[Music] Hello my friends.

Welcome back to the painting studio.

I'm Nicholas Hankins and come on up to the canvas.

I want to show you this crazy thing I've got going on up here.

This is an 18 by 24 pre-stretched, double-primed canvas as I normally would use.

And I've taken a little black gesso and a natural sea sponge and I just plopped in some little tree shapes or what I assume will be tree shapes when we're finished.

Then I applied a little liquid clear over that, and once it had dried - gesso remember as a water-based paint - then I applied a little liquid clear and I mixed up a, a concoction here of Prussian blue, Van Dyke brown, and a little bit of sap green and applied that all into this area.

So there's a little coloring up at the top, just as liquid white, as we normally would.

So we'll take the old two inch brush and get going here.

See what we can come up with.

Kind of have in my mind that, uh, maybe, maybe we're up in the Shenandoah Valley somewhere, taking a little, little mountain hike or something and we'll just kind of see what we can see.

Got in, got in mind to paint a few little red bud trees today.

My friend Carol in Roanoke wanted to see some red bud trees and she sent me some beautiful, beautiful pictures of them back in the springtime.

So Carol, this one's for you.

Hope you enjoy it.

All right.

Got a little, little glow going there.

Let's come back with, oh, take a little Prussian blue, just on that same dirty brush.

I don't have much yellow in there so I can get away with it.

And just a little touch of the midnight black as well.

Prussian blue and midnight black.

Let's come up here and start a little color going in the upper sky.

We'll get it a little darker up here.

And as we work down, it's going to mix and blend with the liquid white and get lighter and lighter and lighter, which Is just what we want it to do.

Carry that off into that corner maybe.

While I still have a little bit of that color on the brush, I'm just going to, I'm going to come down in here and add a little atmosphere or a little, little more misty, misty, foggy haze kind of creeping in here just with that remainder of the liquid white that I have on the brush.

There we go.

We'll make it moody and atmospheric.

At least that's the idea.

Now we can wash that brush out with a little odorless, paint thinner, shake it out.

We'll beat the devil out of it and we're ready to go.

All right.

Oh, I need to do a little blending there, don't I. Need to do a little blending there.

Let's come back in between these two colors with our clean dry brush and we'll just make sure we kind of can't tell where the blue gray stops and the, and the warm yellow starts.

Yeah.

Something like so.

Okay, tell you what.

First thing I'm going to do is grab a little liner brush and a little bit of this Van Dyke brown, dark sienna - their neighbors on the palette so I'm going to, going to mix them together with some odorless thinner and I just want to come back in here and kind of create the impression quickly - I'm not going to spend too much time on this - of just some little, little tree trunks and sticks and twigs in case they show through.

We already have a nice little sort of foggy, soft base for all our trees back here.

And all I've got to do is just come back and put a few accents on those.

So that's, you can call that cheating if you like, but I just call it working smart.

There we go.

Plus, it doesn't hurt to save a minute or two.

I know I only have so long with you on these shows, so I want to, I want to make sure we maximize our, our time together so I can show you as much as I can, and maybe, as Bob used to say, stir your imagination onto bigger and better things.

There we go, just a few little sticks and twigs back there.

Now let's have some fun.

Let's take, uh, we'll take a little one inch brush and I'm going to take just a touch of that base color, and then I'm going to come down here and kind of combine it with all three of these yellows.

Maybe even a little sap green.

And every time I reload the brush, I'm just, I'm going to vary the color a little bit.

So let's come up here and just start picking out some little individual looking branches and limbs and et cetera back here.

Some of these will show, some of them won't, but we do need a little feeling of stuff happening back here.

Like I say, every, every brush load will be just a little different.

This time it's a little darker.

[Nic makes "whew, who, who" sounds] And I like that.

It stands out nice against that nice light sky back there.

It's pretty.

But if every brush load changes just a little bit, that's all right.

There's a lot of thick, dense trees up in this area of the country up in the Shenandoah Valley on the way to Roanoke, Virginia.

