Well, it interests me. Just tough luck on the rest of you, really.... Watched some more of these videos... oil painting demos on YouTube; found one artist amongst all of them, a gentleman from Colorado named Nic Hankins, who can paint and actually goes out on location to do so; so if he does paint "happy little trees", at least he's looked at the damn' things first. However: it's clear that the techniques espoused by Bill Alexander and Bob Ross are only really possible in their entirety by using modified paints and additives; you can, however, cheat.... And the method of so doing would be a quite sound painting practice, so far as I can see... The "Magic White" which Bill Alexander used, and the "Liquid White" used by Bob Ross (which are painted over the canvas first, and colours are then painted, broken or stippled into them, depending on the skill of the practitioner [which is sometimes next to nil]) is basically Titanium White mixed with Linseed oil. This enables a very quick method of painting - a rather glutinous way of painting in my opinion, but then I'm not used to using a lot of medium. I intend to try it, anyway - it would be fairly important to finish the painting in one session; depending on how much oil is mixed with the Titanium White, it would not be a sound method of painting if one were working in layers over a period of days or weeks - there would be a risk of cracking; actually, quite a good chance of cracking, I should have thought: it would run counter to the principle that an oil painting should "start lean, finish fat". I can see, having spent a couple of hours on trawling these videos, that the technique does have something to offer those who want quick results and aren't especially proficient draughtsmen; the least capable Alexander and Ross artists use a series of tricks, manipulations with very large brushes, with fan brushes, and depend heavily on stippling. Hankins doesn't rely anything like so much on these particular tricks, which are I think what have given the technique a bad name (that and the fact that both Bill Alexander and Bob Ross painted the same series of pictures again and again throughout their lives, and their followers usually do just the same: and please - if you've never seen a mountain, do resist the temptation to paint one....). So in itself, it's a technique - no more or less. Well, it's also a means of sustaining the mighty Bob Ross empire, with all its products which you're going to need if you intend to follow the prescribed path in real discipleship.... The only real danger in the technique itself, however, is that of relying on it every single time and being unaware of any others. I wonder if there's life after Bob Ross - Mr Hankins suggests there might be, just. Which is, I suppose, a happy little ray of light on the horizon........