[Music] Hello again, friends.

Welcome to the painting studio.

I'm Nicholas Hankins and I'm excited to share with you today a little autumn scene so come on up to the canvas and we'll get started.

I have a 12 by 24 pre-stretched, double-primed canvas on the easel and it's been coated with a nice thin, even coat of the liquid white.

It's all wet and slick and ready to go, so we'll take off with a little two inch brush.

A little combination of Prussian blue and midnight black.

Just tap that right into the brush and let's take off and see what happens today.

We'll use some little crisscross strokes and paint kind of a grayish blue, cool autumn sky.

Something like that.

This will just get lighter and lighter and lighter as we work down the canvas and it mixes with more and more of the liquid white.

That's just what we want to have happen.

Something like that.

Down here at the bottom, take a little more that same color, and I'm just going to pull from the outside edge inward.

We'll use some level strokes, and we'll create the impression of a little water in our, in our painting.

A little from this side as well.

There we go.

Let's see.

Just wipe that brush out a little bit and then we can blend.

Soften down our, soften down our water then we'll come up to the sky.

Didn't have a tremendous amount of paint on the brush to begin with so we can just wipe it off and kind of get away with that.

There.

Now, let's take a palette knife and we're going to mix a big batch of color.

Watch this.

I'm going to take a bunch of alizarin crimson - - park that over here - and about an equal amount of sap green.

So I have alizarin, alizarin crimson and sap green.

I'm going to mix those in roughly equal, equal parts, equal proportions.

Maybe just a little more crimson than green.

This makes a beautiful, rich brown color.

This is a color that Bob's friend, Audrey Golden, taught him how to make.

So, Bob called it Golden Brown a lot in honor of Audrey.

She was a sweet lady.

Audrey is not with us anymore, but I got to make her acquaintance.

She became one of my, one of my favorite people.

All right, we'll go back to our two inch brush now, and I'm going to pick up a little, little titanium white.

We're going to wind up making a little brush mixture here.

I'm going to use some titanium white, a little bit of that golden brown, and just a touch of the blue.

I'll wind up with kind of a, kind of a grayish greenish color.

I'm going to load that into my brush like this and we'll come up here, up in the distance.

I'm just going to take that brush and kind of, kind of tap it sideways like this.

I'm going to make some very distant little... oh I don't know what type of trees they are, but distant little tree shapes, just by touching and kind of giving it a little, little squash, you can even push it the other way.

Just create all kinds of little way far away tree impressions.

I guess these are some type of evergreen.

They're tall and skinny, like an evergreen.

[chuckles] Tell you a funny story while I'm tapping these in.

Audrey came to visit us at, at our workshop down in Florida a few years back.

My son was about four at the time.

And he made real good friends with Audrey and close to the end of her visit, he was, Alex was giving her drawing tips.

So.

Sure, she needed some.

Audrey even hosted one of the, one of the episodes back in the 80s.

She paints a beautiful seascape.

And it's one we teach quite a bit still at the, at the workshop and some of the classes that we do.

A lot of fun.

All right.

Now, moving forward.

Let's take a little more white.

We'll make a bigger batch of paint here.

I'm going to use some of that brown again, some sap green, maybe a little bit of blue.

Just mix all those good colors together.

We'll make a slightly darker color, slightly darker green so it feels like we're a little closer in the painting.

But not all the way forward.

Not yet.

We'll get there, though, I promise.

Take a little fan brush, and I'm just going to load both sides that brush to a chiseled edge.

I think I want just a little more brown in there.

There we go.

There we go.

That's color I'm looking for.

All right.

Let's come up here and we'll just find some little evergreens that live in our world.

There's one.

[Nic makes "tchooka, tchooka, tchooka" sounds] They live in that brush, you just have to squeeze them out.

And he's got to have a little friend here.

Of course.

Of course.

Can't have our trees getting lonely.

Especially not in the autumn.

There's all that beautiful scenery to see.

We've got to have a buddy to hang out here and look at it with.

I think I want one more about right there so it kind of, kind of bookends the painting.

Yeah.

There we go.

