Blog Ross – The joy of learning how to paint.

‘It’s been a long time’ as the Beatles sang in one of their lesser known songs Wait and I know you all really rely on my story so much (haha), but do not fear I have been working behind the scenes.

The mountains are still a big challenge mainly because I am trying very hard to make them perfect before moving on. So my current situation and routine is that I cover the canvas with the OFFICIAL Bob Ross liquid white paint, get the sky edged in with the little criss cross patterns. I have to admit I am getting very fast and accurate with this technique, I know its not about speed but it looks and feels pretty damn cool….also makes me look like I know exactly what I am doing. Once the sky is in and blended I do the clouds which is then another technique… load the brush by dragging it on the thiner edge and it creates a rounder edge. Then it is all in the wrist and making circles to get those clouds extra fluffy. One big thing I have learned, is that as soon as you see the white get muddied by the blue of the sky either wash and reload or top up on the white. By just ignoring it and carrying on causes the blue to make the cloud disappear and this causes a lack of depth. Depth is the quality that grabs the viewers attention and the following is my personal experience with the application of depth.

I have always had a great interest in art and visiting art galleries but I have never really been exposed to one of the ‘big names’ until earlier this year. My wife and I were in Tampa which is home to the Salvador Dali museum and we just HAD to visit. I was amazed by the amount of depth in these paintings and when looking closely at every painting in that museum I was extremely aware of how intentional every stroke and every slight change in colour was too. It was inspirational. Who knows if that had subconsciously played a part at where I am today with this project. This museum also has a wonderful virtual reality section where you are in the mind of Dali and explore his vision, if anyone reading this finds themselves around the Tampa area you should go visit! Here are a few photos we took during our visit. 

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Back to the real issues….I upgraded my palette knife to a metal one and I am finding that I have more control as it is weighted nicely. One great thing I have noticed is that it is way easier to clean than the plastic one I have…. so instant points for that. The mountain shapes are clearer now and thanks to the angle of the handle I am also able to keep the knife completely parallel to help make the paint ‘split’ and this my friends is what makes Bobs mountains look exceptionally realistic. Here is just one of the many 1000’s of pictures I took. I picked the most practice looking picture so you can see my process. I wanted to show this one because you can see the scrapes of the of the paint, the experiments in thickness of paint (in red) ,and then the first effort with the new palette knife. This canvas is all a weird shade of gray right now because at the time I was not happy and just put paint thinner on to get rid of it. It is quite funny because in the moment nothing looks good, but in reflection I see the slow progress, which links me to the title of this entry “A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss” I just have to keep moving consistently, it does not matter of the speed, it’s just about being constant. I have to carve the feeling and vision in to my brain as there is only one way to make the signals in my brain to be more efficient and thats to keep hacking away at the inroads, help the signals find their way. Flexing the creativity muscle. Anyway, here it is. 

Not Done Just Yet

I have always wanted to try an online course to gain some random skill or something I have had interest in for a while and while scrolling on ‘The Facebook’ I found an advert for ‘online courses on sale’. When is there a better time to start than when you’re going to save money? So I dove right on in and I have found a course that I really wanted to do (unrelated to painting), so I have that to do right now. I’m not sure how long it will take me and I feel very ambitious taking that on as well, but having more goals is helping me endlessly and I highly recommend it. I might even start a cook book for the hell of it…. I could link the cook book to Bob Ross and make paintings out of food…or present the food in the style of a Bob Ross painting. On second thoughts the cook book can wait until popular demand.

After the interesting events that unfolded on Sunday, I got back on the canvas yesterday on 4/6/2019 (May I add, it feels absolutely fantastic to write it that way around. I’ve had to write the date ‘backwards’ at work pretty much EVERY day for the last three years…. sorry Americans…your turn to be confused by the date format this time) I found the PERFECT Bob Ross episode Season 10 Episode 1 – ‘Towering Peaks’.

Watched it two times before even picking up a brush….third times a charm? Let us find out children.

