Learning to Paint: Copying Bob Ross#5
April 2019.
I decided to highlight the mountain with an Arizona red rocks color instead of snowy white because all of my personal hikes in Arizona were in warm weather next to beautiful red rocks. I enjoyed going off the Bob Ross railroad tracks and mixing my own highlight color.
Recommendation: find a good color wheel print out and place it on the table with your paints. Lay out your paints around the color wheel. This helped me visualize the basics of color theory…it literally makes color theory tangible.
An important Bob Ross take-away is “letting the paint break” as you apply highlights and shadows. Bob is a master at making this look easy as he applies broken knife paint to mountains and old buildings. Broken color adds detail and interest to many painting techniques even acrylic. Broken color can be done with a knife or a brush as long as the paint is dry enough and the artist uses very light pressure on the canvas.
I believe Monet uses broken paint technique to wonderful effect. If you look at Monet’s brush strokes up close they have a jagged/splotchy/broken appearance that blurs the edges and mixes the color with its surrounding colors. Broken color is a beautiful effect that takes a lot of practice to replicate (I believe broken color is closely related to “scumbling”).