Oil paintings not in a book Its a feeling Bob Ross Frozen Beauty

Over the years, I must have read hundreds of books on art and painting. The how's, the where's, and the why for's, the what you draw, what you mix. And yet there are still things which you just can't find in a book. Today we're going to be painting a Bob Ross classic, Frozen Beauty, a vignette painting, and we're going to look at some of the things which, well, I think would help you that you won't find in any book. So let's draw all the introductions and get this painting underway. Hello, welcome back to the studio. As you saw from my little introduction there, we're doing another Bob Ross classic today, Frozen Beauty, a lovely, simple, easy to do vignette painting. Yeah, well, that's maybe to be seen yet because the other part of the introduction was the things that aren't written down in the book. Now Bob gave us some lovely instructions for this painting and an example to follow, but does it really give us everything we need to know? Well, I think there are lots of great ideas and lots of tips and pointers, but ultimately we have to develop a bit of a gut instinct. That's what the video is all about. A little walk through this painting and maybe a few of those little gut instincts which I've developed over the years, and I'm hoping will give you a few pointers. Now you know the routine, comfy chair, cup of tea, and the notepad at the ready. Let's paint this Bob Ross classic, Frozen Beauty. So here's my canvas, 16 by 20, and I want to be setting out the horizon line first. I'll use an old Bob Ross one inch brush to do the measuring. This horizon is a little above centre. To mark it, I'll use one of these matte pins. I'll put one this side and I'll position another one exactly the same level on the other side of my canvas. This is a wet on wet oil painting technique and I'll be using this Bob Ross liquid white oil paint to prepare my canvas. I keep a small amount in an airtight pot for ease of use. Once again, I've got my old one inch brush back. You know it's old because it's got a little orange tip. Note, I just take a small amount and I'll divide my canvas into four. This should be applied sparingly. Too much and your painting will become very slippy and too pastel. Too dry and you'll struggle to blend. I'll put some instructions up here in the corner and down in the description. Now, scrub it on well and finish off with long flat strokes to even out the surface. And finally, let's do a little test. I touch my fingers to the canvas and check. I can see my fingerprints clearly. It looks about right. Don't forget about those fingerprints and give your old one inch brush a good dry clean. Here's my palette. Just a few colours to start with. I'll add some more later on. I'm going to concentrate on these three. Some phthalo blue, some phthalo green and a little black. Once again, I'm using my old brush for this. I'll pull down a small amount of phthalo blue and tint it with a little bit of black. I want sort of a cool blue colour. And I'll add into it a tiny little touch of phthalo green. Be sure to tap your brush firmly on the palette when you're loading it. If you get a bit too much on one corner, well, we'll see what happens if we do. I'm going to start in the top left corners and right corners, and I'm going to blend across my canvas. I want to check my colour as I go. This is a vignette painting, which means a dark exterior edge and a pale centre. Gosh, look at that. I did warn you about tapping on the palette, didn't I? Yes, look, there it is. A chunky monkey that got me. Never mind. Let's see if we can work it out. I'll go back onto my palette and work some colour through the bristles and see if I can scrub this out. Liquid white is very useful. It enables me to blend my paint on the canvas. Mistakes can simply be, well, worked out. In enough time and effort, we can get almost a perfect result. But yes, no matter how much I scrub, I still seem to have too much dark in the centre at the top. What can we do? I've got a neat little trick for you. Quick as a flash. Turn your canvas the right way up and adjust the pin lines. Ta-da! To strengthen the vignette effect, I want to darken the corners a little more. For this, I'm going to be using some Prussian blue. Now, let's go down in this bottom corner first. I think it's already dark enough down there, so I'll test it on my canvas first. Yes, I think that's the sort of look I'm going for. But notice that very hard edge. You don't always notice it when you're standing close to your canvas. So make sure you work it out very well. All the time trying to get that nice oval shape for the vignette. Take a good amount of time to do this. I spend a good 5 or 10 minutes just blending edges and corners and finally finishing off with some long flat strokes. For this painting, I feature this brush. It's a Bob Ross half round brush. It has very long soft bristles and slightly oval in shape. Perfect for doing distant trees and bushes. You'll see me loading it by just tapping it into the paint. To get me started, I'm going to use some more of the phthalo blue, a little touch of black and a little touch of green again. Notice how I tap it really well. I'll work a little bit of white into this and test it on my palette. It's a good idea with this style of painting to be really sure that you've got your colour blend just right. Now, above my pins, I'm going to just tap using the very corner of my brush. Keep them small, about an inch tall at this point in my