I purchased some new brushes so I had some spares for when the intense times come and there are dead soldiers everywhere. Picture Forrest Gump in that one scene when he runs back and forth saving all those poor soldiers that got injured during the conflict and puts them down on the lake and saves their life…thats usually me…. with the brushes…. about half way through a painting. Not me, not this time. I am now Tom Hank’s other famous character, Woody, screaming ‘no toy gets left behind’ …does that fit as an analogy? I think it does and if it doesn’t …it does because this is my house that you’re in! Footnote – If you have not seen Forrest Gump stop reading as you’re not welcome here. If you stop reading here and watch Forrest Gump…feel free to continue like nothing happened.

ANYWAY me and my brushes are going to war in the name of blank canvases…. I have a lot more brushes AND I am being a thoroughly good person by actually cleaning as I go too…. I’m learning more than painting here, guys! Not to bore you but I get the sky and water done and here’s the evidence, please read the captions.

Clouds were next on the agenda and I have only really had one positive experience with clouds. But I was determined to do so today. So I start shaping them in and it occurs to me what I think clouds look like and what they actually look like are apparently really different… never really studied them in great detail before, apart from the odd ‘wow look at this great sunset tonight’. Now I have given myself a task… study the clouds and how they dance with each other. So here is the end result… P.S you’ll notice that the sky is not exactly the same as the blended picture above. If you were to ask me, did I try the clouds three times? I would say yes, but I will not admit to anymore times than three… OKAY, OKAY, IT WAS FIVE!! LEAVE ME ALONE, I’M LEARNING!!!!…

Cometh the hour, cometh the mountain(s)

I have probably said this is my FAVOURITE part of all. The mountains always look so spectacular and I don’t know about you but…. it is the first place I look when seeing a Bob Ross painting, so I am determined to get them right. Here are the two other photos from this session:

I learned quite a lot about the mountains. Scraping the excess paint off with the palette knife to create the other peaks is useful and this helps with two things, the blending afterwards but also saves paint! There is a step before this that I will promise to take a photo of next time, but the paint is thicker and the mountains are darker. When removing the excess paint it allows for the canvas to create those gaps and the ‘splitting’ technique that makes the mountains look almost real and come alive! This picture was taken after I had blended the mountains out making them softer and ready for the snow. Here is the final part and as far as I got with this painting.

I felt like they were looking great and I was ready to move on until something happened. Here is a direct quote from the man himself right at this point of the episode:

“I get carried away sometimes, I really like to paint mountains, and I’d cover up the whole canvas with mountains. And that’s not bad when you’re learning. Take an old canvas and start at the top and paint all the way down with mountains and just zip them right off and do it again”

So, sorry to say I just zipped those mountains off and got absolutely lost in the world of mountains, just using the same backdrop. The shape of the mountains did morph a little and I had to fix them, but I had so much fun in the multiverse of mountains. Unfortunately there are no photos of this round as I was just slapping the knife everywhere working out the pressure, angles, the right load of paint and the right texture of the paint before I took it to the canvas. It was a highly productive period of time. Please remember that I am a beginner and have never thought of painting this deeply before.

PLOT TWIST

I am left handed and everything I do is left sided, I play guitar left handed, eat, write, when I play football (soccer) my strong foot is my left. I started to flip the angles and saw a GREAT improvement in how it felt and I was able to get the paint more evenly distributed. It might not be a game changer in appearance right now, but I feel like this could help. So here is my plea… if anyone can reverse image all Bob Ross episodes and just send them to me so I can avoid getting all confused with the angles, I would be forever in your debt.

I am going to sign off with a progression photo rather than the things I have learned section that I usually sign off with. The top is the most recent, middle is before that, and the bottom is one of my first attempts. Thanks for reading I am flattered by all the clicks I am getting so again, big thanks. Have a great rest of the week!

Today was tough…. and I mean tough.

