Every artist was once an amateur. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
As some may know, I aspire to be an artist.
So, when Cat (bottom left) asked her neighbor if she wanted to attend, too, I tagged along. Cost $110, if you bring a date.
Yup, I took a Bob Ross painting class. Same age as Grandma Moses when she first took up the brush. Probably never even took a class from Bob Ross. Advantage, Dog, right there.
Actually started to think about going to Bob Ross College for a week’s immersion in Wildlife Art.
The Bob Ross Story
“We don’t make mistakes, we just have happy accidents.”
Early On
Robert Norman Ross was born in Daytona, Florida, on October 29, 1942 to Jack and Ollie Ross. From his mother Bob learned a love and respect of wildlife. Bob’s father was a carpenter and for a short time Bob worked with him but after an unfortunate accident where Bob cut off one of his fingers he decided that carpentry wasn’t for him and in 1960 he joined the Air Force.
Learning to paint
Stationed first in Florida he was eventually transferred to an airbase in Alaska. During his service there Bob took his first painting lesson at a U.S.O. Club in Anchorage. To augment his Air Force pay Bob took a job as a bartender and sold his landscape paintings on gold prospecting pans to tourists.
When he left the Air Force and returned home to Florida Bob attended various art schools and painting classes until he discovered the “wet-on-wet” painting technique being taught by William Alexander. Bob continued to experiment and refine the wet-on-wet technique ultimately creating his own unique version along with the custom made paints, brushes and knives need to follow it.
The Bob Ross wet-on-wet technique is also known as “alla prima” or “direct painting”. Work created using the “alla prima” technique can be completed in a single session. Throughout art history from the 16th century until today artists such as Jan van Eyck, Diego Velázquez and Thomas Gainsborough as well as impressionists Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh, realists John Singer Sargent and even modern artists like Willem de Kooning have, in different ways, employed the alla prima technique.
Teaching others to paint
Bob was passionate about sharing his love for painting with the world and in 1982 along with his partners he launched the Joy of Painting on public television. To promote the television show and reach a greater audience Bob toured America teaching others to paint. In the beginning, the classes that were offered in shopping malls and art stores yielded only small groups of students. As word of the popular TV show grew, so did the live audiences for his public lessons. From 1982 through 1994, Bob recorded more than 400 episodes and the The Joy of Painting became and remains today, one of the most popular and well known shows on public television. Bob’s passion for teaching and inspiring others lives on today through the thousands of instructors who teach his method around the world.
And now it lives on through me. Although I haven’t touched a wet brush since.
Didn’t like the Bob Ross original, to begin with. Far too dark.
I was doing great – bright sun, blue sky, clumpy clouds – until the certified Bob Ross instructor told us to paint the trees.
Then add “just a little” water to your black paint to create branches.
My branches, pale Pterodactyls hovering behind limbless poles, wondering where to land.
So, okay, I have had more than a little trouble with “just a little” since I was, well, little.
But. to be honest, I am more your abstract expressionist. Even better, think Rothko.
Not much of a draftsman, I must admit. Not even good at tracing.
Can’t copy a straight line.
True story. Went to the local art festival, walked right to the schoolchildren’s exhibit.
Just had to know.
Turns out I am currently painting at a sixth-grade level.
Not even Advanced Placement sixth-grade.
Best thing I saw was by a third-grader – bright sun, blue sky, clumpy clouds – so there’s still hope.
Happy accidents, too.