Learning to Paint: Copying Bob Ross#4
4th Bob Ross painting - March 2019. I took a year break from learning to paint.
By now, I was using the Bob Ross brand easel and liquid white which made the painting process easier.
Bob stresses the importance of using natural hair brushes for his wet on wet process. I purchased the Bob Ross brand 1 inch and 2 inch brushes but I found that the quality of those brushes were not the best because the bristles splayed out after a few uses and white paint chipped off the handles.
I went to a local paint shop and purchased Corona brand professional natural hair brushes with wooden handles and found that their quality and performance was much better! They kept their shape better over time and this led to better quality trees and bushes.
In this painting you can see that I was still pressing to hard with the brush for light green highlights on the trees and bushes. This led to the mistake of covering up too much of the dark shadow areas. Pressing delicately when highlighting makes the leaves look better and preserves shadow areas.
I have an unproven hypothesis that natural hair brushes make better foliage because of fractal nature and self-similarity between small and large scales of natural things. In other words, natural hair makes more realistic looking leaves. This hypothesis led me to also try using natural sponges to paint foliage with acrylic paint and I love the results.