The Bob Ross Experience

Are you talentless when it comes to artistic endeavors? Do you quake at the thought of creating something nice to look at? Well I felt that way for most of my life. Math, easy. Computers, cake. Science, bring it on. But when art class rolled around, I was like a fish swimming up to a shark.
One man made painting look easy every weekday morning on the local PBS station in Dallas. That man was Bob Ross. Everyone knows his "happy little trees" but did you ever really contemplate his show? Here's a guy that produces a entire painting in a half hour. A half hour! And he makes it look so easy. Well, this guy has been trained, right? Spent years perfecting his method of painting. True true, but the simplicity with which he creates twinges the creative juices in all of us and give us that, "I could do that," moment.

It was because of this moment that I was intrigued the first time I saw mention of a Bob Ross painting class. This was a couple of years ago and although I was very interested, it just never materialized in my schedule. Either that, or I was afraid I would be the first person to fail at making a "pond that would be our little secret." Then Christmas 2009 rolled around and my wonderful wife got me a hand made certificate for one Bob Ross painting class. I just needed to pick a day. I was so excited because now I had no excuse not to attend. The day I picked was yesterday....

Class started at 12:30 at the Arvada (Senior Citizens) Recreational Center on Wadsworth and 68th. I didn't need to bring anything with me except 5 dollars and my creativity. Well, I had the 5 dollars but who knows about the latter. There were five people in the class including myself. We all got set up at our easel and the instructor got us started. The Bob Ross method is a step by step process of creating the scene. "Wet on wet" as it is called refers to applying wet paint directly on top of other wet paint. In fact we were told that our paintings would not be dry to the touch for a week and not fully cured until about 6 months. Our painting was a scene with mountains, a lake and a waterfall. Our first step was to cover the canvas in white. This helps make a foundation and keeps the colors true to their hues. Next was sky and water. Once we had that, we added clouds and then the shapes of our mountains. So far we just used a two inch brush, a one inch brush, the fan brush and that nifty blade that Bob sports. In fact, these would be all the tools we would end up using the entire class. ( I was very proud of my clouds by the way, best in the class I think). It was fun to see that all the students paintings were similar but each unique. Here's mine at this point.  

Once we had this step finished, we added the snow to the sunny side of the mountains, added the shadow to the dark side and picked which were in the background and which were in the foreground. Step by step we created real images out of oil paints. Here's my next picture.

Once this was done, we start to add hills in front of the mountains and a shoreline for our lake. We finally added some happy little trees on the shore off in the distance (these happy little trees were easy). We added a waterfall in the foreground, and then created some land to hold back the water before it spilled into the river rushing by. Lastly we added to more trees in the foreground (much more difficult than Bob makes it seem) and some bushes and flowers. And Voila! your finished portrait.

I was more than impressed with my work and think it turned out great. I'm still a little shocked that I created this. I realize that I had an instructor and was pretty much recreating something that had already been done, but to quote my instructor, whom I'm sure was quoting Bob, "You make this painting your own little world, and you get to control everything about it. Make it whatever you want."  I feel like I did and I really enjoyed this experience. Am I going to quit my job and become a painter? Heck no. But I may just take another one of these classes sometime to add to my gallery.