Now, down at the base of these trees, I'm going to go back and find my, my clean, dry two inch brush and I'm just going to tap these a little bit and kind of diffuse the base.

I want to make these a little less descript at the bottom so this could be fog rolling around back here.

This could be some, some distant foliage that we kind of see in between the trees.

I just want to, I just want to make sure there's not too descript a bottom edge on any of these, these far away evergreens.

Something like so.

Maybe even tap up into the trees just a little bit.

Make them a little less distinct, a little less, a little less texture on them.

All right.

Now.

Give those a little sharper top.

And we'll grab a... what do I want?

I think I want this one.

Looking for the best one inch brush for the job.

I think this one will do it.

And we're going to take... move some of this out the way.

We're going to take a little bit of our homemade brown, our golden brown here, and I'm just going to tap the top corner of that one inch brush into the paint like that.

Load that top corner full.

There you go.

Now that's kind of hard to see as it's dark, but you get the idea anyway.

And we're just going to come up here and tap in some little bushes, little trees, deciduous trees.

So we'll have something to put some of that pretty fall color on.

We just had evergreens that wouldn't work out so good.

And you just tap these in wherever you want them to live.

You don't have to follow my example exactly, but feel free to if you like it.

There we go.

Right now I'm just blocking in dark, getting a general shape.

It's a very, very versatile brown color.

Makes a nice, makes a nice sepia tone sort of thing.

You could do a whole painting with just this and maybe white and a little yellow.

In fact we, we do that when we're teaching the instructors to become instructors.

We teach them a beautiful little scene that uses just this color and a couple of lighter colors, and it really makes you a versatile artist when you can paint with just a few colors.

I'm loading up a two inch brush now full of that color, quite a bit of it, a little on both sides.

And then I'm going to tap into the paint, push up a little ridge right on the end of the brush like that.

Okay, let's come back up here and we're going to form a, a big, big, big tree.

See, he's hanging out here like this.

I'm going to reload pretty frequently so you might see my brush go bye bye but just hang in there, I'll be right back.

Just blocking in this nice dark shape and kind of getting an overall shape.

I'm kind of stepping back ever so often and squinting at it and taking a look see to see if this looks like a natural shape for a tree.

And if it doesn't, I'll come back and I'll mess it up and try to make it look like a natural shape for a tree.

And all I mean by that is just some of these branches that hang out here, I don't want them to be, I don't want them to be at totally even intervals.

Don't want them to be perfect little fingers, perfect little smooth shapes.

I just kind of want them to hang out there and look like, look like branches that have a lot of leaves and are kind of weighing the branch down and it's hanging down and you can almost feel that, that weight.

Sort of overlapping some of my little background evergreens at the same time then we'll just tie all of this stuff together here in the front.

There we go.

Something like that.

Tell you what, while I've got that color on the brush too, why don't we go into a little bit of that green next door, our evergreen green we were using.

Just kind of mix those two together.

A little brown, a little green.

I'm going to come down here and we'll kind of get a little feel for the lay of the land under all of this as well.

There'll be some grass, a little hillside here.

[Nic makes "tchooka, tchooka, tchooka, tchoo" sounds] As you're tapping just, just sort of think, how would the land flow?

And I want my land flowing just slightly downhill like that.

Because if there's a little water down here, the land has to flow down to it.

It's not gonna... Water's lazy.

It's not going to go up just to look pretty.

I'll pull a little bit of color down in our water at the same time here.

Maybe go back and get a little more of the brown.

There we go.

Give ourselves a little reflection early.

We'll come back pretty that up later.

Right now, I want to work on that big tree.

So let's take some of our brown.

I'm going to add a little black to it.

Make it nice and dark.

Just cut off a little roll of that paint on our knife.

There you go.

And we'll come up and find a little tree trunk in this tree [Nic makes "doot, doot, doot, doot, doot" sounds] Like that.

Maybe, maybe, it's a double.

Double trunk.

It's a pretty big tree so maybe it's actually a couple of, heck, maybe it's three of them.

Another little something right there.

There we go.

Whatever you think will look good.