painting. As we go to the right, I'll grow them a little larger, maybe a little darker. I've adjusted my colours and moved my camera so you can see better the action of my brush. Remember, this is a vignette, so we really don't want this to be going off the canvas with any strength. It wants to just sort of fade into the background. Notice I vary my colours a lot. My distant trees were now grown to about two inches tall. Once again, I'll just let them fade off to the right. Here you see the painting full on. I'll just blend these out slightly. I think about here is where I'm going to have my cabin. But before I do that, I need to put on a little bit more detail. Not too much here because this is distant. So I'm using Van Dyke Brown with a little drop of Odalis Thinners on a liner brush. Hold the brush well back so you paint with just the very tip of the brush. Think about how you would put in just maybe a few sticks and twigs and the odd branch and the odd trunk. Once again, this is very distant in our painting, so you're not going to see a lot of detail. I'm also going to be adding some highlights to these trees, which is going to obscure any detail that you put in now. A few more sticks and twigs here. I dry cleaned my nice oval one inch brush. And I'm going to tap it into some Titanium White. But I don't want it to be too pure. It must be a little bit off coloured. Check the end of my brush. Open and lacy. That's crucial to this technique because we wanted to just, well, the light dusting of snow or frost on these treetops. No chunky monkeys here. Add a few to this tree and stand back. A few more to these trees. And maybe I'll obscure some of the ground area with a few little bushes too. This is great fun, but you can of course overdo it. Stand back frequently. I think I'm just about there with this stage. I leave a little bit of a shadow in the back for contrast. Now one final stand back and maybe a touch here. Maybe a touch here or here. No, time to put the brush down. Let's start laying in the lay of the land. I've got a fan brush and a little bit of this off white colour. Now carefully, just under the edge of the trees, come in and press and pull at an angle. As you see, this develops into a rather lovely distant scene. Save a little shadow here and there. It's important not to get this all too bright. As you can see, when I compare it to a piece of white paper towel, it's really quite nice and blue. Gives me a chance to do things like this. Come in and pick out a little detail. A little flash of light in the old sparkler. So the background's all finished and we're ready to put a cabin in our painting and you're raring to go, aren't you? Yeah, lots of you will be saying no, I don't want to do it because I'm frightened I'm going to mess it up. And that's quite natural when you're starting out. So we need a little bit of help. A bit of planning, of course. Now you've seen me do this sort of thing before in some of my other tutorials. But trust me, it really helps get you over that little nervy stage if you've got something that you can use as a guide. Again, it's one of those instinctive things which you need to develop for your own painting. But until you do, these sorts of things can be really great visual cues on where and how to position things in your painting. So let's press on with a cabin. You're raring to go now, aren't you? You're not so upset at all. So let's use our little cabin on a stick and think about its position. About here? Or maybe a bit higher? No, it looks too big against the trees now. The lower I get, it looks more like a dog kennel. It's getting so small. Maybe over here? No, it looks like it's going to fall off the edge now. No, about here is right. A little right of centre and about a third way in from the right hand side. But I think it's a bit too pale in the background and my cabin is not going to show up if I don't have a slightly darker tree line. So I've added a darker colour. And of course, some highlights, some sticks and twigs and branches. These darker trees and bushes give me a nice contrast against the snowy roof of my cabin. I'll lay in some land as well. Now, let's have a look at how we're going to paint the cabin. Notice how I'm going to use the shape of my palette knife to give me the angle for my roof. First thing I want to try and work out is the very centreline of the cabin. About here. I make a little line down the top of the snow. As you saw, I lay my knife at an angle and just scrape down. There's a slight upward angle here, which will give my cabin perspective. That corner wants to be the lowest corner of the entire cabin. And it's also the tallest wall. If you haven't seen my cabin painting video, I'll leave a link to it here in the description below. As you can see, I spend the next few minutes just cleaning out the outline. Time for a top tip. I spread my titanium white out thin and I get a small roll of it on the edge of my palette knife. And I outline my roof first. This sort of gives me somewhere to aim for when I'm putting snow on the roof. You might find this very useful. I especially like a line just here. Now, a slightly bigger roll of titanium white. And touch gently and just sort of lay down a bit of a bed of white paint first. Something you can use to pull. Stop. Because I can see the line coming up. I can stop just in time. Any little bits I miss, I can come back and touch up. If you enjoy my tutorials, don't forget, give this painting a thumbs up. You can subscribe and leave a comment. Don't