Painting Waterfalls with a Palette Knife - Blue Ridge Falls with Paul Ranson CRI

Hello and welcome back to the studio. Today's Bob Ross classic painting is Blue Ridge Falls but with a bit of a twist. I didn't use a fan brush to do any of the water, I used a palette knife instead. So sit back and relax, cup of tea, palette knife at the ready and see if you can paint your version of this lovely classic Bob Ross painting, Blue Ridge Falls. Happy painting people. Oh don't forget like and subscribe. Thanks very much, bye. So here's my canvas, 16 inches by 20. The first thing I need is some of this black gesso. I want to create an underpainting and to apply it I'll be using this, a piece of car sponge, just to stip along the paint. Work a small amount of the gesso into the sponge to start. I want just a small amount I can use for doing some layouts and a little bit of a design. This wants to be probably a little bit higher than halfway across and I don't want it to be too even so I just tap on a few little markers up and down across the canvas and then I can go back in and darken it all up. Once it's all filled in it's time to let it dry. I'll use my special artist watch to keep an eye on the time, about 45 minutes, that'll do. That feels nice and dry so it's time for the next layer which is going to be some of this Bob Ross liquid clear oil paint. I want to apply this over the entire canvas, a thin even coat. I'll be using a nice one inch brush and the old one inch brush here for the liquid clear. The other brushes I'll be using a liner brush, a filbert brush and a fan brush and of course a Bob Ross palette knife. Let's get started with that clear. I've got it in a little pot I use just for storage, it makes it easy to get the brush into. I dab a few drops on and start scrubbing it into the canvas. This wants to be applied very sparingly, just a thin coat. I made a video all about it, I'll post a link here in the corner. Now carry on scrubbing it on and then finish off with long flat strokes. Once again this wants to be applied very very thinly, just a tiny coat. Let's have a look at our palette. I'll list all the colors I'm using down below in the description. I'll add these highlighting colors later but to start with I need a nice dark forest green color, prussian blue, van dyke brown and some sap green. We'll need quite a lot of this color so use a generous amount of each. Put one on top of another and then use your palette knife to turn them over. I want this thoroughly mixed and I'm going to apply it everywhere there's black gesso. I've gone back to my old one inch brush that I applied the liquid clear with. I load my brush well and apply it over the black gesso but there's a bit of a problem. You can't actually see how much you've applied so what should we do? I know, I'll use my fingertips. There we are, a nice strong color, perfect, but if it looks a bit more like this well it's just thin oily color and that won't work so be generous with it. I'm going to take it right up to the very edge of my background which will be the sky and I don't mind if a little bit actually just goes over that edge. I'll be careful not to make a green martian sky in the end. I'm going to use my nice one inch brush for my background sky and we'll apply a small amount of phthalo blue this time. It's a very powerful color so you only need a tiny amount just to stay in the brush and let's apply it to this background. Look bearing in mind there's actually just liquid clear back up there and I do have to be very careful of that green color but you can see well it looks a little bit patchy. It doesn't want to fill in very well. Phthalo blue is a transparent color so all these little brush marks show up. I'm going to add some titanium white to my brush, just a small amount, and this will make the blue color more opaque, in other words a bit less see-through. It also means that I can paint right up to the very edge of that green without it all going very lime colored. So I'll get as close as I can at this stage. Time for a few clouds. I've added a little bit more titanium white to my brush and I'm just going to tap this on. This is probably one of the easiest ways of making clouds. Once you've got the first one on you can add a little bit more titanium white to your brush and just tap in the next one. Let's paint a nice distant hill. I've gone back to my one inch brush with the original dark green color on it and I'm going to load it very well with this color and I'm going to paint it just as though I were painting a cloud but of course I want it to look more like a distant hill or a mountain. Just start tapping and filling it in. It's a very easy process of making something look nice and distant with very little detail. Notice I've left a little bit of a light edge there against that original black gesso. I want to create the effect of a misty layer to add some separation between one layer of my painting and the next. I've put a little bit more titanium white on my brush. Now I can go and tap this on and create that lovely misty effect. I'll be using this process to create several more layers in my painting