And I'll use a little bit of titanium white and mix it with that brown and black to a marbled appearance and just cut off a little roll of that paint.

And let's come up and give these trees a little highlight.

Maybe these are little birch trees or something.

They could be aspens or they could be sycamores, I suppose, anything you want them to be.

Depends on where you live and what you like.

There we go.

[Nic makes "doot, doot, doot" sounds] A little on this one, too.

All right.

Now.

Find a liner brush here and we'll take a little, little liquid white, a little paint thinner, a little titanium white.

Just sort of, sort of squoosh all those together.

And I want just an indication here and there and there and here of a little branch.

Likely these won't show too much so I'm not going to get too involved with them but just should they peek through, they'll look very good.

I want to be able to see what's holding all this stuff up.

Sometimes it's, it's just that little extra minute or two that you take to add a little extra touch of detail that kind of separates your painting from everybody else's.

Makes it special.

There we go.

Like I say, most of those probably won't show, but in case they do they're there.

Maybe there's another little, little sapling popping up here beside all of this stuff.

He hadn't grown up yet.

[chuckles] All right.

That little one inch brush I had going was working pretty good so I'm just going to wipe it out and I'm going to go into - pardon me, be right back - I'm going to get a little drop of paint thinner on my brush and pick up some bright red and alizarin crimson.

That little touch of paint thinner is in there only to thin the paint so it will stick.

As you know, our golden rule in this method is a thin paint will stick to a thick paint.

So we have to have a slightly thinner paint to stick to all that thick brown that we put up here to begin with.

Now we can start adding some pretty fall colors to our tree.

I kind of like that combination of bright red and alizarin.

And we're going to, we're going to transition over to some more colors in just a second.

You hang with me.

Watch what we do here.

So I'll kind of get things started and then maybe, maybe we'll jump next door.

I'm going to get just a little more thinner.

I don't want too much, though.

And we'll go into, with that same dirty brush, a little yellow ochre, Indian yellow, maybe even a touch of the cad yellow.

We'll just, we'll just get some of all of them going there and tap in, tap it onto the brush.

And this will be a little different.

Be a little different color.

Because sometimes the leaves, even within one tree will sort of change at different, a different pace.

There we go.

And finally I'm going to drop that brush and pick up, pick up a clean one.

And I'm going to dip it into just a touch of the liquid white.

And then let's go through, let's go through so we're going to get bright now.

We'll get some cadmium yellow and Indian yellow.

Load up this brush full of that color.

Now let's come up here and we'll, we'll get into the brightest bright highlights on our tree.

There we go.

Plenty of paint and a nice light touch.

And being careful not to cover up all the darks.

That's really important.

I should probably say that a few times.

Be very, very careful that you don't cover all of your darks.

They're just as important as the bright pretty highlights.

If anything, when something starts working good, it's easy to, it's easy to kind of think, oh well, this looks so good.

I'm just going to put it everywhere.

And that's when you get in trouble.

It's when you can overdo it.

There we go.

Now, let's jump back to our original, original brush we had going here.

I'm going to pull that sort of reddish orangey brush through some of these yellows and we'll get, we'll just, we'll get a little mixture of everything.

And I'm going to tap it into the top corner of the brush, and come back up here and just start adding some highlights to all this beautiful stuff down here.

Again, paying very close attention not to cover up all the darks.

We've got to have those darks in there.

You'll be upset with me if we cover them all.

And I don't want you upset.

I want this to work and you to be happy because painting should make you happy.

Frankly, it should.

That's, that's the number one thing it [chuckles] should do if it does nothing else, it should make you happy.

And if it doesn't, as Bob used to say, you're doing the wrong thing.

There's a little more bright red and alizarin crimson.

Whew.

I enjoy those colors a lot.

A little on that one.

A little under there.

Tell you what, maybe here and there, we'd see some of that in our water.

Maybe even a little bit of that yellowy, orangey color.

Whew!

Isn't that pretty?

Now, take a clean, dry two inch brush and we'll just zip over that.

I told you we'd come back and make this pretty.

And then brush across very gently.

Just enough to diffuse it like that.

All right.

