Goal Met – Paint Bob Ross Painting

Now this may, on its head, seem like an odd goal. But I’ve always wanted to do this and part of this 50 for 50 thing was to realize this dreams and goals that have been subsided by bigger things in life.

I need to preface this by telling a story. My mother was a painter – she used it as therapy after she had a stroke and she’s the one who taught me how to draw and paint and encouraged me to create and explore art.  One thing I knew each week was that Bob Ross would be on the TV when I got home from school and we’d watch it together and I would be absolutely fascinated how he’d just create a stunning landscape out of nothing – just slapping paint on the canvas and *bam* clouds! Pallete knife? *bam* mountains.. It was like magic.

Even at that young age I wanted to try, but we didn’t have oil paints and the things we needed so I kind of just shelved the idea but I still watched the show each week with my mom and tried to guess what Bob would be up to that week.

I didn’t think about it for a while until I was looking at something else online and saw that they released a bunch of Bob Ross videos onto YouTube and I was immediately taken back to that 1980’s couch (you know the one – we all had it in fact if I googled 1980’s couch it’s the FIRST RESULT) eating my after school snack and watching bob on the ol’ 32 inch color TV

I knew I wanted to try to recreate a Bob Ross painting and this goal series seemed like a good place to make that happen. I had some canvas and brushes and some oil paints so all I needed was the ‘magic white’ and a few colors I was missing and I followed along with a Youtube tutorial and I learned very quickly that Bob Ross makes it look easy, but it isn’t. I struggled so much with the mountains that they look terrible but when I tried to fix them they ended up looking worse than when that one lady ‘fixed’ that Jesus painting

The rest of the painting wasn’t too bad actually – I had to pause and rewind frequently but I managed to get most of the process down. Other than the horrid mountains, the rest of it was adequate.

But you know what Bob ross would say?

Thanks Bob – I think I’m going to try again but do some research first – maybe watch some tutorials or something that can give me more pointers but I really enjoyed the experience of painting this and will definitely try a different one