Bob Ross Paintings - Bob Ross Beginners Tips & Paintings

The above Bob Ross exercises aren't paintings as such or at least, not in that sense.

Some are in oil and some are in acrylics; some on canvas, some on artist board, most on thin card.

Each one started with a "I wonder what would happen if ..." question that the exercises then answers. Sometimes, more than one question.

For example, in the "Mars" painting, the palette knife slipped to make a sharp vertical trace. It looked like a transmission tower, and all the others buildings that indicate life and productivity on this barren planet which are there now, would not have been if it hadn't been for the "happy little accident".

It got me thinking about buildings, so I tried the church exercise with the classic Bob Ross foliage around it, just to check it out how hard that might be. It's not!

Some insanity happened in the picture with the bright red sky which caused me to overpaint the whole thing with red lacquer. The photo doesn't quite do it justice, but the effect is really rather stunning. Which in turn led directly to take this effect further in the "fire sky" picture.

Often, things also just went hideously wrong (sorry Bob, but they did, in so far as I wanted to do something specific and just failed miserably - LOL!).

If I had gone at any of these with the idea of "creating a painting" rather than "doing an exercise", my German character would have probably demanded:

b) to avow absolutely to never attempt any painting again, not even in a future life.

I've only done those few and some random exercises on spare bits of paper so far, but I can feel that certain things are becoming easier, becoming UNDERSTOOD, don't worry me any more.

As this is happening, into that space I guess some form of creativity is entering and we get things like a happy little waterfall but the sky is on fire and that is NOT reflected in the water on this occasion.

I might have some ideas for pictures that I want to paint and have them be what I want them to be before I start.

Bob Ross Beginner's Tips

The ENTIRE technique set revolves around "wet on wet" OIL. Which means in other words that before you start, you have to underpaint the entire canvas with EXACTLY the right kind of liquid white paint. You need to think of it as an ice rink on which all the other colours slide around with consummate ease, thus giving you those FANTASTIC soft blends and shadows.

If this underpaint is too liquid, things mush into one another and the top layers of paint just don't stick cleanly; if it is not liquid enough, you don't get smooth blends and the whole thing goes to hell in a hand basket.

If you don't get spot on Bob Ross results first time out, chances are it is because you don't have the right canvas, the right paint mixture, and the right tools. I'm not recommending to run off and start shopping for "Bob Ross Recommends ..." wares here; I'm just saying that if your results are disappointing, LOOK TO THE TOOLS FIRST before doubting your SELF.

The whole Bob Ross painting technique is so straightforward and watertight, you CAN'T get it wrong if you have the right tools, or if you figure out how to compensate for not having them.

For example, the SIZE of the canvas and the SIZE of the brushes are directly correlated.

If you use a smaller canvas, you must likewise reduce the brush sizes to reflect this shift in proportions or else it won't work exactly right.

Also, listen carefully to the names of the colours he uses. They are the same ones over and over; you stick anything else in there, such as Prussian blue instead of Phtalo blue, there is a noticeable shift in the results.

I've already mentioned the tools and the proportions. If you want to do paintings exactly like Bob Ross, then you must absolutely copy the tools he uses and re-size them if you change the proportions of the paintings.

* Here's another weird thing I recently noticed about the proportions. Bob Ross is HUGE! He has HUGE hands. If you don't, you probably misjudging the proportions of the tools, the canvas and the effects you are producing, because human beings take other human beings as a guideline, and they take AVERAGE human beings as a guideline, not REALLY BIG ones like Bob Ross.

I bought a Bob Ross roundbrush by mail order and when it arrived, I literally gasped at the size of the thing! In my hand, it looks like an axe handle and I'm 5'8!

When you "paint along with Bob", you really do have to LISTEN to what he tells you. If he says to add LIQUID WHITE to your Titanium white for THAT effect, you've got to do EXACTLY that or else you won't get THAT effect. That's just an example of the many little instructions which are there but you don't hear them or you don't pay enough attention, but which are CRITICAL to the success of the painting as you're trying to stick one layer of wet oil on top of the next.

When I first starting watching the shows, I think I was too caught up in everything that was going on or doing weird things inside my own head and I wasn't LISTENING properly to the instructions he gives you.

WATCH how he loads the brushes. By all means, COUNT just how many times he will tap a brush into a streak of paint before he takes it to the canvas. Then do the same.

There's a similar deal with, for example, laying the light colours on the bushes without mushing the paint. COUNT how many times he touches the brush to the canvas BEFORE he takes it away for further cleaning and re-loading. With the fine filigree bushes in the foreground, he makes no more than 7 dabs before cleaning and re-loading and changing colour, too.

It's little details like that which make or break the technique and having it work exactly right, and with the best results possible.

