WIP first seascape and first oil painting

I don’t use oils but even in watercolours Prussian Blue is a colour I’ve rarely used as it’s so strong and dominants the painting  made the mistake when I first started using in a few paintings I’ve nit used it for several years now. . Just to say  having said that I’ve just used it to cover a background on a painting that I was struggling with and it was a mess , Prussian came through and saved the painting more by luck than judgement to be honest comments have been positive about it. 

Prussian blue mixed with Indian red makes a lovely chromatic black, which is preferable to using black as darkening colour.  As Prussian blue has a green undertone its lovely to make a wide variety of dark greens when yellows are added.

The point that I try and make with all potential followers of BR, is that it is just as easy to learn traditional oil painting techniques, as it is to learn the BR way. This is why I recommended the book, which will start all relative newcomers to oil painting off on the right track… In my opinion, the Ranson\Seago book is excellent, but definitely for the more experienced artist.

Mouth and foot painters are in a sphere of their own - they have nothing to do with any of the Ross techniques; nor is it a matter of right or wrong, it's a question of what is honest and appropriate - mouth and foot painters have obvious limitations, but it's not their technique that's any kind of problem, just their ability to adapt those techniques: some of them manage fantastically: one, named Something (sorry, memory fade) Twistleton-Higgins (again, a bit of a wild stab there) was a wonderful painter.  Bob Ross was a very different kettle of fish - the history is interesting, but I don't want to recite it all again, really: in short, he picked up a technique from the German-born painter William/Wilhelm/Bill Alexander - whose aim was primarily to shift product, secondarily to teach people how to paint in his technique and materials.  He had terrible trouble finding an oil painting white that wouldn't powerfully yellow - and wasn't entirely successful.  Anyway, Bob - a very worthy man in so many ways, but as an artist .... just really poor: he never grasped perspective, his drawing was not good, but he had compensating virtues: the desire to communicate, the wish to help others produce paintings they wouldn't be ashamed to put on their walls, the compulsion to help animals, and more: he went from being a drill sergeant, accustomed to yelling at people, to a softly-spoken demonstrator of a particular technique.   Was that "wrong"?  Well - here's the thing, probably yes, it was.  Because he didn't teach oil painting; he painted with oil paints, of a kind, but they weren't oil paints most people who want to paint would ever want to use.  They filled a 30 to 35 minute video slot; and that was about it.  Another painter who fitted her teaching into a compressed time-frame was Nancy Kominski - whom I don't remember well enough to know if her pictures were good or bad, but which I remember admiring at the time, a long time ago.   She painted with knives - built up her pictures, which at first seemed to make little sense, and then, with a flourish - and a few extra touches - bang!  All was revealed.  I wish mine worked like that..... In defence of Bob Ross, and I don't often defend him (other than to praise his character): he said, admitted if you like?, that his methods were not applicable to .... what to call it.... regular oil painting?  They were not; he knew that; he said (you can find this in some of his videos) that he wanted people to move on: the videos were intended to encourage people to paint, not to stick to painting his way or with his materials.  Sadly, the Bob Ross Corporation (Inc) then popped up; the Kowalskis, his early television patrons, turned his method into a major business, diversified in ways he would never sanction, froze out his son from the business (who didn't want to play the commercial game), and diversified into a huge range of paints and equipment that Ross himself never used.  So you get "Bob Ross floral sets", which he never used or recommended.  Money took over - the desire to make more and more of it.   That's why some of us dismiss Bob Ross (Inc), rather than Ross himself.  I don't think he was a good painter: his best pictures were of Alaska, which he knew well and by which he was a bit besotted; I do remember a couple of his paintings which were more local to him in later life - one of a creek in ..... damn': forgotten again - Florida or Louisiana? ..... and I think they were pretty good, but untypical, sadly.  The trouble was a) that his love of Alaska stayed with him decades after he'd left it, and he repeated himself very often, b) that he inherited a way of working from Bill Alexander (who, by the way, was a much better painter), which relied on a type of oil paint only available from a very limited source: Ross was quite clear - his method "will not work" with regular oil paints.  I've watched all of his videos - it's not disparaging them to reveal that they help me to sleep: I'm an insomniac, and his voice is (to me) very soothing. Why am I running on at such length - well, for one thing: I just do run on.  But for another - there are very good reasons why exponents of mainstream oil painting deplore his methods: there really, genuinely are - it's not snobbishness, it's not trying to exclude anyone, it's soundly based in strong doubts about his materials and method, which we don't think will, in the end, help anyone to paint in oil or to make real progress in the medium: and if we think that, we're bound to say so in order to help those who wish to learn.  To repeat myself though - this has absolutely NOTHING to do with the mouth and foot artists, most of whom use(d) regular oil paints or other media, and no artist would wish to disparage them.

Sylvia Yes I have two young Yorkshire Terriers (6 month's old) and the old man (12) large and grumpy Yorkshire Terries  Waffle Bear Teddy Love them all to bits Carol thank you for your Interest I hope I don't disappoint you. 

Just curious James, how does your "grumpy old man" get on with a couple of youngsters?  Will be following up your painting with interest.

My landlord has a grumpy old woman - an elderly border terrier, confronted (fortunately, she's been spayed) by two of those semi-hairless little horrors, whose breed eludes me.  They worship the ground she treads - she treats them with tolerance for the most part, but when feeling feisty, circles around the room and, when they least expect it, nibbles overhanging tails and paws. sniggers wickedly, then slopes off to her bed, her task for the day done.   You can never trust the elderly.