adding separation as I go. Back to the original dark green color again and then a little bit more of that mist. This creates depth and distance in your painting. For my next layer I want to paint some fir trees and for this I'll use my fan brush. I'm going to use that little bit of a misty area in the background to make them show up. Just tap with the top corner of the brush and let the brush sort of skid down the canvas a little bit. Of course another layer of mist. My next layer I want some more detail so I'm going to take some of these fir trees and I'm going to give them some limbs. I'll extend them down a little lower. Now tip your brush on one corner and tap downwards. Stay on that same corner each time although you can flip your brush over to get some more paint. I'll add two or three just for a little bit of background interest. I'll use some little upward strokes just pressing with the brush to create some little bushy shapes maybe some background land. Next I'll need some highlight. For this I'm going to use a new fan brush. I've actually got two. It saves washing and drying them all the time. So I'm going to go into sap green and some cad yellow and maybe a touch of Indian yellow. This paint is very thin and oily compared to that lovely dark green colour. I'll give my brush a little push to load some colour right on the very edge of the bristles. Now with my brush held at the same angle over on one corner I just want to offer the brush to the canvas. The dark green colour is sticky and dry and the thin oily highlights stick easily. If you have trouble making your highlights stick then add the tiniest drop of liquid clear to your colour but only a drop mind. Time to add some water to our painting. I've combined all of my mucky whites into this pale blue colour. Top tip don't use pure white. Once you use pure white well you've run out of options for anything brighter and this colour is surprisingly bright already. I'm going to take a small roll of this off-white paint and I want to go in just underneath that piece of land there with a sort of a soaring action left and right. Just let the knife bump and run and jump across the canvas. It'll leave little ripples of light as though the water were moving across the canvas. Start thinking about where the waterfall lives. I'm going to have it just about under these big trees in the background so let the knife come across and then hold your breath and there we go just let the knife just drag down the canvas. I think painting waterfalls with a palette knife has got to be one of my all-time favourite things to do. It's much easier than it looks and for my money easier than using a fan brush. I need some rocks to hold my waterfall together. I've picked up my filbert brush and I'm going to go into some black and van dyke brown. Both sides of my brush. Groom it into a nice sort of flat shape just like a soft palette knife really and you can see I'm just going to use the tip of that brush to put in some of that dark colour in the background. Somewhere where I can add a few highlights. A few from one side and a few from the other just to create the illusion of a riverbank. I also need some big rocks either side of my waterfall to hold that in as well. If you enjoy watching my videos and you want to show your support for the channel don't forget you can always give this video a like by giving it a thumbs up, leave a comment or even subscribe. You can even buy me a coffee and I'll use your donations to buy more paint. Now then time to put on some highlights. I'm going to marble mix some colours so I want some of this grubby white colour a little bit of dark sienna and maybe just a little bit of van dyke brown. A bit more of that. Keep this paint very very loosely mixed. That's what I mean by marbled and I want light on one side and I want some dark paint on the opposite side. So with the light to the topmost part of my rocks I've got my brush turned with the light side up and I keep the dark side facing down. You notice I've got paint on the top but nothing on the back. Very very light touch with this finger and thumb is all you need. I want that brush just to bump and touch and add to my lights where it touches that dark brown and black colour. This is very much a sort of hit and miss sort of method of working which produces some of the most realistic results. I find sometimes the harder I try to make my little rocks look realistic the less realistic they actually look. So I keep using that very light touch. I'll use a little bit of time lapse to speed up the process. I've picked up my nice brush again I want to add some splash and some crash down here at the base of the falls. You can see I've sort of trimmed off that bottom edge a little bit where I'd overshot with my palette knife work. I'm just going to add a few little speckles of light blue in here and then I'm going to come back in with a few little touches of slightly brighter cleaner white colour but it's still not pure white. Time for some more water. I'll use my palette knife to slide up into that pale blue colour and I'm going to take probably about half of that misty murky