forget, when you subscribe, ring the little bell. So that way you get to know when I release a new video weekly. Thank you. I always make sure I add a little bit of snow to this back edge and that it overhangs the end of the wall. Now, let's take a little bit of van dyke brown and black. And just block in the front of the cabin. Again, just a stain of colour here. Not really too thick and sticky. Just a nice deep colour. Be sure not to lose that very bottom line. That's an angle. It's most important you don't. Because otherwise your cabin will lose its perspective. There. I'll also add a little touch of dark here under the eaves. Bob had a little overhang. Maybe a little woodshed at the side of his cabin. I didn't bother outlining that. I just did it as a freehand. With the small blade of the knife, I'll just touch in the side of the cabin. It's a bit too small to scrape out. Once again, I'm sure to keep this line nice and straight. A little bit of shadow to the side. And we have a completed cabin outline. Let's give our cabin some old boards. For this, I want a marble mix of colours. A little touch of dark sienna. Maybe a little touch of yellow ochre. And some of that original van dyke brown and black colour. Even a little smudge of white. And notice how little I blend it. This wants to be a marble mix of colours. I take a little roll of paint on the edge of my knife. And I do them board by board. I find this gives me a really lovely effect. And maybe a little easier than just doing it as one sweep of the knife. I come back in just touching little bits of colour. I vary them as I go. And it doesn't take long before my cabin really starts to look nice and woody. And I can even get into these really small areas with just a touch of colour. To finish off my cabin. Maybe a little darker under the eaves as well. I make this long corner of my cabin a little more prominent by making it a little brighter. It really helps it stand out from the side of the cabin. One last touch of shadow under the eaves. Our cabin needs a doorway. I'll use the small blade of my knife just to scratch out some of the paint. I'll put back some more boards, maybe in a slightly lighter colour. And edge it with a little touch of white. So it looks like snow. Time to add some more snow. But careful around the base of the cabin not to pick up any brown. I'll extend it forwards and add various levels and layers. I think I need to add another bit of detail here and I've got two fan brushes on the go. This darker one I'm going to use to tap in some nice bushes and bits of scrub. This will help settle my little cabin into the painting. I'll keep the other brush just for laying on snow. Maybe for adding a little highlight. It's always useful to have a couple of fan brushes when you're doing these sorts of paintings. That way you don't have to keep stopping and starting washing them. As I come further forwards in my paintings these little details want to get a little darker. Once again, another level, another layer. But I want to add some water as well. I've gone back to my original old brush and added some blue, black and phthalo green colour to it. Just press in firmly and pull down gently. I'll give my brush a nice dry clean and then brush across the reflections just to give them a little bit of a shimmer. Once again, don't overdo it. Leave some of those lovely streaks of light and dark. I'll use a little more titanium white to tidy up the banks. Bring a little bit of foreground snow around the corner as well. Once again, soften it out at the edges to keep that vignette style working for us. So my painting's coming along really well but it's time for another decision. Another little twist maybe in the story of this scene. Do I try and paint it exactly the way Bob did it or do I stand back and think actually something needs to be moved? In this instance, I think I didn't want to squeeze everything over on that right hand side. I needed to move part of the scene to the opposite corner of my canvas. So let's sit back and see how I get on with moving things around. Here we see Bob's original painting and he had a little bit more room over on this right hand side and his cabin was a little more central. And he had a nice big open area here. But my painting's worked out that I don't have as much room here and a slightly bigger cabin. So let's move things. I'm going to start off again by combining all my dark colours together. Blue, black, brown and mix them up. I've got some phthalo green in there as well. I'm going to use my dark fan brush. Load it well and let's paint a nice fir tree. I like to work out the centre line first and then this time I'm going to have branches that face upwards. Notice how I hold my brush at a nice upward angle and press with just one corner. I don't let the brush slide. I wanted to leave an imprint of the bristles. They look just like pine needles. I start off by working a centre line, getting that nice V shape. It takes a little practice. Once you get the hang of it, every fir tree will be a success. I'll bring these right down until I reach the bottom of my line. I'm careful not to go too far to the right here. There's quite heavy snow there, which I painted earlier. As Bob would say, every tree has to have a friend. Let's give this one a nice centre line first. Just touch the centre line in. Then re-groom your brush with a nice dark colour and come back and reshape it slightly. You might find doing a tree in two steps a little easier than doing it in one