With the Champions League final being on Saturday, I watched the game with my footie mad aunties, one of which missed the opening goal as it happened so quick… 30 SECONDS INTO THE GAME…damn. The game was drab but congratulations to Liverpool F.C. We also decided to go to see some of our favorite local musicians perform together in town in the evening, so a lack of painting was acceptable as the social life was priority.

I know I signed up for this and any pain is a self inflicted wound that will eventually heal and get stronger. To quote one of my favorite bands songs, Radiohead – Just
‘You do it to yourself, you do, and that’s what really hurts.’

Today hurt. I changed nothing, everything was the same but something was off and the worst part is I did not even have a diagnosis for it at the time, that would have been nice as I could have worked around it rather than pulling teeth.

MORNING SESSION – ACT 1

As I said above, I changed nothing but I was having bad results. The sky is typically the easiest part of all of this because, essentially, all I am required to do is slap some sky shade of blue in the corners and slap the brush around in the criss-cross pattern as Bob says. Doing this helps to spread it all out nicely and with the liquid white applied first, the color will get lighter the lower it gets. This part I messed up. Bob said ‘just throw some black in there’ So I did that…. but maybe a little too much… I managed to fix it though…. only for Bob to say ‘lets put a dash of red in those clouds’ So I did that, got a lovely pink color… but the clouds ended up looking like bloody Dame Edna. (For Americans reading this, just click on that link). Now all I could think of was Dame Edna and I had to try get back on track. Dame Edna aside, my patience was running thin as things were just not clicking for me. So I touched up the clouds with some white to create some depth and take away from a drag queen wig look and swiftly moved on to the Mountains.

Ahh the mountains, my home, my sanctuary, the one place I know that will bring me back….WRONG! I got three scrapes in on the palette knife and I just knew that was it. DEATH OF THE MOUNTAINS – END OF ACT 1.

AFTERNOON SESSION – ACT 2

Full of food after a fantastic lunch at Manatee cafe, I tried again. Same principles with the sky… which I think you’ll agree looks rather ready for some mountains to pop out of the earth.

Then came the mountains and I picked this episode on purpose as I have not worked with reflections as of yet. So I followed the instructions down to the letter and came out with this

Looking alright? I thought so too. The mountains of course need snow and this is my favorite part. Then something else slightly new, a little hill with trees growing in the distance. Just a few dabs of paint slightly lighter than the mountain color and then soft pulls of the brush upwards. It gives the sense of big tall tress but really far away. Next there’s some grass but it is all fuzzy. Why? Because it’s obviously far away. Then a water line and you end up with this.

I often watch Bob and I think what on gods green earth are you doing covering up that beautiful mountain with some big obnoxious tree in the foreground?… but as the saying goes don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. And boy did I try it. No fear just going in. Here is the end product from today. *DISCLAIMER* Bob did not finish here, but I was ready to finish.

SELF DOUBT

Self doubt was the reason I was feeling a little off today, every time I put color on that canvas I was thinking ‘I can’t’ or ‘this is not good’. I fed myself bad information and it spilled into the next part until I felt it looked terrible and I could not possibly do this again. Each step needs care and individual time and effort, it is not about how the next part is going to be difficult. I have found that it is all about the now with this stuff, not the next stroke, color or object. When walking, not two steps are alike. There may be gum on this step and a crack in the pavement in the next but we really should just focus on not falling on the current step. In essence I thought that I am making hundreds of first steps in this painting and at the end they will resemble a mountain, trees, clouds and water as a collective.

I chose to do this because I believed in myself, the doubt was not there then… why did I let it in only after a few times of doing this? Who knows. But I usually talk myself out of self doubt with logic and the logic I used today is, Why am I doubting myself more after practice than before even picking up a brush?….and then the doubt disappeared, slowly, but eventually it went. As mentioned in a previous blog entry, oils take ages to wash and that was a good thing for me today. I took time to clean all the brushes giving them the respect and focus needed and in that time I was able to reflect.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

The painting that you see as the final product today is actually no longer. RIP and thank you for the learning experience. I took some paint thinner to it and now the whole canvas is a lovely shade of light blue. I am learning not to get attached to these things. The less attached I am the less the feeling of regret/self doubt sinks in. If I have no connection to the paintings, I can happily discard them with not a care in the world. If I hold tight to them and try to create perfection this will ultimately drive me crazy and I will be emotionally attached and with that comes a roller coaster rather than a nice steam train ride through the countryside.

