Loving & Hating Bob Ross
Saturday February 28, 2009
My Bob Ross blog from a couple of years is again getting love/hate comments. Gotta say this for Bob Ross, he may have died years ago but he makes people very passionate about painting! That so can't be a bad thing, even if you think his painting is bad.
"I LOVE Bob Ross for making it easy to start painting in oils. I was gutted when I found out he died before I’d heard of him, but I watch him paint every day now. It is wonderful. The only bit I dread is when he says: 'let's go crazy now', but it always works! There is no reason to knock him..." -- Richard Madgin• Who was Bob Ross Anyway? (Plus the poll for voting about loving or hating his style)
Comments
As an artist, I have mixed feelings about Bob Ross. I don’t care for his style. However, he has helped a lot of people discover their ability to paint by demystifying the process. He has inspired a lot of people who never would have picked up a paint brush to find and enjoy the creativity within themselves. That can’t be a bad thing.
I watched Bob Ross for years, and he taught me a lot about painting, and I continue to work with oils.
Though some are very critical of Bob Ross, even to the point of saying “he wasnt an artist”, I still received inspiration to paint.
Though I never fully adopted his style of painting, I did learn a lot from his techniques. And we must keep in mind, he did paintings in about 28 minutes. Try that yourself, and then tell me he wasnt an artist.
Im sure, given more time, or working at home Bob accomplished many better paintings.
Bob Ross and a Canadian by the name of ED Martynik, who painted in the style of Bob, where the two who got me started in painting. After a heart attack and stroke I am left with very shake hands,and found that I could copy this style, but it lacks definition and detail. I am hoping as time goes on that I will develop my own style. It is his kind of painting and enthusiasm that get people interested in the arts and take the mystery out. If they have the interest and the will, then they develop their own style and move on from the start that Bob and ED and all the others of the Bob Ross group have given them, if not they get to play at painting and enjoy themselves.
I despised Bob Ross because he was a fraud who tried to pretend he invented the wet on wet technique. In reality it was invented by a wonderful man named William Alexander who taught Bob to paint. Bill was an incredibly kind, passionate, talented man who wanted to share his great love of painting with amateurs to encourage them to follow their dreams. Bob even stole his phrases like “happy trees” but when Bill said it, it rang with love for nature and the wonder of creating it on canvas. Bill was vibrant, alive, so full of passion you were caught up by it, too. Bob was a wimpy, pale,colorless, tasteless fraud and it’s time someone spoke the truth about him. I loved Bill, along with millions of others who miss him, too.
Neither William Alexander nor Bob Ross invented or discovered wet-on-wet oil painting. It’s a technique as old as old painting itself, predating both of them by centuries.
Neither Alexander or Ross said they invented it. They simply helped people discover painting.
Accept them for what they were, and forgive them for what they were not.
They were both commercial artists who managed to make a living through their art, and it was art. It brought a lot of joy and enrichment to countless lives. That they made money at it,
Well, so did Rubens and a host of other painters through the centuries whose names we don’t know.
Yes, they marketed their own brands, but no one was forced to buy it or into them. they both brought their own human uniqueness to what they were doing.
That is all they claimed to do.
O.K. Bob was very cheesy.A product of the ‘Flower Power 60’s ‘but you can’t deny his talent for creating a scene in minutes. I wouldn’t particularly want them on my wall, but obviously loads of people did! What’s wrong with that? He certainly had an eye for landscape balance and an ability to paint well,using the wet on wet method. So leave old Bob alone and accept him for what he was and did!
I have been someone who always felt I had talent, but was never able to bring it out so others could see it. I was a lousy self taght guitar player. I could never get over the hump, so to speak, and be concidered anything but a ordinary musician. I watched Bob Ross on TV for years. I always said I could do that, but never tried. I finally decided that I needed some peace in my life. I looked up a Bob Ross instructor and began to paint. My first painting I ever did was completed in two and a half hours. The instructor did not put her brush to my painting. I did it all myself. I found that I did have a talent for painting, especially the Bob Ross method. The person I gave it to was asked if she would concider selling the painting when she went to purchase a frame at the frame shop. I now have every book, dvd, and tool that Bob Ross offers. I start my journey into the painting world November 3, 2009. I will go through all three weeks of the landscape school and I will become a Bob Ross advocate to all I know as well as an instructor. I thank Bob for encouraging me to try, even after his death. Personally, I am not some fly by night shister. I have made a good living all of my life and raised my children to be good adults. I was a combat Marine in Vietnam, so I am definately not a wimp. I find that Bob has given me the ability to find peace in my life for the first time. I truely believe that art, in any form, can do exactly what Bob says it can. I can create the world that I want everytime I paint.
I don’t think there is any reason for anyone to hate Bob Ross, and those of you that feel so passionate about despising him probably need to take an anger management class. I’m really bothered by people that trash artists and are all “holier than thou” because they don’t appreciate that kind of art. I think Pollock sucked, his stuff looks like a 5 year old did it to me, but it doesn’t me he wasn’t an artist, and it doesn’t mean there weren’t so many people that were moved by his work. The definition of art isn’t “something I like”, according to my dictionary it’s “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.” Even my cruddy paintings fall in that catagory. Bob Ross may have simplified techniques that when left complicated result in different final products, but simple isn’t bad. I think his art is very soothing and pleasant to look at.
And as for him stealing from William Alexander, I don’t think you can steal painting techniques, considering they aren’t copyrighted nor do they belong to anyone. It’s like saying that your guitar instructor stole his teaching methods from you dad. Bob Ross didn’t make any grandiose claims about discovering wet on wet, he, like his teacher, just wanted to bring painting to the world for everyone to enjoy. Not liking his art is one thing, but hating a man like that is ludicrous.
I have yet to find a painter from whom I can’t learn something.
For me, that’s ’nuff said.
I received a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Art but from Alexander and then Ross I learned techniques I never learned in college. I also feel inspired as many other viewers obviously do too, when I watch Joy of Painting. I also like to watch Jerry Yarnell who has a different slower technique.