As a child, my first art teacher was Bob Ross. I remember watching PBS with my dad and waiting for Bob to create his magic on TV. My dad’s favorite part was when Bob would “beat the devil” out of his brushes. My favorite was that even as a child, I felt like painting was something I could do, too.
My parents always encouraged my creative side, and my dad brought home my first set of painting supplies when I was 10 years old. He found them in an old colleague’s basement he was helping to clean out. The find was solid gold: a Bob Ross starter set complete with brushes, paints, mediums, and solvent. I was the first of my friends who was able to play with such permanent paint, and I loved playing with paint on cheap canvas, organizing my supplies and dreaming of painting on TV.
As I got older, I realized that painting on TV wasn’t necessarily a career path I could pursue, but my love of Bob never waned, even through college and my more “formal” training.
Over the course of 2020, I found a channel that airs old episodes of the Joy of Painting, and that became my morning routine with my coffee before logging into my actual job. My husband is a pretty intuitive gift giver, and he saw how my eyes lit up when spending time with Bob. He found a virtual class and surprised me for my birthday: an all-day Bob Ross painting class with a local instructor.
What I love about Bob is his philosophy on painting. Painting is fun, and anyone can learn to do it. Not everyone wants to, and there is certainly some natural aptitude involved, but if you want to pick up paints and spend an afternoon playing, with a few tools and techniques, anyone can create a nice picture.
My afternoon class was a blast, and I ended up with a painting that’s pretty and reminds me of Bob’s style in all the right ways.
We recreated a Bob Ross painting, and my version only uses 4 colors: black, white, prussian blue, and cadmium red. It’s amazing what so little color can produce!