Thanks to all the readers for keeping me accountable to this goal. I am getting a great amount of traffic on here. I feel like this post has a different tone than the rest but trust me I am just as determined as I was when I started, but this is the journey I am on right now… I might be a little spread out in terms of emotions.

THINGS I LEARNED

I. Slow down, taking pictures along the way actually help. It is not a coincidence that I do not have pictures of the morning session, I was trying to blast through it too quickly.
II. Do not become attached to the paintings, they need to be disposable. I am in training, I am not creating a portfolio.
III. I really need to look into faster ways to clean the oils, although the reflection time is sometimes needed, it can be a chore and I do not want that.
IV. If I am self doubting I need to walk away and reason with myself. I am not Rembrandt, I am myself and I will get there.
V. Hurting is good… this is a challenge…and it will get easier over time.

As you can probably guess I took on clouds today and had a very good time!

I am aware that you’re all on the edge of your seat about what happened with my Amazon correspondence so get yourself comfortable.. this has a fairytale ending. The seller had responded essentially blaming Amazon here is the reply in all its unique glory

“Sorry to hear about that. IDK what happens in these amazon warehouses sometimes or if one of the transportation guys was through the box around. We will gladly refund your order ASAP You can still paint with the tubes right? Hope everything else is well – Matt“

What a hero! Everything else is going absolutely swimmingly, Matt. Can I still paint with the tubes? Barely Matt, but I am learning…. I did not respond with that. I responded like a good citizen with a variation of this: thank you, how unexpected, and I will reorder another set of paints…. I am in this for the long haul so I guess I’ll need them.

My day started with a very uplifting text message about this project from my mother-in-law. All stereotypes aside my mother-in-law is GREAT! We text during football (soccer) and she is now a premier league expert and an all around good person! I hate to brag but she is another exceptional artist (she has a degree in fine art) that I am surrounded by, we chatted about art a little and what I feel like my weakness is at the moment and she turned me to a Japanese way of thinking about art called ‘Wabi Sabi’ and anyone can correct me if I am wrong, but after briefly reading about this its basically accepting the imperfections in your art as the beauty of it. Now that’s a philosophy I can get behind. I promise to share a picture of a piece of art my mother-in-law made for me in my next post and you’ll see I am not kidding about her skills.

UP IN THE SKY!

So as usual there I am with Bob on the iPad, paints on the palette and with nothing but eagerness in my body as I start painting clouds. I used a bigger canvas with the idea that I could just cover it over with clouds… much like the mountains I practiced the other day. I picked three random videos with different style clouds, might as well try to nail all three while I have white on my brush. So here they are…. Soft cloud to the upper left… fluffy clouds with the light hitting them on the upper right and on the bottom to quote Matt the Amazon guy, ‘IDK what happened’ but I guess we could call them dramatic grumps.

So feeling a mix of confidence of my mountain session and wanting to cover up those dramatic grumpy sods (sod: an English expression for something that is unpleasant or something you are upset with.) I wanted to press ahead and turn this cloud session into a double your bubble and throw some mountains in. So here we go:

So here it is. I see an improvement and I certainly felt a vast amount of confidence while doing this. If you look in between mountains 2 and 3 (count from the left) you will see a slight purple line… while paying attention to my previous things learned “Can’t stress this enough…. LIGHT grip when pulling the paint for snow” I actually had too light a grip and dropped the knife full of purple… oh well ….WABI SABI….

