10 Truths Bob Ross Has Taught Me
Unless you live under a rock (and hey, maybe you do — I don’t know your life), I don’t need to tell you that for the past 5 1/2 days there’s been a bit of a phenomenon taking place within the Twitch community; nay, within the online world at large.
We’ve been granted a trip back in time thanks to the genius who decided to stream every single episode of The Joy of Painting in honor of what would be Bob Ross’s birthday. Thank you, genius person. I owe you one.
Didn’t watch Painting as a kid? I feel sorry for you. Because I did, and it was magnificent. Every Saturday, I’d watch as magic was created on a canvas using only a handful of colors, a few tools and less than 30 minutes.
My future husband was also watching, as it turns out. Bob Ross and his iconic hairdo and gentle, happy little trees played a role in his formative years as well.
So much so that we’ve been Chromecasting the feed to our TV and using it as background noise while we work, and as a major distraction while we don’t work but should be working but dang, look at that mountain range he just painted…!
And let’s not even get into the fact that we’re sitting in the same den in which my husband sat on the floor and played with Legos while Bob painted on a TV which sat in the same place our TV currently sits. Life comes full circle.
I don’t know why I’m so drawn to this, or why when the stream was interrupted for a minute or so yesterday I panicked (note: It happened again as I was typing this and again, I panicked a little). What was I going to watch instead? It’s like I forgot there was actual TV or, god forbid, a LIFE elsewhere.
But I’m not the only one; when I picked up my iPad to find out what the issue was, I was gratified to see that the problem wasn’t just with my device because wow was the chat going insane with people just as panicky as I was. Where’s Bob? Where did he go? Nooooooo!!!!
How did this simple guy manage to captivate not only tens of thousands of viewers at time, but out of an audience full of cynical gamers? Granted I’m not a gamer, and I had never heard of Twitch prior to the announcement of this marathon. But I’m guessing the majority of viewers are regular Twitch users.
I can’t speak for them, and maybe they’ll forget about him in a few days, once the show ends. But I know why I’ve been watching for days, and it’s not just nostalgia.
He’s so.damn.wise. I can’t even handle some of the wisdom coming from his mouth sometimes.
I remind myself of the D.C. “insiders” in the movie Being There, who mistake the simple sayings of an intellectually challenged gardener for great profundity — not just because they’ve heard other people talk about how profound he is and want to seem savvy, but because they’re bringing their own tired, jaded souls to the party. They’re hearing what they need to hear; they’re filling in the blanks on their own.
With that in mind, here are 10 truths I’ve learned from Bob Ross:
- It’s your world
This is probably one of the phrases I’ve heard most frequently over the last several days. It’s your world — do what you want. If it meant adding more trees or bushes to the painting, go for it! A babbling brook? You bet! It just never matters, because it’s your world.
How many of us act like the world we live in — our own, private world with our own thoughts and feelings — is ours to do with what we want? Maybe more of us should. I know I should.
2. Do what makes you happy
You wouldn’t know it from listening to that gentle, kind voice as it describes how to mix Titanium White with Alizarin Crimson, but Bob Ross spent 20 years in the Air Force before retiring with the rank of Master Sergeant. And he referred to that time in his life on more than on occasion while painting; once, he recounted getting home at the end of the day and painting as a means of escaping into a gentler, quieter world of his own.
All you have to do is watch him paint to see the literal, no-pun-intended joy he got from it. But he didn’t discover painting one day and quit the Air Force the next; he practiced and honed his skill until he was eventually making more money selling his paintings than he was through his day job. He “followed his bliss”, as we’re so fond of saying nowadays, but he wasn’t foolhardy about it. Instead, he got better and better and happier and happier until it made no sense to keep being unhappy doing something that made him miserable.
3. Be as weird as you want
Let’s face it: I love the guy, but he was quite an individual. And that’s a nice way to say he was a lil bit strange. His love for birds and squirrels and all sorts of little animals seems borderline obsessive at times; in a few episodes, birds he rescued were actually right there beside him, chirping away, while he painted.