You copy EXACTLY what he does with his brushes to clean them in between ALL THE TIME.

That's an example of watching EXACTLY what he's doing - when I got my head around the constant and immediate brush cleaning and "fresh brush using", all of a sudden the blends and foliage started to work when before it just wouldn't. Couldn't is the word!

The brush cleaning thing is one of those core background deals, including finding "enjoyment" somehow in that activity and having it become a real part of the process that is actually essential to getting the right painting, and to experiencing "the joy of painting" all over.

It's EXTREMELY important to the whole package that at some point, we DON'T paint along with Bob any longer, but really just get started on a "happy, happy sky" with the TV switched off and you're all alone with your (suitably underpainted) canvas, your brushes, your paints, your bucket of turpentine and yourself.

Bob Ross is NOT copying something, and as we watch him do his thing, we also observe how he lets himself be guided to just what kind of sky there is, what time of day, what feeling he wants the painting to express.

Where a tree might go, and if this tree has one friend, or two; if there is a waterfall or not.

THAT is the outcome and the core activity that makes "The Joy of Painting" such a totally unique and fascinating experience.

Bob says it, time and time again: "This is YOUR world. YOU are in total control here. You can move mountains here and decide where everything goes ..."

But I've found that as I'm going out now, post-Bob Ross, I'm looking at shapes of beautiful trees and I'm thinking, "I'll have myself one of those in MY WORLD ..."

I saw some amazing little flowerbeds today and those are going into MY WORLD, too, at some time.

This is a very, very cool thing in every sense and I'm just having so much fun with this, I'm so glad I found this!

Bob Ross Blog

I remain (now 4 weeks into it) completely fascinated with the "Bob Ross Model" in and of itself; the active attempt at my modelling of his approach (that would be in the NLP term of "modeling"), the results and what it's doing to not just my approach to art, but also to the way I am looking at the world in general, and at other landscape art, trees in real life and Stargate SG1 in particular.

Stargate SG1?!

How do you know you have changed? When your REACTIONS to some thing which has remained essentially the same are DIFFERENT from what they used to be.

Now I've sat through more Stargate SG1 episodes than I would care to admit, mostly due to the fact that it was "family viewing" when both of my sons were still fairly young and one of those programmes we would always watch together.

My main complaint about SG1 was the ENDLESS, and to me, it was ENDLESS!! "stumbling through forests".

If you watch StarTrek, any series, any episode, you'll notice they've made an effort to keep the illusion going that we're in the future. Little things, like weird shaped glasses and the flowers on the table look a bit freaky. To keep the cost down, we'll use steel corridors or caves, that can be anywhere.

In Stargate, to keep the cost down, we have extended scenes of folk running around in the same goddamned forest and no-one's even bothered to stick a few blue tails on the trees to give some sort of indication that we're supposed to be half way across the galaxy.

So yesterday was Sunday, I put on the TV, there was absolutely nothing on, so from the nothing I picked Stargate as a standby to run until something better came along.

It had already started and - yes! We were stumbling around in the forest! Of course!

But this time, I went, "Wow! Look at those happy trees! What interesting shapes! And those happy little bushes! And those neat little rocks! COOL! I'm going to paint them!"

The other two things were I've really noticed it is looking at trees, shadows and lights, houses, perspectives, skies in a different way.

And so, to the landscape paintings. Now I don't know what I saw when I used to look (or more like glance) at a landscape painting before I met Bob Ross, but my goodness, that has changed so much, it's nearly scary.

Some new thing has come into the whole deal which makes them fascinating and inspiring now, when they were never anything to me before.

I've been looking at galleries of artists on the web every night for about 4 weeks now and the interest has spread from landscapes to *all* paintings - abstract, even kitschy kitty pics now hold some interest.

Wow. That's an interesting development and one which I hadn't expected. But it's very welcome because I was getting bored with my usual thoughts and ways of looking at things :-) and it is also nice to notice real change when it has happened. There's hope for more then ...

Am I getting any better?!

I'm trying to do at least some painting exercises every night, and weekends I've reserved for serious painting - that's when you get the whole lot out, the oils and the turpentine, the large canvas, the brush cleaning pots and beater pans, dozens of brushes, kitchen towel, and the whole caboodle that entirely covers my den in every way and precludes any other form of activity for at least 3-5 hours.

I'm more confident, more relaxed and I think I've got the basics of water, sky mountains and vegetables down now. What I mean by that is that I think I understand how it translates from the real objects to the representation/illusion on the flat canvas.

Bob Ross Tribute Oil Painting - Winter Landscape with Xmas Tree by StarFields

This little painting might not look so impressive but what I like about it was that I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like, what I wanted it to be and to do, and I got it done.