step. Time for some snowy highlights. I've gone back to my other fan brush and I've got some titanium white paint. I've also added a little tiny drop of liquid white to it just to soften the paint slightly. Titanium white from the tube is usually very firm and dry and it won't stick. If you add a tiny tiny drop of liquid white to it, you'll find it's soft enough to stick. I'm going to concentrate my highlighting mainly on the right hand side. As my brush runs out of colour, I'll do a little bit more of the centre and the shadowy left side. I want to make it more of a feature of this area, so I'll just stab in a little bit more foliage. A few touches of highlight as well. Back to my dark and pick up a small roll on the edge of my palette knife. I think I want a nice little rocky outcrop here. I've had something similar in the original painting. So let's do a few little dark patches here. I let the paint break gently across the canvas. A little bit of texture to it. I often use highlighting colours from elsewhere in the painting. It adds a sense of harmony to my paintings. Again, something you don't always see in books. But I find it works really well for these sorts of paintings. This colour was originally the planks of my old cabin. As you see, it ties the two corners of my painting together rather well. I'll finish this area off with some nice snowy highlights on the edge of my palette knife. I want this to look lovely, chunky and thick. Really textured. Just like fresh fallen snow over the vegetation. It would be so easy to overwork this area of my painting. But I know from experience that if I do, it'll lose that lovely fresh look. Once again, this is something you can't learn from a book. Something else you can't learn from a book is just coming up. Can you guess what it is? So here we are, a couple of days later. Knowing when to stop painting. Well, it's something which you can't learn from a book. You have to learn it from your own experience. And my experience down here was that, well, I was going to start getting myself into a bit of a mess and a bit of a pickle. And that brown colour would probably go all the way to the other side of my painting. So I took the decision to leave my painting alone and let it dry slightly and then come back. If I test it now, it's just tacky. Perfect for me to carry on adding the next layers of detail to my painting. So let's press on. I stood back and decided I want to add a third tree to this area of my painting. Not much room to the left, though, and a little bit tight through the centre. But if I use my liner brush, some Van Dyke Brown, I might just squeeze something in through the centre here. Small, sticky, twiggy type tree. Nothing too big and bold. I'll start off with a nice centre line. And as I go up, I'll branch off left and right. Again, not too big and bold. And I'll try and make this look like it sort of goes up behind the tree on the left. I'll extend a few branches out and have them stop and then restart on the other side of the tree. I think that works out quite nicely. I'll also add a few little sticks down here in the vegetation lower down. Again, it sort of blends harmony to my painting. But let's have a closer look at this picture. Can you see what I can see? It's here. It's like, well, a new horizon line. Nothing's allowed to go above this point in my painting. It's all sort of jammed at this tree line here in the background. What I need to do is extend this tree a little more, I think. If I make it taller, it'll bring it closer to me in the painting. I don't want to crowd the trees on the right, so I'll grow it a little further to the left, just inside the edge of the canvas. A few touches of snowy highlights. I think that's a great addition to my painting. Now let's add some lovely heavy thick snow to the base of these rocks. Leaving my painting for a day or two enables me to get these really brilliant lovely snowy highlights onto my painting without fear of picking up a lot of brown. These sorts of details really help your painting stand out. Make it really pop. I'll add a few touches of highlight on the snow as well and then soften them into the vignette with my fingers. I think there's one more thing I'd like to do to my painting. I need to add a little bit of life to my cabin. Maybe a wisp of smoke. And of course, I'll soften that out with my finger as well. Now that wouldn't be able to get there unless I had a chimney pot. So let's put one of those in as well. You see me using my little homemade marl stick here, just something I can rest my hand against. Now if there's a fire in the hearth, you need a light in the window. I start off with a little bit of Indian yellow. I add a tiny touch of bright red to it to make it a nice orangey red glow. And then to make the light really stand out, a little dot of white. This is a lovely painting to do and one I've really enjoyed demonstrating for you. It taught me a few things and I hope it's given you an inspiration to paint your own version of this Bob Ross classic, Frozen Beauty, in a vignette. So there we have it, a Bob Ross classic, Frozen Beauty. One that I hope has given you some inspiration and not to be too concerned about getting things wrong. Developing the gut instinct takes time. Ask any artisan who bakes a cake, repairs a shoe or paints, they'll tell you it takes time to develop that sort of sense of touch. In the meantime, there's some lovely videos for you to watch that'll help you on the next step in your journey. Happy painting, people!