Let's come back with our, back with our two inch brush we were painting our big tree with and I'm going to pick up - I've got a little liquid white here on the palette and we'll pull our brush through some of the yellows, a little sap green.

And with that bit of brown that's still in the brush, that will just dull it down enough that we can kind of get a nice natural color for our highlights on our grass out here.

There we go.

But this is where you really want to pay extra, careful attention to the lay of the land, because this is where it's going to show up the most.

You can... you can be a little careless when you're blocking something in, but when you put those highlights on, that's that's when it matters.

So we're going to be extra careful and watch that we've got the right angles going down there.

Take a little bit of my, my brown.

I've got a little brown and black left too, let's use that.

Cut off a little roll.

I'm going to make a little, little bit of exposed soil right there at the edge of that land.

That's always kind of neat looking I think.

There we go.

Mix that with a little titanium white.

A little bit of that brown and titanium white.

Again, a little touch of black with it.

We can graze a little highlight across there.

Just be very gentle.

[Nic makes "whoo, whoo, whoo" sounds] Let the canvas take what it wants and it'll give you back what's left.

All right.

Tell you what.

We've got a few minutes left here.

Let's have a little fun.

We'll do something kind of ... we'll get, we'll get a little crazy.

How's that?

We don't have a whole lot of time left but we'll get a little crazy.

I'm going to mix some blue and black, alizarin crimson.

the rest of that homemade brown, maybe even a little sap green in there with it.

We're just going to make a super, super, super dark color.

Quite a bit of it.

And I'm going to dip my knife into some paint thinner.

We're going to soften that paint up just a little bit.

Make it a little softer consistency.

A little more paint thinner again.

There we go.

So I've got a big bunch of it.

And it's a little softer than normally would be right out of the tube.

We'll park that right there.

Clean up my mess a little bit here.

Now I'm going to take some titanium white.

We can even pick up whatever we have left here that had the brown and black in it.

I'm going to add a little, little black to that and a little liquid white.

Pardon my reach there.

So again we've got a softer, a little softer consistency paint.

All right.

We'll park that right there.

Now, we can reach for our, our little oval brush.

That one's kind of different, it's got a black handle and the end has that little oval shape in it.

That's kind of cool.

So I'm going to take this brush and we'll pull it through that softer consistency dark.

Give it a little wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.

Turn it over, a little wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.

And then sharpen it and load it to a chiseled edge nice and full of paint.

And then we're going to take that brush and pull one side [Nic makes "boop" sound] through the lighter mixture.

So I've got dark on one side and light on the other.

Now if we turn this brush sideways, it's just it's like the little filbert brush.

It can make neat little rocks, but it can also make great big rocks like that.

So I'm just pulling one side through the dark when I need to reload and one side through the light, and we can put some little, little stones out here on our... [chuckles] Isn't neat?

Stones on our hillside.

Now, let's come back and just take a little bit of that yellow and green, and we'll kind of clean up the edges of the... clean up the edges of the rocks, settle them down into the painting.

See, they just need a little bit around their base there.

Kind of settles them into the painting.

I also want to overlap that, that soil and rock on the bank we added with our knife.

There we go.

Something like that.

Take a little, little touch of liquid white, titanium white, maybe just a touch of blue in there with.

Cut ourselves a little, little water ripple right there around the edge of the bank.

There we go.

All right, All right, enough fooling around here.

Let's get serious.

Let's go, let's go back and grab some blue, some black, a little sap green, some of that rock color's okay.

Just get a good dark color and we'll come down here into the corner.

I want to kind of close everything off and push all that other back.

So I just pop in a little, little foliage down here at the bottom.

Find us a little one inch brush that's clean.

I'm about to run out of them.

And we'll highlight some of this stuff with the various mixtures of all the yellows.

Come up and give them a little... yeah, a little something like that.

Maybe even a little bright red every so often.

Turn it sort of orangey flavored.

There we go.

Might be a nice little place to take a liner brush and just drop in a little grass or cattail or something.

Well, I wish I had more time to spend with you, but we'll paint again soon.

Take care.

Happy painting.

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