Painting snow, ice and frost on the ground and the trees is not that difficult and as I come from a place where there was a lot of that, I have a connection with the snow landscapes.

I'm really pleased with the way that is going and how it came out.

Bob Ross Tribute Oil Painting Lakescape by SFX

Sunset Lakescape - I was a bit naughty there and snuck in some blue flowers which aren't usually found (or ever at all!) in a true Bob Ross painting. But as he always says, it's my world and I can do as I please ... :-)

Bob Ross Tribute Oil Painting Sepia Waterfall by SFX

This sepia style forest waterfall was the first time I committed myself to a large canvas.

To be honest, I'm really amazed at it.

It's standing on an easel in the front room to dry at the moment and every time I walk in, I just can't believe I actually painted that.

I guess that is my first ever "proper" oil painting.

Wow ...

Bob Ross Tribute Oil Painting Valley Waterfall by SFX

Now this is my version of "Valley Waterfall" and I'd say probably my real first tribute to Bob Ross.

Valley Waterfall is a painting from Series 23 and I tried to paint it in real time (but failed! LOL)

Still, sitting here looking at this I'm having a similar response with this as I'm having to the sepia waterfall - you've got to be kidding me! I can't paint something like that!

But I did, and I can, and I'm still not over the astonishment of it.

Framed ...

Consciously I know that we're not talking about art here, not like "grand masters" and the Mona Lisa and stuff. I do know that.

There is a part of me that is still small and sees these sort of paintings hanging on the wall of my parent's house, my aunt's house, my great aunt's house. They "don't know anything about art" but they gave over space in their abodes to just such paintings, in thick golden frames.

So as I was processing the photographs of the paintings, it occurred to me to put them into a virtual gold frame, to see what they would look like.

Now I really don't know if that's just me, or if the world over just such pictures are hanging on the older generation's walls, but there really is something about this particular thing that I find most peculiar, and also in a way, reconciling.

After years of "high magic", to be painting something like Valley Waterfall there, and to be able to appreciate what my Valley Waterfall would actually bring to a room in *energetic terms*, is a strange thing indeed.

Perhaps the "arty diatribes" about kitschy waterfalls and stupid people with flying ducks on the wall are an affectation, or simply a misconception and a mis-understanding between the arty folk and those who use pictures on the wall to brighten their every-day-lives some.

Perhaps there should be more precise categories of art that doesn't disrespect people like Bob Ross so completely or denies their right to exist, or denounces them for simply being a sign of stupidity, lack of good taste and refinement.

Perhaps we can call it "Feng Shui Art" when you try and really EVOKE the essence of a sunset or a waterfall or a little cottage by the lake with roses round the door, instead of tearing up the canvas with slashes of red paint and semi-formed skeletons lurking in the shadow.

That form of art has its place also but it certainly isn't all there is in a wide spectrum of human expression and discovery, and what I'm thinking is that it isn't any *better*.

The Lighthouse

I developed a personal style of painting things that I found fascinating some years ago, a simplified representation of the elements that make up the image behind it (like DragonRising).

Now I haven't done anything in that style for a long time, probably because I was busy with the symbol paintings, but one appeared a couple of days ago, right in the middle of Bob Rossing. Which surprised me somewhat.

I was looking at a photograph of a light house in a bay and thought that I would like to paint that. So I started to get the kit out, but as soon as I was about to put brush to artist board, I got a real strong message/sensation/whatever to do it in the old style.

I was surprised at that, argued it a little but it was very strong; so in the end, I did.

I have to laugh though. These paintings just don't photograph well. They don't look anything like the originals - they photograph so wrong, it's stunning. Perhaps they have a soul that won't be captured in a camera, or perhaps I just suck as a photographer!

Experiments

One of the fun things, and something I look forward to immensely, is after the "happy tree" painting is finished, to take what's left on the palette in the way of paint remnants and just go mad with it.

It's good fun and things happen that I make a mental note of to use elsewhere and for other purposes; you could say its a whole lot of "happy accidents" rolled into one and happening all at once.

Masterless ... :-(

I recorded a lot of "Joy Of Painting"s to my Skybox, and lost most of them, including one that I had underpainted ready for a particular picture.

Masterless, the canvas kept staring at me so I completed it anyway, best as I could.

We may wonder if masterless is the opposite of masterful? Still, I did the best I could with it and that's all you can do, right. I like the sky though.

Sepia Waterfall In A Real Frame

Well, Sepia Waterfall has dried sufficiently to be handleable now. In passing, I saw an old big frame, which used to contain "Me & Me" before someone took it home (hoping here it went to a good home, like many of my other artworks which keep vanishing mysteriously!).

I kept looking at it and in the end tried it - only to find it is the perfect fit.

