Winter Mist - Bob Ross in Acrylic 1-4 - #30in30 - 3

While Bob paints he throws out nuggets of wisdom about painting and life in general. He constantly encourages his viewers to give things a go. He knew many would be afraid to pick up a brush, but his show was entertaining even if you just watched and listened.

Bob said he learned from William Alexander who was an earlier TV painting instructor. Prior to studying Bills technique, Bob was a painstakingly slow traditional landscape painter who spent days getting a cloud or a tree perfect. Bobs show was half an hour, and in that time he completed a painting live from start to finish. Today, with the benefit of new technology, we can stop, start, rewind and fast forward until we feel comfortable, but early students had to go at Bobs pace. Bob soon brought out videos, but video players were expensive, so often a student had to wait for re-runs. How lucky we are!

I keep forgetting to time myself, but I think with stops and replays, I’m completing each painting in about two hours. That doesn’t include prep and varnish, but nevertheless that’s pretty fast for me.

I think one of Bobs secrets is the limited 8 folor palette he works with. I find that working with acrylic paint, changes things somewhat: Prussian Blue is dull and cool and I would like a warm blue like phthalocyanine blue (red shade), or light blue permanent. Also, perhaps it’s because I’m using hues, but I find it difficult to mix a really dark color for the shadows with Bobs palette and would like a more opaque deep red to mix deep purple and green/red blacks. I admit that the Van Dyck brown I’m using is not well pigmented, so perhaps I can find a more opaque brand to enhance the darks.

In this painting I did cooy Bob’s crazy cliff on the left, and on reflection its OK, but I may modify it in time. It does add an element of surprise and curiosity though.

Winter Mist Bob Ross Series 1 Episode 4 

I forgot to post so I ended up at #85 on the challenge. 
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