THINGS I LEARNED:
I. Clouds are very light at the top and do have a multitude of shades.
II. On that same topic keeping the clouds light is all about the blending with the clean brush
III. The mountains have shade all over them, not just on the oppose side of the snow. I can put them on any dark spots to really make them pop out of the canvas.
IV. Cleaning oil from the brushes is hard. But remember to use a palette knife to scrape the paint off before washing. Makes it 1000x easier! oh and the best for last..
V. Matt really is not sure what they do at Amazon warehouses but I hope he gets to the bottom of it.

So I promised myself a mountainous session and angles have ALWAYS been a bad point for me when drawing (NOTE: I do not draw either well either, I am beginner to all art) The mountains are always so impressive and such a focal in Bobs paintings and I really want to crack them first. So here we go.

So unfortunately, I am out of white as explained in the previous blog. OH and a quick update on that I reached out to the seller very positively because I am a good student of Bob and he would have done the same thing and you all know it! I gave them a little message basically stating I love the product, loved the quick shipping but I have encountered a problem with one of the tubes… how can you help, signed Future Bob Ross (not really, but I should have). Lets see how they respond, if they could send me a replacement white tube I will be over the moon grateful!

Like a true human of this day and age I just googled ‘best mountain quotes’ and I found ‘You are not in the mountains the mountains are in you’…. bloody hell that’s heavy… but I like it. I am not going to add quotes here and pretend I have them stored in my brain like David Brent. Click here for a 2 minute clip of this UK Office episode. Please watch, it is hilarious. Ricky Gervais and Martin Freeman…what more do you want? P.S UK office is better than the US office…I said it…fight me…Wow blogs are great for tangents.

Anyway….. mountains are a great thing to make analogies out of and google is full of them. So I started my mountain tonight and due to the lack of white I coated my canvas in a very nice light blue and then put a dark blue on for the sky in Bobs criss cross stroke pattern… things started well …again.

I think I got too confident and distracted. I threw a few clouds in and they looked great. I even added some orange in 😎 you’re going to have to trust me on how great they looked as there is no record…sorry. Now onto the mountains.

I think I got distracted by what my actual goal of the day was because I truly and quite frankly messed up the mountain and I was not even watching Bob…. I could not believe what I had just done. I apologized to Bob for thinking I was better than him and I did not need his guidance in that moment and I scrubbed the deck… here’s the proof…. and I encourage you to zoom in to look at the mess I made of the mountains and how fuzzy the picture is… taken in mild frustration and disappointment for abandoning Bob….

Anyhow I moved on and covered the canvas in a similar shade of blue I started with, I added some paint thinner and slapped that all over the place. I put too much paint thinner on and had to rapidly wipe it down with a rag but it actually evened out the canvas in one color. Bob never steers you wrong… HAPPY LITTLE ACCIDENTS DO HAPPEN AND YOU CAN HAVE THEM TOO!!!!

SO to bring it back to the white being missing… I used other colors and repeatedly told myself this is a technique class, Daniel, stay calm, the colors do NOT matter. So I got myself a complimentary color chart and just picked colors that looked good together… I went for it and it really actually worked out well… the pictures I will include at the end are not visually stunning, they are a part of my process and I learned a lot.

Things Learned

I. The angles of the mountains should be more straight than you think
II. The Knife does have to be quite loaded to get that great splitting effect.
III. Can’t stress this enough… LIGHT grip when pulling the paint for snow.
IV. I need to trust myself as the nervousness passes onto the canvas. Confident strokes are the way to achieve.
V. Do not paint without Bob OR without vision.

Here we go, they don’t look great or much like mountains without any context. But I learned a lot about technique tonight.

Monday 27th May!!!

Before I begin talking about my experience. Here are the things I learned a long the way last night:
1. Art stamina – It really does take some mental stamina
2. I really need to know when to slow down
3. Black should only be used MINIMALLY
4. When Bob says ‘you don’t need much’… you reallllllly DO NOT need much paint.
5. Oil is so terribly hard to clean off the brushes.

