sitting just on the tips of the brush. It's soft paint. Don't press too hard. Round the corner of the brush as before. Once again, rounded side to the top. Now, gently, just touch the canvas and leave a little imprint of the bristles. Every little tiny dot of paint is a petal or a leaf. Notice I also touch off any dark colour on a piece of paper towel. It stops my colours getting contaminated. You see, I do one little bush at a time. Refreshing my brush as I go. I leave a little dark centre. Maybe I'll tuck another little bush in. Here you see a nice close up. Adding one little branch to each bush. I also want to add a little bit of colour into the water of my reflection. So with not too much paint, I just touch a little bit in, dry clean the brush and then just add that detail to my reflections. I also want to create a little bit of a riverbank. So I take my palette knife and a small amount of that nice chocolate brown colour. Just where the bushes meet the water, I rub in a little bit of the dark to create a nice shadow. To finish this off, I'll just add a little waterline. To the left of my painting, I want to add a nice leafy tree. Does this technique look familiar? I paint one individual little turkey bush, um, sorry, one individual tree limb at a time. Luckily, I just caught the end of the land in the distance. That was a bit of luck. I carry on adding more bushes to my painting into the foreground, but I'm careful not to cover up all of this lovely reflection. Now, just as before, I load my brush with highlighting colours and touch in the shape of some of these bushes. But my brush doesn't appear to be working quite as well as it did before. No, it needs a dry clean. No matter how careful you are, eventually your brush will clog with paint. No point in trying to use that. Give your brush a nice dry clean. Get it back into good shape. With some fresh colour, you can once again paint these lovely leafy bushes. Top tip, save a little bit of dark here and there. You don't want to overfill this, but it's very tempting to keep on adding. For a little variety, I've brush mixed red into Indian yellow to create a warm orange colour. I highlight my little leafy tree, one tree limb at a time. Once again, don't be tempted to fill it completely with colour, but save some dark here and there. It gives your tree a lovely sort of sense of 3D. I couldn't resist it though. I did try and sneak in a little touch of red here and there amongst the bushes, but that's it. Now, let's mix up a little bit of a marble mix colour for a tree trunk. I'll use some of this contaminated white colour and a little touch of dark sienna and just marble it. Take a small roll on the edge of your palette knife, but keep it small. Just touch through the centre line of the fir trees here and there. When I add highlights, you'll see some of the trunk, but not all of it. If you need to add a little point to the end of your fir trees, use the end of the palette knife. I've gone back to my fan brush, given it a nice dry clean and just gone into some of the highlighted colours from the bushes. We know the light is coming from the right from the highlights on our mountain. So, I want to highlight the right side of my fir trees more heavily. A little darker through the centre and no highlights at all on the left hand side. To finish off the left hand side of my painting, I want some nice tree branches and trunks. I use my palette knife as a guide. I want to pick a line between the mountain and the leafy tree and I use the point of my knife just to scratch the line. If I've made a mistake, I can easily cover up what I've done, but I'm happy with the position and I think I want to just extend a little deeper into the bushes. There. Now, here's a little tip for you. Rather than trying to paint over the top of all that thick paint, I use the small edge of my palette knife just to scrape off some of the paint. I start on the point at the top of the canvas and at the knife flatten out as I get towards the base of the trunk. This gives me a slightly wider clean patch to fill. I'm going to use Van Dyke Brown and a little roll of it to fill in the shape of the trunk. Notice the knife stroke. I'm doing a sort of rounded stroke I want my tree trunk to look three-dimensional again, not just flat. This is good practice because the highlights are done exactly the same way. It's lucky we didn't have a very big cloud at the top to cover up. And of course, I also didn't put very much snow on the left side of my mountain either. Again, I planned ahead. For highlights, I take my marble mix, add red, some of the yellow tones to it and what's left of my white with a bit of blue through it. Again, a nice marble mix, a small roll of this color on my palette knife. And once again, think about doing a nice rounded shape. It's a very quick, short stroke. Touch and lift almost immediately. Let the paint break. The Van Dyke Brown is very dark and sticky. It'll take what it wants. This needs practice. It took me quite some time to master this stroke but in time, I got it quite nice. I'll give this little tree a touch as well. For my tree branches, I prefer to use linseed oil to thin down some Van Dyke Brown on a liner brush. I hold my brush well back and paint with just the very point. Older branches face more horizontal and the newer branches face more upright. So, gentle touch, point the brush and just gently come out to the side. You see, I'm floating literally on the point of the brush. Once again, the lack of snow on that mountain helps. I go along the tree trunk several times branching off at different points. This helps my branches grow a little in width without becoming sort of too thick. Add more branches, more upright as you go and allow some of them to cross in front and behind the trunk. Bob loved to add little sticks and twigs to his painting. I'll add a few here and maybe a few to the distant bank as well. These little extra details are what elevate your painting to a different level of quality. Spend time adding them. All these little extra touches are what your viewing public love to see so don't disappoint them. I'll even add a few little suggestions of a tree trunk or two on the very distant bank as well. So my painting's complete. Just one more thing to do. That's right. I forgot to sign it. No, just kidding. It's time for the big reveal. Gently, gently does it. Get hold of that tape and gently pull. Everything worked out, right? Should leave a nice border to my painting. So there we have it. Sunset Oval. Without the oval, of course. If you've enjoyed watching me paint this there'll be another lovely painting for you to watch. Right along there. In the corner. Go on. Give it a click and I'll watch. Happy painting, Gigi Paul. Well, I was thinking ahead and this is something which I'm going to encourage you to do. And then discover that you sort of paint yourself into a bit of a corner. I suppose that's what you might call the mountain in the corner of the room, maybe. Not an elephant.