Maybe this is somewhere around Radford or Salem or one of those areas.

Carol helps us out a lot with the show.

She does some valuable work along with all my friends down here in Florida.

And boy, they all did.

I need to thank them too.

Just like Bob thanked his crew.

There's a lot more to this than just showing up and painting, a little painting that you don't see behind the scenes.

And I'm very grateful for everybody that comes together on this team to put this show together for you.

We hope you enjoy it.

Tremendously proud to be working with each one of them.

See all those little trees just kind of come to life all of a sudden.

I love the stuff you can do with the gesso.

It's just, it's so neat.

Create a lot of depth, really, really fast.

There we go.

Painting a little, little ground foliage there at the same time, just as I tap along here.

We're dropping a few little things in into this area, stuff growing along the hillside.

Who knows what all that could be.

There we go.

Occasionally, maybe even I might pick up just a little touch of the bright red, just so we have a little different flavor of something happening back there.

Yeah, it kind of breaks up all that green.

And sometimes I'll go back to the green.

[chuckles] There we go.

Now, we've got a good little start on things.

Might even take my big brush and just kind of, just kind of soften down here so you can't make out anything too specifically.

Make all that stuff look very far away.

Okay, how about, let's take a little fan brush, take a little number three fan brush, and I'm just going to pick up some Van Dyke brown, dark sienna, midnight black.

I'll mix all those colors together there.

And let's come up and find, maybe we've got a little, [Nic makes "wwht" sound] we do now.

Got a little pine tree growing right there.

A little evergreen tree of some sort.

Maybe that one goes all the way out the top of the painting.

Maybe, maybe there's another one right there too.

[Nic makes "wwhhoot" sound] Like that.

Now watch this.

Let's just take that same brush.

I'm going to pick up a little titanium white.

Just move it down here away from my clean paint.

We'll wipe that brush out.

I'm going to come back and mix, mix a little bit of those two browns, a little black and white.

We'll just take this same brush.

Let's come back up here.

And I'm just going to sneak down the side of the tree.

Give it a little tap, tap, tap, tap, tap and we'll highlight it that way and kind of soften it.

Soften that back edge, soften it into the darkness a little bit.

Isn't that a neat way to highlight a little tree.

Works really well too.

Looks like that sort of fuzzy, fuzzy bark you see on those big... it's almost like bark and moss.

I, I don't, I don't know.

It's like a combination of the two, but sure looks like those, those big old pine trees you see growing out in the wild.

That kind of rough hewn bark.

There we go.

Go back to my little liner brush just a minute.

Get some paint thinner in the two browns and we'll put some little branches on our, on our little evergreens.

Maybe pull a little cleaner top out of the top of that one.

And then we'll come down and just, just give them some little, little arms.

Again, I'm not going to spend a tremendous amount of time on these because we'll probably cover a bunch of them up in just a minute.

So they're nothing to suffer over.

Just need a little something to hold up our foliage in a minute.

And if a few peek through, then that's great.

Sometimes, sometimes they split and turn and turn back in front of their own trunk and that's kind of cool.

Anything to make them look unique, make them look like your own thing.

They have to have a little, [Nic makes "rr, rr, rr" sounds] little wiggle in them sometimes.

They can't all be straight.

[Nic makes "rr, rr, rr, rr" sounds] Little noises do help with that stuff.

There we go.

Right.

Now, I need a bigger, I need a bigger fan brush than that little tiny one to make my, to make my pine tree bows here.

I've still got some of that dark color I mixed up - the blue and the - the blue and the brown and the sap green.

So I'll just kind of add to it.

I'll make a little more and I'm going to add some black and maybe even a little phthalo green.

Just mix all that together.

Get a nice big pile of dark, dark, dark paint.

And we'll take our fan brush and just load it full.

I'll even give it a little wiggle, wiggle, wiggle and then pull it through and sharpen it so your fan brush is loaded to a nice sharp, chiseled edge there.

There you go.

Alright, let's come back up here.

And now we'll just kind of place here and there... We don't have to fill them absolutely full of branches.