Man, that's weird. Even weirder seeing it right next to a big symbol painting ... This is either a culture clash, my usual multiple personality disorder re-surfacing or let's call it a phase that I might outgrow soon :-)

Drawing Exercises & Courage ...

I don't care what anyone thinks, this painting and art business is DIFFICULT. It is scary, it is challenging, and reveals reversals by the bucketload.

Anyone who hasn't tried this really can't know what it's like, and how WEIRD that is.

I'm supposed to be an adult. I'm supposed to be able to do things well. But if we're going back to basics here with traditional art, I'm NO ADULT. I'm a beginner. I'm a kid, clumsy and fearful, yet fascinated by the colours and the promise of expression, of creation.

I can wow other adults with my language skills, hypnosis skills, and a few other tricks beside.

So do I have the courage to start again with something that I won't be able to do well? That many might laugh at, others might condescend to?

Well yes I do. Only thanks to a massive and constant application of ET, and also EFT for good measure thrown in (I should write an article, Bob Ross & EFT = REAL Joy Of Painting!).

But it is hard. There's always the temptation to stick with the "safe stuff", the things you can already do well, and that have form and function and get suitable recognition. You can't live like that though. *I* can't live like that. I have no shame!

Bob Ross often says that if you want the good fruit, you have to go out on a limb, cause that's where it is and nowhere else.

Drawing People

My worst reversals of them all do revolve around the subject of painting people.

Drawing people. Whatever that is when you try and depict human beings and you look at your stick figures and you just know you're not getting it right.

Nicola and I were talking about this the other day and she mentioned those classical anatomical drawings of skeletons and muscles. Her tone was despairing; I got very angry and said, "Well have you EVER, and I mean, EVER, seen some bloke strutting around with his skin off???

"We just can't go at it like that. It's not motivational to folk like ourselves, and furthermore, it's silly. Think about it. HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE YOU SEEN IN YOUR LIFETIME SO FAR?

"This is TOTAL BULLSHIT! We have this knowledge inside of us, more than we ever needed to capture at least the essence of people in some medium - surely!"

I know this is true. I KNOW I already KNEW that things in the distance become bluer, BEFORE Bob Ross told me this. I've seen distances for 47 years, for heaven's sake! I've seen trees. The knowledge is THERE. It just needs to be accessed, and let out.

So I mustered my courage, got a brush and all the handy self help techniques and just started doing some really basic drawings, my first ever really, of PEOPLE.

You can psychoanalyse me if you want, that's alright. It's probably even relevant on some level.

So here, and after all of that, are my "kids drawings of people", in acrylic ink with a single sable liner brush on paper.

People Creeping In

The day after the people drawing exercises I had some left over paint to do some of the "strange things" with the pallette knife - and a people crept into the picture!

I'm not sure I like this drift-off into art therapy. But perhaps its necessary - who knows? Not as though I'm either stable, or sane, is it!

Self Portraits

As I joke, and really, as a *joke*!, I said to to Nicola, "Hey let's do self portraits!"

So it should be somewhat strange that at 9 o'clock in the morning, as I was about to go to bed, the very last painting to be done, in a state of walking sleep by then, should turn out to want to be a self portrait.

Now unlike Nicola, I didn't seem to have it in me to be specific or even recognisable; this is how it was:

There actually is a face in there, you just have to step back a bit before it becomes revealed as it were.

Most peculiar colour choice. Watermelon tourmaline. Not colours I would have ever knowingly associated with me.

It's a peculiar thing to put these images on this site, which does have considerable traffic. But on the other hand, why paint at all if you don't want other people to SEE what you're doing?

The Bob Ross Portrait - My Tribute To Bob Ross

Bob Ross has changed my life. I've always had the talent but what I didn't have was the self belief and the confidence. I thought I was too clumsy to paint, that I couldn't learn how to do it. Bob talked me patiently through my reversals and with the help of a lot of EmoTrance along the way, I now know this to be untrue.

I wanted to do a tribute to Bob Ross and with my heart in my mouth, if not higher, I decided to paint a portrait of Bob Ross.

If you don't know me personally beyond what you've read on the web, you have no idea just how difficult and personally challenging that was, from even daring to form the idea to the execution.

I don't think I've ever been so afraid of a project, or during a project, ever before in my entire life and I'm absolutely serious when I say that.

Full of trepidation I set to work. During the planning of the painting, creating the layout and deciding on what the feel of it should be, I often heard Bob's voice; to get started on the face took me a whole week of fighting and resolving reversals.

I don't know, I'm still too shell shocked. But I kinda asked Bob if it was alright and he said it was. (And he also said that it's ok for artists to be a bit crazy, indeed, it's expected!).

May not be the greatest painting ever, or even any good at all, but it does have my heart and soul in it.