I just saw a full episode of his show. The fuck? I’m not a painter but I’ve seen my mom paint all my life.
This motherfucker just did in 15 minutes what would take her weeks. Like???
And he did it while talking, in clean fucking strokes. So fucking fast. I saw a literal masterpiece being created in fifteen minutes from nothing. From nothing. It was a blank fucking canvas, man.
I knew of Bob Ross, but I’d never actually seen him paint. Goddamn. How did actual artists react to him? Like, how do you not feel just thoroughly outclassed.
All while this mofo is saying how easy all that he’s doing is while I know for a fact how hard it is. Like, is he just gaslighting everyone?
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Artschool dropout here. People have mixed feelings. On one hand, he taught a lot of people how to paint and (more importantly) not be afraid of paint. On the other, he didn’t challenge himself and was doing the same thing over and over, creating a lot of kitsch and commercial art.
As far as I know, he never had any long-term projects or stuff done in private. This means he plateau’d and stayed at the same skill level his entire career. Compare that to people we consider masters, like Picasso or Rembrandt or Michaelangelo. They were constantly looking for new ways to challenge themselves and trying to unlearn everything they knew to create something new. We have a lot of discoveries because of it.
Picasso invented collage and expanded our knowledge of 2D design. Rembrandt created the building blocks for Impressionism and Expressionism, while uplifting printmaking into its own artistic medium. Michaelangelo went out and practically invented new colors. Bob Ross, by comparison, didn’t do much other than show how to paint something quickly. And speed is something all artists get better at with practice.
Furthermore, some of my professors resented Ross for reinforcing realism as the only way of creating art, especially among normies. Ross didn’t do this intentionally. It was just a side effect of making landscapes easy. Keep in mind, we’re still in the Post-Modern era and a lot of my instructors were the Post-Modern rebels who suffered under their Modernist mentors. So for them, it’s frustrating trying to move art forward and have people still cling to what was already done 75 years ago. Even more so when they know the Modernists before them did put a lot of labor into their work.
Using Picasso again as an example, he’d start by drawing something realistically. Then he’d draw it again, but with less detail. And again. And again. And again. He’d get an object down to having as little detail as possible while still being recognizable as what it was supposed to represent. Then he’d compose these drawing into a painting. For Guernica, his magnum opus, he spent an entire summer doing this. There’s thousands of drawings for this one, single painting he did and it’s a huge painting (like 10 feet by 15 or some shit).
Now imagine you’re an art professor who knows this and some asshole wearing a Bob Ross shirt walks into your class and says “Picasso paints like shit.”
(I was told not to wear my Bob Ross shirt again)
Not an art student or anything, but I remember an expo of Frida Kahlo and one of the walls were a picture of like a chair and a window and surrounding the picture there were dozens of documents relating to the paint itself, like napkin sketches, a mini version just in black and white, Frida’s writings about the picture and so on. For me that I’m not an artist it showed me all the work behind that you never see, I always tough that painters just got inspired and painted in real time, when actually there’s a lot of work behind the scenes.
reinforcing realism as the only way of creating art
I see this as the big problem. I don’t think there is anything wrong with not seeking to significantly advance one’s personal artistic skill or vision beyond a plateau, but Ross did contribute to the current orthodoxy of photorealism being the highest aspiration of an artist. Unintentionally of course, but the compound effect is there. As a hobbyist artist, I often struggle with trying to escape this mindset thanks to the prevailing cultural pressure that comes from corporate and profit driven motives to create, but I can’t personally fault a Bob Ross type for enjoying remaining in certain niches (he certainly had more technical skill than I, so I figure I shouldn’t judge on that aspect at least.)
some asshole wearing a Bob Ross shirt walks into your class and says “Picasso paints like shit.”
Not every artist has the dedication or inclination to create works like Michelangelo or Picasso and that’s alright IMO, but we hate to see something like this happen lol
As a hobbyist artist, I often struggle with trying to escape this mindset thanks to the prevailing cultural pressure that comes from corporate and profit driven motives to create
I mostly do miniature painting and it’s obnoxious that we’re going through the motions of the last 500 years with no self-awareness as other miniature painters encounter problems we’ve already solved. There’s this mindset of needing to make everything as realistic as possible and miniature painters are finding out that has limits. “Blanchitsu” or “grimdark” or “INQ28” or whatever you want to call it, is miniaturists just now figuring out Baroque and Expressionism…you know…the things that influenced John Blanche. Maybe we’ll figure out Rococo and Mannerism were already a thing within the next 25 years lmao?
