Winter Glory

I have been on quite the hiatus and neglecting my Bob Ross lessons. “Funemployment” was much shorter than expected. In fact, I never actually qualified for payments. I left for Anchorage on August 16^th and on September 16^th I started as an associate at one of the oldest and more prestigious law firms in town (hereinafter “The Firm”). One face to face interview and I was hired. I never knew I was so employable. Also, quite honestly, I never saw “law firm” in my future. As the liberal, artsy, crunchy hippie, the corporate world did not appeal to me. I figured I should try it before I knock it, so here I am. For the past month I have been sitting in my penthouse office that stares out at the Chugiak Range, working my butt off defending insurance companies and wrongfully discharged employees.

Most surprisingly, I love it. Absolutely love it. I have responsibility. I work with great, experienced professionals and deal with really interesting topics and cases. Possibly the best part is that I am not working 80 hour weeks. The Firm really respects personal time and as one of the partners said during my interview “you can only look at those mountains for 9 hours before you have to get out in them.” They meant it.

That is the other reason for the hiatus. This is my first fall in Anchorage and it is amazing. It has been dry and beautiful, as opposed to summer which I heard was wet and more wet. The mountains right now are an amazing mix of yellow and crimson with white termination dust topped peaks. I have been out ptarmigan hunting, hiking, jogging and enjoying the sights. I think it will be good inspiration for painting during the cold winter months.

However, after six weeks of exercise and lawyering my right brain was screaming for attention and I made it a goal to paint this weekend. I resisted the urge to hit up the bars so I would be energetic and clear headed for the latest lesson. I of course broke that promise because my buddies and I went on an epic ptarmigan hunt up Turnagain Pass which involved me taking a 40 foot slide down a steep mossy bank and having to grab a bush to keep from going 100 more feet. That deserved a couple beers once I got home.

I did take it semi easy and woke up early Sunday morning to head to Michaels for more titanium white and some extra brushes. Bob recommends having multiple 1 and 2 inch and fan brushes so I followed his advice. Big mistake going to Michaels though.. Michaels overcharges like crazy. If you want to do the Bob Ross method, mail-order supplies from Dick Blick. They are the best art supply store hands down with super fast shipping and you spend half the money.

I got home, broke out the supplies, turned on the DVD and was ready to paint “Winter Glory.” It was a very white snow scene and it stunk. Seriously, on ice. I totally hate it.

It was my junior curse. Third tries are usually bad. How many great bands put out a great debut album, a stellar second album and a throwaway third album? You get too experimental trying to find your voice and just blow it. Well “Winter Glory” is my throwaway. As much as I was dissatisfied with the first two, they were on the whole good. Not so much here.

Everything that could go wrong did. My background colors and sun didn’t come out right. My mountains look like lumps of dirt. The pink and blue tinted snow colors were too dark and didn’t stick and break correctly on them. I was left with patriotic looking humps. My background banks were too steep and did not have good form. My evergreens were blobs and I, for some unknown reason, stuck the shading on the wrong side of the tree. My reflections barely reflect. You get the point.

The big problem again is that I am still learning the paints, e.g. how to mix them, how to load the brush and how thick to put them on. Bob does it with such ease. He mixes the paint in a perfect brush-width size area and taps the paint into the bristles ever so perfectly. I, on the other hand, end up with a sloppy pallet full of wasted paint mashed into indiscernible colors and slathered three inches up the stem of the brush.

But, as Bob said this lesson, “You can’t have light without dark. You have to have bad days so you know when you have good days.”** Bob, of course, is right. I need to have a bad painting so when the next one comes out good, I will know it. Thus, I’m not deterred. In fact, I am now more determined than ever to master wet on wet oil painting. I had a set back and am ready to move on to bigger and happier clouds. I think this weekend I am going to try to knock out another lesson – if I have spare time while working on my cardboard robot Halloween costume. Until next time, happy painting and God bless.

**Bob also said “only do one bush at a time” which I thought was equally prophetic and applicable to life.

Painting #2: Peace Offerings of Summer

Painting #1: Mountain Summit

The Bob Ross quickening has commenced. After picking up odorless thinner, a container – which finding a sealable container is harder than you would expect - and a garbage can for the beater rack, I attempted my first wet-on-wet oil painting. Well, first I watched the introductory video where Bob Ross, in his soothing voice, explains the different tools and paints and basically hawks his wears. Then it was the half hour episode Mountain Summit.

