I learned to paint by watching Bob Ross videos, and so did my girlfriend! It's incredible how much joy painting has brought me since I began. I started with oils, the same Bob Ross paints and brushes and liquid white and all that, and I stayed with them for quite some time as I learned. Eventually, I began experimenting with acrylics, which quickly became my preferred medium. I learned so much with acrylics and online tutorials as I sought out greater skill and understanding. I learned more about color mixing and stopped relying on premixed colors, and the results improved my color harmony so much. I gravitated towards finer and finer detail, and smaller canvases. I love fine details and I love nature themes in all of my arts. I also picked up watercolor painting, specifically to help myself be more comfortable with a looser style and spontaneous or unexpected things in my painting. It is also possible to do fine detail in watercolor, of course, but much of the nature of the medium is fluidity and the beauty of unexpected interactions. And everything I have tried and experimented with has helped me learn and grow.
I do a lot of different crafts and arts, and nature is a big theme in everything I touch, whether it's painting, drawing, photography, embroidery, or poetry. Bob started me off with permission to be a beginner, to have fun with learning and experimentation and to treat it as play, not something to succeed or fail at. And that has become a critical part of my own art philosophy, as well as with learning any new skill. The curiosity and drive to learn and to grow, to experiment and try new things, should always be rewarded, and it pains me to see it often punished instead - many times, others say hurtful things or dismiss us and our journey entirely, and then we internalize that, and perpetuate it for them. Ask yourself: who does it serve?
If something doesn't turn out the way you wanted the first time, or the hundredth, it's okay. It might be frustrating, certainly, but what it is not is an indictment of your skills. In fact, falling short or 'failing' is an integral part of the learning process. And being hard on yourself, being ashamed, or accepting and internalizing shame and dislike from the overly harsh critiques of people who have either never been where you are or who have forgotten what it is like, does nothing to help your advancement or enjoyment of what you're trying to do. And if you are neither learning nor enjoying the journey, what is it for?
Similarly, if you try something and discover that you aren't impassioned by it, that's fine, and you have done a good thing by trying something new even if it didn't work out long term! Like any interpersonal relationship you might have, not every relationship with every medium will be a forever bond - and it's okay. That's natural, and it's not anything you have done wrong! Sometimes people grow apart. Sometimes our interest wanes and waxes in different areas over time. We might lose interest in a craft or medium and abandon it, but the skills we learned may serve us well in another pursuit later. And the door is rarely closed on what we love to do. Almost everything will be waiting patiently for you later if and when you choose to pick up the brush, the chisel, the camera, the needle and thread, or the pen once more.
Love of art is for everyone; it is human nature to create and to learn, and it is a human right. Bob Ross and others like him paved the way for us and showed us how to free ourselves. It is for us to take the path, and to walk it in our own way, and to make our own, new roads. ❤️ 🎨 🖌️