I had all the tools, I had my iPad paused and ready to go, I pre watched the episode to find out what colors I needed, I was there but all that was left to do was start painting. I started by following Bob and coating the canvas in liquid white, he says it is supposed to help with blending as it keeps the canvas slightly wet…. must be true if he does it, I have not painted either way so I can’t comment on that… P.S I opened my white and it was drier than the other paints… there was a split in the tube… I am going to write to the seller on Amazon and see if I can get a replacement because that is not right!

OPEN SKIES!

The sky and clouds were 10/10 I was gliding along and my confidence and concentration was at an all time high and if you can tell from the picture the sky looks exquisite. Look at my concentration face here:

At this point all my paint brushes were dirty! CRISIS TIME! I was worried if I dropped the pace I would lose concentration and confidence so I plastered through. By this time the mountains had been crafted, it was time to make trees and the whole thing was steadily going down hill from there. Not to fear, I just kept going.

The part came when I had to paint some wooden hut thing and Bob was talking about who might live here. I was at the height of my frustration at that point. I did not care who lived in this hut. INFACT I hoped the recluse little bugger who built this stupid hut thing never came back to it…. but like Bob repeatedly reminded me ‘you decide what it looks like, its your little world’ So I guess I built this thing and I’m the little bugger.

BLACK IS PERMANENT

I really wish I knew this before starting…but this is the journey. Toward the bottom of the painting things got…..dark. Bob does say that the things closer to the foreground get darker and technically that’s what I did.

For Next Time (things to work on):

I. Remember black is to be used minimally for mixing.
II. All paint is to be used sparingly as it gets harder to blend the thicker it is.
III. Pace myself, learn to step away for a few minutes.
IV. Work on mental stamina
V. Have a practice session for blending and mountains

HERE IT IS

P.S I even signed it in Bob-style red!

After minimal research and watching an hour long episode of Bob Ross explaining his techniques in a lot more detail than in his usual 30 minute video, I assembled everything that I feel I need.

Thanks to Amazon and Michaels I am ready to go in under 48 hours from the idea.

Today, I will attempt a Bob Ross painting and upload the results…. no matter how bad it is. I have picked a random episode and the journey starts here.

Happy Saturday! My wife and I started watching Bob Ross the joy of painting after realizing it was on Amazon Prime. My wife is an artist and a very good one at that, go check out @woodvibesart on instagram if you fancy getting your favorite pet immortalized in wood 😉

Anyhow, we’re watching Bob Ross and I am thinking this looks very easy, but his technique is just out of this world! Good old Bob has inspired me with all those positive reinforcements he gives us while painting so carefree. I posted on my instagram story (@here_there_everywhere27) asking if any of my friends have actually painted along with Bob instead of just falling into a coma at his unique skill of making you feel more relaxed than meditating on an elephants back in the summer rain. There was a resounding 100% NO! I know what I have to do…

INSPIRED!!!

I thought I should really try to recreate one of these paintings just for myself and see what I can do. Well, after watching a film last night called Julie and Julia starring Amy Adams and Meryl Streep, I was inspired. Long story short Meryl Streep plays Julia Child and Amy Adams is Julie Powell and her character is described as “Frustrated with a soul-killing job, New Yorker Julie Powell (Amy Adams) embarks on a daring project: she vows to prepare all 524 recipes in Julia Childs’ landmark cookbook”. She does this and blogs all about it. I happened to come across this film last night (5/24). It is not the usual film I would have watched but it was inspiring, nonetheless. It came to me that I should try to paint ALL the Bob Ross paintings in a year, but that would be somewhat too ambitious and I probably wouldn’t learn much. I want to develop a new skill so it seemed a little better to challenge myself to paint a good quality Bob Ross-esque painting in a year.

Here is what I have done so far:

Purchased these from Amazon:

$22.95
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B073NPDKN1

I also went to Michaels and purchased:

Odorless paint thinner $21.00 down to $7.95 ABSOLUTE BARGAIN.
I got palette knives and finally 10 canvases on sale (5 for $10.00)
All of this and we used two coupons…..Michaels is the absolute craft heaven… all stores should aspire to be as amazing as they are.

First Blog done I guess…. stay tuned!