Oookay. I found a plastic palette knife that actually was the right shape and had some matte medium to thin some white acrylic, so decided to give the Bob Ross method a try.

It wasn’t bad… I made a passable painting (which does NOT reflect on my skills) but believe me when I say you do need to use the materials he says to.

The wet base wasn’t as much of a problem as expected. I used heaps of medium with a little titanium white and applied it excessively as a base because I knew of the tendency of boards to absorb moisture and acrylic to dry very fast. Thankfully it was enough.

Blending was hard. Very streaky, brushstrokes galore, I had to blend very gently to minimise them. Especially with synthetic brushes. Many hairs and pieces of dirt to pick off with the corner of the brush.

The clouds ended up blobby and smeary cotton balls because the paint was too thin and wet.

Again, the paint was too thin and wet to ‘break’ on the highlights and give the desired texture. As you can see I gave up halfway.

I couldn’t get nicely detailed trees or give the highlights on the trees enough definition because it was hard to get the brush dry enough to give thin clumps of bristles with concentrated pigment. I gave up.

There is a reason Bob Ross beats his paintbrushes so viciously. It’s because of the moisture that is so hard to completely get out and will badly mess with your painting.

Wayward drips removed paint from the sky. And as I tried to paint the ground and then to highlight the ground, instead of applying paint the brush removed the paint beneath it. I blobbed brown on to get the dirt down but had to do the same for the highlights because the alternative was the brush taking off everything beneath it.

I almost didn’t want to post this because of embarrassment but wanted to show what happens when you use inappropriate materials.

I didn’t finish this so much as give up in disgust. I hate the clouds the most. Trust me if I had had thick dry pigment they would have looked very different.

Also MELBCAT STEPPED ON THE PAINT PALETTE

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