The major push behind it is the corporate and profit driven motivators. Hyper-realistic painting is what appeals to non-artists and the major events around miniature painting are catering to those people. Emperor forbid we see something cool entered into Crystal Brush or Golden Demon like this:
Or these:
Having to start learning from scratch as an atomized individual stuck behind tool & material prices, free time, isolation etc. sets makes that process of learning to represent one’s imagination on the medium take so much longer and feel so much more stressful than it should.
It’s actually funny; what you said is completely accurate - so many of the techniques that are artificially by medium, community, initial costs, are really just the same principles applied across mediums. The most recent progress I’ve made in improving my digital 2d technique were from applying painting methods I learned while mini painting
I had so much trouble with illumination, shadow, and reflectivity before trying different mediums and applying techniques both ways. Realism is absolutely fine to pursue, I just wish more people had the time & opportunity to express themselves without sacrifice & worry about precarity and the omnipresent pressure of profit motive 😔
When Thomas Kinkade died, I swear to God there was a celebration in the staff lounge at the art department at my school LMAO
I’d never compare Bob Ross to Kinkade…Kinkade was truly a hack and the worst aspects of capitalism finding its way into art.
I’m pro-Bob Ross because I think he helped demystify art for a lot of regular people who might have never gotten into it otherwise.
IMO one of the biggest problems with creative stuff in general is that people have this horrible idea that there are the talented and the untalented, and if you aren’t born special, you don’t get to do it and can’t ever be good at it.
In my view, having a popular mainstream figure break painting down as a learnable skill sort of helped bring it back to regular people.
I agree - I think individuals can have the potential to learn some things faster or take to them easier, but the larger part of improvement in the arts is practice rather than “talent”.
I’ve known people who struggle greatly with 3d visualization, and I personally have difficulty with perspective in 2d art; practice can help to a huge degree, along with some teaching & direction to tackle stuff that may be more fundamentally difficult to wrap one’s head around. “Demystify” is a good term for it.
His painting style is very simplistic. He used large brushes and a limited amount of color to make it easier and quicker. The point of his show was to make it easy for the non-artistic person to paint.
as others here stated, Bob Ross just did a specific type of painting well but didn’t pioneer anything: except
he is the father of ASMR. he may not have known it, but the arrangement of microphones and the use of the soft brushes, along with his cadence and personality, all laid the foundations
most people tuned into his show to relax and feel good. as a kid, my grandmother would watch because she painted landscapes but i just liked my hairs standing on end and the squishy feeling from the scratch scratch, watching a task be completed, and hearing someone softly talking positive stuff to me
and i know people will argue against this but ASMR, despite plenty not “getting it”, is a legitimate modern artform
ASMR, despite plenty not “getting it”, is a legitimate modern artform
Look, I’m not saying you’re wrong necessarily, but uh I would need some more explanation about this. Would you say that say a mukbang video is also a legitimate modern artform or is ASMR somehow qualitatively different from other modern slop content?
I might argue yes (in a way).
They are forms of expression ASMR using audio and visuals to form a unique experience. Maybe not a mukbang… not too familiar with that. I would clarify that ASMR may be a medium of artistic expression.
In a similar way, personifying animals in furry art can be a genre or medium, and I still wouldn’t call MS Paint Sonic Inflation Pornography “high art”.
Those are just my thoughts. I’m wary of gatekeeping artistic expression, and think “cringe” things are necessary for artistic expression to bloom. But maybe that’s just from my own experiences of learning how to draw, and making a lot of “bad” drawings in the process.
I still wouldn’t call MS Paint Sonic Inflation Pornography “high art”
I guess I’ll just have to hang onto all my challenging outsider art the next time you need to knock a million off your tax bill, then, philistine.
Hahahaha! How about a charity auction gala?
i know nothing about mukbang so i can’t comment on that
but there are plenty of ASMR “slop” artists trying to draw engagement just like there is plenty of corporate “slop” art. but many of the early artists as well as some unknown percentage do masterful set design, stories, roleplays, characters, worldbuilding, audio design, and essentially create immersive short films or aural/visual experiences that go far beyond someone just making mouth noises into a microphone
off the top of my head, and i’m sure others can add more, some prime examples would be Goodnight Moon and Dreamscape ASMR for storytelling. Ardra -ASMR would be a good example of immersion, especially her later works
like EVERYTHING in this hellscape capitalism is perverting the shit out of it and it will ABSOLUTELY die as an artform and become pure slop
Wow interesting. I really had no idea about any of this
i wish i could go more in depth. i get a bit passionate because it really helps with my anxiety and I am one of the rare people that experienced the whole “tingles” thing since I was a child
i only watch femme presenting artists so i can’t speak for the male presenting but i’m happy some of these super talented artists found a niche and a way to make a living
sorry hope i didn’t seem too boomer-style upset
it’s not at you
No not at all! I appreciate that I learned about a whole new genre
I am one of the rare people that experienced the whole “tingles” thing since I was a child
Frisson?
