Day 1: Mountain Retreat

Well here it is! My first entry in the #britnyandbob challenge! I knew recreating Bob Ross’ paintings would be a challenge, but recreating them in acrylic paints is WAAAY harder than I thought. I also underestimated how relaxing it would be listening to Bobs positive affirmations and brushstrokes- like some kind of Artist ASMR 😆.

I would love to follow the class with oil paints like Bob teaches, but I am a new mom and having a baby that close to paint thinner fumes is just not gonna happen. So Acrylics it is! And it’s a lot harder than I thought it would be. But hey that’s the point of a challenge right?

So I chose this painting because it has a cabin like Michael requested and it’s in the same season as two paintings Trea wanted. So I’m starting with this painting “Mountain Retreat” Episode 1, and continuing on through season 3 of joy of painting. if you’d like to follow along with us you can see the whole list of paintings and lessons at twoinchbrush.com

I started by laying a layer of wet white paint like Bob did... it dried in 5 seconds. Acrylics dry so fast and here in Colorado, in the high desert, its crazy how fast my paintings dry. The second issue I ran into was not having the right colors. I wrongfully assumed that because my cabinet is full of paints that I would have all of the colors I needed. Apparently my color pallet is a little brighter than Bob is used to so I had to mix almost every color except black and white 😆 But I knew I couldn’t pre-mix the colors because again, my colors dry so fast there is just no point. Bob out yellow right in the middle and it was instantly lighter because of the white behind and then he put red and blue above that in about 30 seconds. I spent maybe 10+ minutes blending out my sky the way I liked it because as soon as I moved on to a second section the first one had dried and I went back to try and fix it. I stumbled along the mountain line because paper knifes don‘t spread thick acrylic paint well and the fan brush gets buried in paint and looses control easily.

However, I stepped into this challenge knowing it would be tough. Bob wouldn’t want me to quit and each mistake was just a happy accident right? So I pushed through and made it my own little world! I’m not impressed with my version of this painting but I am impressed that I finished because of how hard it was. And I look forward to doing more of these and coming back to this painting at the end and seeing how far I've come.

So if you run into any issues here just stick through it with me and Bob! We can do it right? Happy little trees and painting during the baby’s naptime all lead up to a good night’s work. 😘