area that I made and turn it into moving water. So again I use that little sawing action left and right let the knife just bounce along it will leave little traces of extra sort of foaminess on the tops of the water and start thinking about maybe another water feature. Yeah let's add in another little waterfall. You can add the sound effects as well. I don't know if it makes the paint go on any easier but it makes me feel happy. Let's trim that back a little bit further into the background and of course once I put in that extra little bit of water I'll need some rocks to hold it all together again. So it's a repeat process. Waterfall, then rocks. I'll even put a few little rocks under the edges of that water to give it something to hold it all up. Earlier on in the video I talked about trying too hard to paint rocks and top tip don't be afraid to scrape them off when they go wrong. I painted a section of rock there that well I just wasn't happy with. So pick up your palette knife and remove them and try again but as I mentioned don't try too hard that's when they go wrong. Time for some big fir trees. I've gone back into my dark green mixture and I want to sort of plan the position of some of these. I want a sort of a medium size one in here maybe a few bigger ones over to the right. I'll drop them in. I'm just looking at the positions at this stage. I think that's the position sorted out but this one here well it looks a little bit too close in height to the background mountains or hills so I'm going to make this slightly taller. I'm going to use the corner of my fan brush angled down as before and just touch. I'm going backwards and forwards across the center line of my tree. You can work on them by just filling in the middle lines and then making them slightly wider or if you feel more confident you can make them wide from the get-go. You decide what suits you best. I quite like these big ones on the left with a little bit of the blue sky peeking through from the background so I won't overgrow those and make them too big. This one wants to be growing way down just above the falls. This one you can see it's very close to the top of my canvas so top tip paint over the edge or stop well inside the edge of your canvas otherwise they can look a little bit like they're holding up the top of your painting. I'll grow this one slightly bigger. My fir trees need some trunks and for this I'm going to use some of my marble mix from the rocks. Maybe I'll add a little bit of yellow ochre into it as well. So with a very very small roll of this on my palette knife I just want to touch here and there through the center line of my trees. When I put some foliage on there it'll break it up a little bit more so I'm just looking for a hint at this stage. Now back into my sap green and cad yellow and yes I've added a little touch of phthalo green to this color just for a little bit of extra sparkle. Notice how I groom my brush very well and then give it a little push. I want a little bead of paint just across the edge of the bristles. I think the light is coming strongly from the right hand side so that's the side that I'm going to be favoring with my highlights and yes before you all tell me I know my rocks have got highlights from all directions but that's one of the You can please yourself it's my world and I have it the way I fancy it and you can too. Don't forget save a little bit of dark through the midlines of your fir trees. Highlights to the right a bit less through the center and a dark shadow as well. As Bob used to say those little critters have got to have somewhere to sleep. I'm letting my brush run out of color for these fir trees. I want these to look like they're slightly further back and then this one slightly brighter to bring him forward. It's all about just playing with color shape and shadows. Now back to my nice one inch brush. I'm going to be loading this with color but just on the very corner of my brush. I pull the paint out nice and flat and then I want to push up into that color and just favor this time that left hand corner. Just give it a little squeeze and I'm going to be holding my brush just on that corner. Notice how I've got a little bit of extra heavy paint there so when I come up to my painting just angle the brush over and just touch. I'm leaving little impressions of the tips of the brush make it look more like a leafy tree or bush as opposed to fir bit too much green I think. Let's have a change of color and add a little touch of ochre and Indian yellow to my paintbrush as well just for a bit of variety. Let the color run out here and there to create some depth and distance in your trees and bushes. I'll add a splash of that color on the other side as well and add a few touches of vegetation between the rocks just to soften the edges a little bit and I think we're very close to a finished painting again. Just time for a signature. So there you have it Bob Ross waterfall painted with a palette knife. Whatever next? See if you can make friends with your palette knife and do this waterfall painting next. It's somewhere over here on the left. Happy painting people!