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 of the mountains 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’m trying to break this art block by drawing small things. Little exercises/doodles. I’m doing so little and stressing so much. I don’t know how this was so easy and automatic when younger.

The Bob Ross painting method looks fun and easy, much less rigorous than drawing or traditional painting. But when you look into it the actual materials and tools aren’t very accessible.

The palette knife is a particular style and proprietary. It can be bought in Australia but is like $30.

The magic white is proprietary but can be duplicated by diluting titanium white in linseed oil. However I don’t want to work with linseed oil due to the risk of spontaneous combustion of the rags, and don’t want to use turps in the house around Melbcat. Mineral spirits is also something I don’t want in the house.

I don’t know how I’d go about getting paint that is thick and dry enough without hunting down a particular substitute which could be expensive.

I considered water based oil paints but they are softer/spongier and don’t cure well, are much more expensive than straight up oil paints, and I don’t know what medium is appropriate to thin them.

Wet on wet with acrylic has been tried by others but it’s not suited to the purpose and involves a lot of additives like thinning mediums and drying retardants that would add to the cost.

That’s all without getting appropriate canvases. It needs to be stretched rather than a board (which would suck up all the moisture) and not treated with gesso (same result).

It’s fine, I’d probably just be too lazy anyway