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"Just add a little black."
The sorrows of painting with Goth Ross
posted by They sucked his brains out! on Oct 24, 2026 at 3:14 PM
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Oh my god this is real?!
posted by mittens at 3:17 PM
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I love this so much
posted by selenized at 3:26 PM
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I like that he has the full spectrum of colors on his palette.
posted by surlyben at 3:31 PM
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The dude from Friends?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 4:05 PM
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Hard to improve on that! And yet, maybe some background music?
posted by Calvin and the Duplicators at 4:14 PM
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I can see this was a labor of love for both the medium of oil painting, and the source material. Some things I noted as wonderful homages to Bob's favored techniques:
- The canvas prep with a thinned white paint that eases blending
- Using the palette knife and a light touch to break the snow on the mountains
- Bringing the dark portion of the water in from the sides, leaving a central highlight
- Using horizontal blending strokes on the reflections
- The order of layering (sky, mountains, distant forest, water, foreground details)
This truly is how Bob Ross would've painted a scene with only black and white! (Though it should be noted, he's gotten close on occasion.) I even learned that an alla prima painting can be revisited, and that a little more linseed oil on the canvas can allow you to continue on if you set the canvas down for a while. Thanks, Goth Ross!
posted by greytrench at 4:26 PM
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This popped up on that stuff that YouTube thinks I will like. I love his palette with just a glob of black and a glob of white. And the irony of doing that landscapey stuff that Bob Ross does.
posted by njohnson23 at 6:39 PM
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We don't make mistakes, just fated disasters.
posted by phooky at 7:23 PM
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Gotta admit I was hoping for the addition of a cryptid on the shore or in the water, at the last minute.
posted by maxwelton at 7:39 PM
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This makes me think a lot of Bill Alexander, who I always assumed was a substitute for Bob Ross, but I have since discovered was actually his forerunner/mentor. I remember one episode of Bill Alexander's show in particular, in which he was painting a little cabin and surrounding it with little happy wildflowers, and then said "but we'll make this cabin look a little sad, a sad little cabin, maybe the owner has just died." I later learned that he had been drafted into the Wehrmacht and was a POW in WWII, and eventually ended up in the US as part of what I can only assume was a wet-on-wet edition of Operation Paperclip.
posted by phooky at 7:43 PM
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I love the fact that this is loving and parodic.
And phooky - I only learned about Bill Alexander from Epic Rap Battles of History Bob Ross vs Pablo Picasso. (which is still one of the best videos they ever made)
posted by drewbage1847 at 7:47 PM
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I hadn't seen that, thanks!
Now I'm watching a few Bill Alexander videos before I go to sleep and A) wow, the opening track to that show was a very special vibe and B) his shows don't go off the rails, they start off the rails. WTF, Bill
posted by phooky at 8:05 PM
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> I like that he has the full spectrum of colors on his palette.
It's the only way to capture the full range of human feeling.
> I love the fact that this is loving and parodic.
Parody without deep affection is hollow invective, no matter how virtuosic.
posted by Rat Spatula at 8:32 PM
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add some color
...
when I say color I mean black
posted by telepsism at 7:04 AM
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Black and white perspective is alive and well and lurking in the pallid and obscure corners of the art gallery. Excellent.
posted by TrishaU at 10:08 AM
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