Thursday, August 26, 2010

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.

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