Frisson is distinct from ASMR but believed to be closely related
Frisson is purely an auditory phenomenon while ASMR tends to be primarily visual
there’s been only a few studies and some hypothesis about ASMR but the best one is that it is more tied to primate grooming behavior and mirror neurons
for example, when i was in elementary school watching girls brush each other’s hair made me feel like fingers were going through my own. i felt everything i saw. i just thought it was normal didn’t know it was ASMR
i also have a personal theory that it’s more common in AFAB cis/enby as well as transfemmes. like estrogen enhances it. THC does as well, at least for me
Bob Ross is the perfect Sunday painter.
No real hate from me though, I don’t think he had many pretentions about being Avant garde or whatever, he just liked making his simple, pretty, little paintings and that was enough. However if someone was interested in learning about art, I would recommend Ross last even when it comes to landscape painting.
A side note, but Ross has a very underexamined view of landscape as a subject. These are postcards, but not much else. They do not engage with the history or problematics of landscape/painting, something which many art critics have written about even from a Marxist standpoint. It is art without history, which is not very interesting in the long run.
“Here’s a happy little tree performing a happy little dialectical analysis on the bourgeois character of this happy little cloud exerting its state-sanctioned monopoly on violence over the top of this happy little proletarian mountaintop…”
I’d watch this
the style he’s painting in is partially designed for speed. according to wikipedia he took the style and the show idea from Bill Alexander’s The Magic of Oil Painting
William alexander was pretty amazing, screaming about the hammer of thor while aggressively painting is such a mood.
I hadn’t heard of this show. It’s really interesting seeing the similarities and contrasts between these two. On the one hand, it’s exactly the same format. On the other hand, Bill Alexander’s delivery is so different from Bob Ross, that it seems almost in a different category.
No I don’t think he was gaslighting everyone…I don’t know too much about his personal life so if he like murdered someone then let me know lol but otherwise he seems like he genuinely wanted to bring calmness and good vibes to people’s lives. Like if many people wanted to paint but just thought they couldn’t, I think he was saying hey once you get the hang of this (particular efficient way of painting), it’s not so hard and anyone can do it. Seems like a really inclusive dude. I loved watching him a few years ago
Pretty sure every episode required 3 completed paintings. He painted one off camera to use as reference, and then would paint two copies during the filming of the show. Guy loved to paint.
I’ve legit actually followed along on a couple paintings after getting some basic kit oil. I would have to pause a lot, but following the technique actually helped me get some nice results. I know it’s kitsch, but that’s not the point. He enjoyed what he did and he wanted other people to be able to get in to it, enjoy it, and connect with other’s using art. I had always gotten the impression that he saw himself as a stepping stone to people pursuing artistic expression overall. He was also the original ASMR. As far as his technique, he honed it while in the Air Force and stationed in Alaska (painting what he saw around him of course), and further polished it when he got out and did art full time. If you do stuff like this day in and day out for years, you’ll get fast too. He also did a lot of shortcuts as others have said. Personally, I think he was great for the simplicity and accessibility. I’ve taken what I learned painting with oil and been able to use similar/modified techniques to do some really cool stuff with acrylic, finishing wood, painting houses, pottery painting, arranging composition, color mixing, and even photography. I pay attention to details and it honestly has helped make any of my artistic pursuits more enjoyable.
This thread, summarized:
“No hate to Bob Ross, but dude was a fucking hack”
“Bob Ross paintings are the three-chord butt rock of landscape painting”
Not everyone can paint, actually. That’s the problem with him.
(it me, I can’t paint)
i’m pissed off he never painted any smut. what the hell bob?
Bob would practice each painting 3-4 times before each show. He was crazy fast and achieved that level of speed by rehearsing a few times before filming. Also, his style very often was a bit repetitive, so I’m sure that helped - just sort of mixing and matching familiar elements. Even with rehearsing and the paintings being similar, though, he was crazy fast and consistent.