I have mixed feelings on the results. Objectively, the painting isn’t bad – you can tell it is trees and water with a mountain in the background – but as with every project I do, I am not satisfied. The colors are not as vibrant as Bob’s are, nor do my clouds, trees and bushes have much form.

My major obstacle is learning the materials. The Bob Ross method claims to let you see quick results and my first painting was decent, but I have to get to know the tools more confidently. The wet-on-wet method is based on blending small amounts of wet paint on the canvas. The canvas is first covered in a thin layer of very oily paint, aptly named liquid white, liquid black or liquid clear. When the thicker colors are applied it blends to vibrant colors for the background, water and reflection. Thicker paint is then applied as a dark shadow color. Thinner bright paints which stick to the thick darker colors are applied over the shadow color making the bushes, trees and mountains.

This method requires a lot of blending and a soft touch. When Bob Ross says “pretend you’re a whisper” he’s not joking (or just talking stoner). I am used to using acrylics and gobbing on thick paint. Fluffing the base of the mountains and the clouds damn near destroyed them and crisscross brushstrokes are also tougher to master than you would think.

My other problem was that I think I used too much liquid white. Thus after applying the background pthalo blue mixed with black, the titanium white for the clouds did not stick and my clouds blended into the sky. Also the colors of my mountain and trees did not stick well to the canvas. I had to gob it on so when I blended out my mountains they spread and I was left with a lot of mountains in the background. When I went to put the bright colors on my trees and shrubbery, they also didn’t stick and I started to make mud. I realized that adding liquid white to the color thinned it out enough to stick so my last batch of shrubs and trees (in the foreground) are much better.

The pine trees that Bob paints so easily are by far my biggest challenge. Loading the right amount of paint onto the fan brush and using just the corner went beyond me. The tree color also had trouble sticking on the canvas which combined with even worse brush control left them too fat and not cone shaped enough.

On the good side, I think my mountains do look alright, even if they are kind of big. The pallet knife makes snow very well and I even made a smaller mountain in front. I want to perfect mountains and work on making grass and tundra come up them halfway so they more closely resemble the mountains around here.

Overall it was a valiant first effort. I have nine one hour instructional videos left. I’m not sure what the extra half hour is going to bring, but I can use all the tips I can get. I am also hoping the hour long format will be slower. Bob races through his paintings because he can. I had to keep the remote by my side to pause and rewind. As I said, it was an encouraging first attempt. I am still a long way away from reaching Bob’s painting Zen, but then again the Dahli Lama wasn’t trained in a day either.

Still waiting to start.

I'm such a tease. I put up this blog and haven't begun yet. I want start this project, but right now it is a waiting game for the 10 DVD box set. I ordered it from Amazon and apparently the seller is shipping it via mule powered barge. I have a few final supplies to procure as well, e.g. a garbage can for the beater rack so I can “beat the devil” out of my brushes, odorless thinner which some asinine government agency says is hazmat and thus cannot be shipped to Anchorage, and canvases which I neglected to mailorder. Having found out Blaine’s Art Supplies where I planned to purchase canvases and thinner is moving and not open, I am going to have to shop around town or mailorder canvases. There has to be in AC Moore or Michaels hidden somewhere in this city.

However, as for good news, when I got in to my new place two days ago most of my supplies were waiting for me. Because I am not half-assing this, I wanted the full range of supplies. If a painting calls for yellow ochre, I wanted to be sure I had it. For such an egalitarian painter, Bob Ross’ site is quite expensive for his own gear. Luckily, being a bit of an artist already, I knew where to look – Dick Blick, the finest art supply mailorder business around. For a fraction of the price I purchased the following starter supplies:

Melamine Palette
Bamboo Lyre Easel

1-inch Landscape Brush
2-inch Background Brush
1-inch Round Foliage Brush
2-inch Soft Blender Brush
Halfsize Round Brush
1-inch Oval Brush
#3 Fan Blender Brush
#6 Fan Blender Brush
#2 Script Liner Brush
#6 Bristle Filbert Brush
Painting Knife #5
Painting Knife #10

Liquid Black, 8 oz.
Liquid Clear, 8 oz.
Liquid White, 8 oz.

