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Bob Ross
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Message
Posted
I'm not doing any article on Bob Ross! Someone is tugging at my leg there....
Nancy Kominski was on television, and she painted with oils and a painting knife: it was so long ago that I've forgotten if she was any good or not, but I do remember watching the series with my mother; suddenly, in a mass of colour and knife-strokes, the actual subject was revealed - well, WE were both impressed at the time. She could resolve the painting - as I remember - Tommy Cooper style: "just like that".
Frank Clarke - lovely man, excellent teacher.
What Alan Bickley says is very true: "It’s just as easy to learn to paint my way, as it is to paint Bob’s way, so I’d like a half hour weekly slot on Channel 4 to prove my point! Fat chance of that of course."
I should be very happy to join a campaign to get Channel 4 - other outlets are available - to get Alan on TV to show his methods, but I tend to agree that no TV station would bite, because if they did people might actually LEARN something useful, which they'll never learn from Bob-bloody-Ross, with all due respect to the man's memory as a humanitarian and animal-lover. The trouble with television is that it increasingly goes for spectacle, "personalities", the offbeat and bizarre. Both Ch 4 and the BBC are supposed to "inform and educate", as well as just entertain, and both seem to have forgotten the first two to the advantage of the third.
Edit
Posted
Not as rich as the Kowalskis, who marketed him; nor particularly happy, since he was riddled with lymphoma. Many people have died rich men, and many other people have contributed to their wealth - doesn't mean much, though, does it? Rupert Murdoch isn't exactly fighting for the last penny: because many people bought his papers and watched his TV stations (and because his parents left him a large wodge of cash): he's still a pernicious old menace.
But I'll tell you one reason why Bob Ross still has his adherents way beyond (and hardly in) the art world. It's his voice. The ASMR industry ... not so much an industry really, as most ASMR content is free (I'll tell you what it is in a minute, if you don't know already) .... has latched upon Ross's soothing, soporific voice; indeed, when I couldn't sleep, I would often doze off to a Bob Ross soundtrack: it beat having to look at his paintings hollow.
ASMR - obviously the initials stand for something or other, I don't remember what, can be found on, among other places, YouTube. A large number of generally young people, with appealing voices, coo at you in order to help you relax and sleep; also to produce the "tingle" sensation in the neck and down the back. Some use their voices (most do) others run their fingers along various objects, to produce a range of sounds. Now, this is the sort of thing against which I would normally rail, but actually - it works; in moments of stress (arguing with people on here, for example) I just tune out to a nice ASMR half hour. Others meditate; some chant to Buddhist mantras (without having any understanding of them, but there we are), I and many others just go to YouTube and listen to an ASMR broadcast.
Or, I did: now that YouTube has decided to forbid Adblock, plainly this form of relaxation will be punctuated by idiot advertising. So that's another form of recreation denied me. If you do want to know what the initials stand for, you'll have to conduct your own research via the omniscient Mr Google. Or perhaps Alexa would tell you, if you have such a thing - possibly Sam wouldn't care for it though.
Posted
Norrette I will ad Frank Clark to the list , would you be willing to do a short introduction .I will give it try, if you're sure Paul. There's not a great many of his works in image format rather than video, so I will look around. They can be of the potboiler type as my mother would have called them. But there's one or three I'd give time for.
Posted
Agreed about Rupert Murdoch, Robert, but back to Bob . . . .
Like you, I often put on a The Joy Of Painting recording to help me sleep. His voice is a soporific, no question about it, and that is part of is appeal, along with his wisdom sayings:
"We don't make mistakes - we have happy accidents."
A lesson for life!
Edited
by Bill Downie