And in fact, I think they look a little neater if they're a little bit sparse.

We'll paint some old branches on these, on these pine trees that are just kind of hanging on up here.

See if we join this tree already in progress.

[chuckles] He goes right on up off the top somewhere.

If you see my brush going away, I'm just, I'm just picking up more paint.

That's all.

I'll be right back with you.

Got to have a well loaded brush to paint these big dark branches and limbs and get the texture that you want and get the darkness that you want.

There we go.

Something like that.

Tell you what, it's kind of nice when you're, when you're painting and you want it to sort of relate, if you just wipe that brush out, I'm not going to clean it in paint thinner necessarily, but I'll wipe it out and I'll pick up a little liquid white and just come right back with that dirty brush.

And then we can pick up a combination of all of our yellows.

There you go.

And get some nice highlight colors, maybe even add a little phthalo green to it.

That's super color for a evergreen highlight.

There we go.

Now let's come back up here.

And we'll pop a little highlight on a few of these branches.

Again, I don't want to, don't want to lose my contrast.

Don't want to lose all that dark, they just need a little, a little accent every so often.

Some people say, I have an accent, but I don't hear it.

Do y'all?

There we go.

Has to do with growing up near this part of the country, I guess.

I'm an Appalachian American.

There we go.

All right.

Now, as we get a little closer, I want have some darker foliage down here.

Now again, it is, it is already kind of dark, but I'm going to go into my, I'm going to go into my dark color that I had mixed up for my evergreens there and just pull this one inch brush through there in one direction like that.

And then I'm going to turn it over.

It'll round one corner and I'm going to turn that rounded corner to the top.

Let's come up here and I'm just going to pop in a few little, a few little bushes down here.

Probably won't be able to see too much of that yet, but I want to make sure I hide the, hide the foots of those trees, as Bob would say.

We've got to nestle them down into the painting, something like that.

Maybe on out here we've got a few little things that are growing a little more like this.

I can kind of take the side of the brush and tap it so you can have a little variety back here.

That's totally up to you.

However you want to arrange your foliage, why that's the way you should do it.

Once again, I'll take a little, little of the two browns and some paint thinner, maybe a little liquid white or titanium white, whatever I can get my hands on real quick.

Let's come back up here and we'll just, maybe we'll see a stick and a twig or two show up in the, in the finished painting.

Maybe, maybe not.

I'm just kind of popping a couple in here in case they peek through.

Nothing we need to spend too much time on.

And I'll come back to my brush that has the, the highlighting colors in it.

I'm even going to, I'm even going to go a little darker and cooler down here.

I'm picking up a little phthalo green and Prussian blue and adding to my color so it's a little deeper, deeper, darker green.

And it won't stand out quite so much.

That way these feel like they're kind of in shadow down here.

I just want them to have enough of an accent that they sort of show up a little.

But I don't want too much, I don't want too much attention from you guys, okay?

You be quiet down there.

Here we go.

Here we go.

Just little quiet things.

Maybe those, some of these might even be ferns or goodness knows what's growing along the, the lower portions of the painting there or the lower portions of woods here.

I'm going to kind of come back and highlight these this way.

Maybe that's a little different variety of tree there.

Just got a few different things hanging around back here.

Just have all sorts of fun there.

All right, clean out my little, my little fan brush again and we'll have some more fun.

Let's pick up, let's go back into our Van Dyke brown, a little Dark Sienna, a little midnight black.

Mix them all together on your brush.

There we go.

Load that up nice and full into a chiseled edge again.

And I said, I promised Carol some red buds so we're going to, we're going to add them in right here.

There's one right there.

Maybe it's got a little arm that comes out there.

Maybe there's another little arm that sticks out there and we'll give it some more arms in a minute.

This would be a prime spot for another one right there.

Because they'd have to have - even a little red bud would have to have a friend.

Wouldn't be right otherwise.

Alright, let's take the old, take the old liner again and we'll make some, make some little arms, little branches on our tree.