Alizarin Crimson
Bright Red
Cadmium Yellow
Dark Sienna
Indian Yellow
Midnight Black
Mountain Mixture
Phthalo Blue
Phthalo Green
Prussian Blue
Sap Green
Titanium White
Van Dyke Brown
Yellow Ochre

Bob Ross Brush Beater Rack
Bob Ross Screen

For now I wait. I hope to get out hiking and ptarmigan hunting in the mountains this weekend for a bit of inspiration. I am really excited to do this. I forgot how hard it is to fill up a day when you are unemployed. You can only spend so much time surfing the internet, jogging and watching Netflix. My truck still not being here is also a pain. At least then I could travel around site seeing or buying craigslist furniture for the apartment. See the other blog for the wonders of unemployment. Until then, keep checking back. Happy little clouds will be coming.

The Journey Begins

In May of 2009, with a law degree in hand, I left the East Coast and moved to Alaska on a boy becomes a man, self-discovery soul sojourn. Through a twist of events, I ended up in Nome for a yearlong clerkship with the Superior Court. Nome’s long winters and off-the-road system solitude was the perfect setting for a life vacation, where I could hide out and make art while reflecting on the past three years of seemingly endless studying and stress induced booze and sex.

I refer to my time in Nome as my own seven years in Tibet. I spent a lot of time pondering what I wanted out of life and how I was going to go about getting it. Most of this was done through pot and samurai movies, long and frequent letters back and forth to a pen pal, and quite a few “self-help” books. Mind you, these were not the bullshit, Purpose Driven Life, Tony Robbins, or get rich quick books, but rather about the thought process of a successful person. Think and Grow Rich, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and One Bullet Away: The Making of Marine Officer were three of my favorites. Self-improvement has become my focus.

I recently read a piece in Wired magazine by Matthew Honan about the proliferation of immersive, first-person gimmick books, otherwise known as stunt books. These are titles like Julie/Julia, where a young woman cooks her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking or Just Do It, where a 14-year married couple has sex every day for 101 days. For you television watchers, think Morgan Spurlock’s 30 Days. People love these stunts and occasionally there is actually a point to them. That is that the person doing the stunt may actually learn something about himself and come out a better person.

On a recent lazy Saturday, I popped in a dvd containing series 23 of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross that I had procured from the internet. Everybody knows Bob Ross as the happy clouds guy. His soothing voice, love of squirrels and seemingly superhuman ability to paint a landscape in 28 minutes is legendary. However, it is his theories on art and life snuck in between directions to gently tap the ½ inch round brush into cad yellow that I find amazing.

Bob Ross is an egalitarian, populist painter. He wants everybody to paint. For him, there is absolutely no pretention or arrogance to art. Bob Ross wants everybody to escape into pure right brain activity – submersion into a world of art. There are no mistakes in Bob Ross’ world, only “happy accidents.” There is nothing to pull you out of the zone. He wants to remove all worries, troubles and stress when painting. It is escapism.

I want that escapism. My forays into art has always been heavily influenced by graphic design or craft oriented. My love, screen printing, is a lot of choosing and placing fonts and manipulating images, very left brain. My painting is very pop art inspired: precise lines, bold colors and it is all basically laid out before hand. Likewise, jewelry making, sculpting and illustrated paper projects are planned works. None fully immerse me into world of pure creation.

Therefore, I am trying Bob Ross’ method. And it is a method, not a style. It is a tool to achieve painting nirvana. Watching the show, it is clear that Bob Ross knows his materials very well. He knows the dryness of his paints, what happens when he mixes them, and how they react when put on canvas. By perfecting the method, your artistic mind is allowed uninterrupted freedom to express itself.

We will see what happens. The worst result is that I find out that landscape painting is not for me. Perhaps I will be good. Alaska needs to be painted. The tundra is begging for it. And let’s face it, Bob teaches you how to paint Alaska. The majority of his paintings come straight from the time he spent up here while in the Air Force. Yes, Bob was a military man for 10 years. Also, I want to paint for the sake of art, but I can’t help but think that if you were to slap a few moose, musk ox or fishermen in his paintings they would sell like hotcakes to the summer tourists on 4th St. Perhaps, Bob Ross will make me a rich man.

The Bob Ross method needs to tested and documented. I like writing and am really getting into this blogging thing so I am taking on that task. I don’t know if learning to paint will be as enthralling or life changing as other self-experiments. I don’t know if anybody cares that I am doing this or will read this blog. All I know is that this blog will force me to stick with the program. I often fizzle out on projects so to counter that I am posting pictures and updates on my progress. I hope you enjoy my journey into The Joy of Painting.