And you know what? Good for him. He literally did not give a single fuck about whether his viewers would think him weird for wearing a family of baby birds on his shirt, or for advising them to talk to a tree. He just did it, because it meant something to him. He liked sharing that part of himself with the people he thought of as his friends out there in TV land.
4. There are no mistakes
There are only happy accidents. So just chill out already.
He encouraged viewers not to despair over mistakes, but to look at them and learn from them. It’s only a failure if you don’t learn from it, he said. #truth
5. Everybody needs a friend
Trees, little animals, it didn’t matter. It was all the same to Bob, as evidenced by the baby birds and “rascal” squirrels he seemed to be constantly adopting and caring for. He was a friend to everybody and everything, and people loved him for it.
6. An artist is never satisfied with their art…and that’s good
This one really got me, and I know it made my husband sit up and take notice as well. He’s a web designer and developer who routinely labors over whether he should call a site “finished”. He struggles with the same problem all creative types have: We always find something we could have done better.
Bob addressed this problem directly during one episode when he told us about a fan who asked him “How do you know when a painting is finished?”
His answer was that his paintings were never finished, and that he’d never been completed satisfied with anything he’d done. But he was grateful for this; he said that if ever the day came when he was satisfied with what he’d done, he’d quit painting and do something else. He advised his viewers to be glad when they felt dissatisfied, to be grateful for that feeling because it meant that they were supposed to keep painting.
My mind was maybe a little bit blown.
7. The shadow is just as important as the light
Ever seen Bob Ross paint a mountain? It doesn’t seem as though it should work; he just uses his knife to create the rough shape of the peaks, then uses highlight and shadow to indicate the shape of the mountain. He doesn’t rough it in, he just plays the two shades of paint off of each other. It’s ridiculously simple and effective.
The shadow is just as important as the highlight, and Bob himself repeats this time and again. You can’t have light without dark. But how many of us try to avoid the dark entirely?
8. When you’re in your zone of genius, the world will pay attention
He wasn’t flashy or flamboyant. He started at a small PBS station in Muncie, for Pete’s sake, and started getting perms to save money on haircuts. But he found what he was good at, what made him happy, and what he could share with the rest of the world.
This quiet, peaceful, unassuming man has lived on long past his death; why is that? I feel that it’s because he found his zone of genius.
It helped that he was exceptional at demonstrating this painting technique in a way that not only got the method across, but encouraged others to give it a try. He was the Pied Piper, calling others to create their own happy little world full of beauty and charm. Who wouldn’t want to follow that example?
His talent for painting and his talent for charming an audience with his folksy, friendly point of view converged and ensured that he’ll live on in anyone who refers to “happy little trees”, or who found joy through painting thanks to him.
Imagine if we all found our own zone of genius…!
9. Make a decision, and go with it
Oh how I cringe when I see him take what looks like a finished painting and just plop a passive tree trunk right in the middle of it. Like…why?
He encouraged this sort of risk taking; he instructed his TV students to make a decision and move ahead. Just do it. Put that tree there. Place that mountain just so. Commit. Don’t overthink it, don’t wonder whether or not you should have after the fact. Make your decision and have the conviction to stand behind it.
10. Keep it simple
At the same time, he didn’t overdo things. Just like he used simple swipes of paint to indicate a craggy mountain peak, he could indicate an entire forest full of trees with just a few taps of a brush. He could transform a flat canvas into water with a few gentle swipes. He knew that it didn’t take a ton of time or sweat to get the look he wanted, and so he didn’t overthink or over-paint.
And he encouraged viewers to keep things simple, too. A tree didn’t need too many leaves, or too much highlight. Just a touch would do the trick. Sometimes doing just enough is better than doing too much.
He talked many times about “making a happy buck” with a painting, but also about how money doesn’t really matter in the end. What matters is “in here”, he’d say, and he’d motion to his chest when he did.
I hope he knew how much he gave to the world by doing what felt good inside.