Again, a lot of these will get covered up, but just in case they happen to peek through, I want a little something on there.

These are usually shorter trees in amongst all the others in the woods, not, not quite ornamental, but they, they kind of look that way compared to some of the others.

A few little branches on this one too.

There we go.

Again, just enough, just enough that if it shows up, hey, great.

Might even mix a little dark sienna and white, a little paint thinner and maybe there's just a little, little kiss of highlight on, on the bigger parts on the trunk and stuff.

That might help it peek through actually.

Make our, make our detail time worthwhile here.

There we go.

Just light them up a bit.

Sun's sort of peeking over.

Maybe this is kind of early morning.

Early morning in the foggy, gets foggy in the Shenandoah Valley sometimes.

All right, clean my palette up here a little bit.

Put that dark out of the way.

I'm not going to throw it away though.

I might use it later.

A matter of fact, I have a, have an idea that I probably will use it again, so we'll just move it up there out of the way.

Okay, now let's take, we'll mix up some alizarin crimson and some Prussian blue.

Just mix those two colors together and I'm going to add a little white to it.

We'll kind of see what... ooh, that's pretty.

Looking for sort of a, sort of a, a lavender that's a little to the red side.

As a base, I've got to have a little darker base for these trees.

Then we'll come back and highlight them.

More of a pinkish, pretty reddish type of a highlight color.

And I'm going to use my little oval brush today.

That's the one with the little, the little dark handle.

And we'll load this brush nice and full of this base color.

Kind of wiggle it through there, wiggle it through there, and give it a little push, push, push to load it up and we'll come up here and just kind of, just kind get a basic shape of our little red bud tree.

They were so pretty though, the photographs and video that Carol took the time to send to me.

My gosh, they were, they were extra special this, this spring.

I miss, I miss seeing those trees.

We don't really have those down here in Florida.

At least not in our part of Florida.

[chuckles] It's just kind of summer all the time, except for a couple of days when it turns fall and a couple of days, then it's spring and then we seem to get right back to summer.

Not that I'm complaining too much though.

Now, I'm dipping a clean oval brush into some liquid white and I'll pull it through some titanium white so I am softening this paint just a bit.

And I'm going to pick up some alizarin crimson and [Nic makes "wwhho' sound] add to it.

Isn't that pretty?

Maybe even a little touch of the bright, yeah, a little touch of the bright red.

Just mix those two together.

Now let's load this brush full and come back up here.

Now, we'll pick out our little highlights.

There we go.

That'll make it come to life.

I think spring in the, spring in the mountains in East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, Southwest Virginia.

It's my, probably my favorite time of year and my favorite place in the world.

Everything comes up pretty.

Colors are pretty, everything smells good.

All that stuff's blooming.

Lovely, lovely to be alive that time of year.

There we go.

I see, I said we might be on a hike here and we'd have to have a way to get back to see all this.

So let's build a little, we'll build a little path down here with some Van Dyke brown and our palette knife - just kind of comes right out into the foreground right there.

And we'll take a little white, brown, dark Sienna.

Going to mix that to a marbled appearance and cut across.

And then we'll just come back and highlight our little path.

There we go.

Now we've got a way to get back here and see all this stuff.

Now, to come back to our little one inch brush.

Just going to let a little bit of this stuff kind of droop over the path there.

Kind of reclaim a little bit.

And down in front here, I'm going to kind of close everything off with some of that dark color on a big old fan brush and we'll plant some, we'll plant some little evergreens here that are just going to kind of hold everything back.

As Bob used to say, these little trees live in your brush.

You just have to kind of coax them out of there.

I like that contrast against the, against the light down here.

It's pretty.

There they come.

[Nic makes "tooka, tooka, tooka, tooka" sounds] Another one there.

There we go.

Down in foreground here we'll just take a little bit of that green and kind of feel like we can feel the hillside coming on down there.

Might even drop a little highlight on our trees.

I hope you've enjoyed this.

If you live where you get some red bud blooms in the springtime, go out and see them and I'll see you next time.

Happy painting.

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