I was in a room on the side of a big-box craft store in the suburbs north of Dallas, about to start a class taught by John Fowler, a Bob Ross–certified instructor-which means that he spent three weeks in Florida learning the wet-on-wet painting technique Ross employed on television. Matt Ozug edited the audio story.To hear more feature stories, get the Audm iPhone app. He reminds people that the dark is there for a reason, and helps them find the light when they need it. Maybe what's made Bob Ross so everlasting is really that simple.
Then he turns back to his painting, instructing viewers on the next step. He looks at the camera and quietly says, "I'm waiting on the good times now." Gotta have a little sadness once in a while so you know when the good times come." If you have dark on dark, you basically have nothing," he practically whispers, his brush tapping rhythmically on the canvas. If you have light on light, you have nothing. Gotta have opposites, dark and light, light and dark, continually in painting. He loads his brush up with a dark mixture of paint and starts to dab it all across the bottom of the mountains.ĭon't worry, he tells viewers, I'm only adding this dark for contrast. In the episode, he's painting a scene with a lake resting between two majestic mountains. One that pops up often is from an episode that Ross taped in 1992, after his wife, Jane, died from cancer. These sprinkles of wisdom have lived on in quote books and Internet memes. Ross himself was surprisingly philosophical during the show, often casually whispering big ideas to viewers before returning to his instruction. And he's basically saying, 'And then we'll do another happy little accident tomorrow.'" And at the end of the session, it's done. "And then he adds a beautiful bit at the end: You can do this, too," Saltz says. Instead, he demystified the process for viewers in each episode, creating one landscape, from start to finish: a blank canvas transformed before their eyes. There was no irony, and the closest thing to a gimmick was a pet squirrel named Peapod he would occasionally bottle feed on screen. but Bob Ross breaks down painting into its component parts," he says. "People think that he's just kitsch and cute and a little Buddha and fun happy little accidents. Ross captivated and connected with audiences, but he did much more. "It's you alone in your dorky studio in your apartment, wearing an old shirt, and just working." "Once you set eyes on that guy you're kinda locked in for 25 minutes," he says, referring to the length of an episode.
Jerry Saltz, senior art critic at New York magazine, says that was one of the things that made Ross great. He could be wonderfully weird and deeply emotional. Over 31 seasons and more than 400 episodes, Ross became known for his hushed, soothing tones, big bushy hair, vivid landscapes and "happy little trees."īob Ross made viewers want to lean in closer to the screen so they didn't miss anything.
#Corel painter bob ross tv#
Remember, trees have depth to them!" she reminds the class.īut this is no ordinary painting lesson: The students have come to Purcellville, Va., from as far away as Texas to learn to paint in the distinctive style and palette of Bob Ross, the Air Force sergeant-turned-painter who rose to public media fame in the 1980s and '90s with his TV show The Joy of Painting. "And think tree! Don't just go tap, tap, tap any old place. They're dabbing paintbrushes loaded with dark green paint along the edge of a lake, the beginnings of a glowing sunset in the background. On a recent Friday afternoon, Sandra Hill leads a painting class at an arts center nestled amid rolling Virginia hills, about an hour and a half drive northwest of Washington, D.C.Įach of the 10 adult students has a canvas balanced on an easel in front of them. Hill is one of more than 3,000 people certified to teach the Bob Ross wet-on-wet painting technique.
Sandra Hill offers guidance to Mark Scheiffley during a Bob Ross painting class at the Franklin Parks Art Center in Purcellville, Va., on Sept.
0 kommentar(er)
