When COVID hit, my friend bought us a “paint along with Bob Ross” class. At the time, I hadn’t made any art that wasn’t tattoo-related/dark art in… honestly, I don’t even know how long. Everything I created was for work — portraits, realism, pop culture, dark themes — always something with tattoo flavor or something I could relate to “tattoo”.
Bob Ross was the first time in years that I picked up a brush without an agenda.
It wasn’t meant to be “perfect.”
It wasn’t meant to make money.
It wasn’t meant to be posted or critiqued.
It wasn’t even in my style.
It was just happy little trees.
And it was fun.
I ended up going all in. I bought the big Bob Ross oil tubes, the brushes. I found this website where you could pick any Bob Ross episode and paint along with it at your own pace. I painted a lot — sawblades, plaques, stretched canvases, small ones, big ones. I gave paintings away. My dad even wanted one as a gift.
For a while, that was my only time creating anything that wasn’t tied to tattooing. It was neutral. No pressure. Just color, movement, and a guy saying “we don’t make mistakes, just happy accidents.”
And then, life did what life does.
I got into a relationship and gave up my painting room so my partner could have their own space.
I didn’t paint at all for three years. Not once. My studio disappeared and, with it, so did that whole part of my brain.
When I finally left that situation and got my room — and my time — back, I decided to start painting again. But something was different.
Before the Bob Ross era, I used to be terrified of painting. Scared of messing up, scared of making bad marks, scared of not knowing what I was doing. I’d freeze up at the canvas and second-guess every brushstroke.
This time, when I sat back down, I wasn’t scared.
I was aggressive.
Confident.
Loose in the right way.
Ready to push paint around instead of tiptoeing.
And that’s when it clicked:
All those “dumb” pandemic Bob Ross paintings had actually taught me how to handle paint. They taught me how oil behaves, how long it stays open, how far I can push it, how light or heavy my touch needs to be. The wet-on-wet technique gave me muscle memory I didn’t even realize I was building.
I truly never thought those landscapes and mountains would matter for anything other than passing time during lockdown — but they did. They completely changed how comfortable I am with the medium. They took the fear out of the process.
Now I’m deep into my portrait series — dark, mythic, narrative-heavy fantasy realism. The opposite of Bob Ross in every possible way. But the confidence I paint with now? That came from a place I never expected.
Sometimes doing something creative “just because” ends up being the thing that pays off later. You don’t see it while you’re doing it — you see it when you return to yourself.
Bob Ross didn’t teach me how to paint witches, or oracles, or crones lit by fire in the middle of darkness.
He taught me not to freeze.
He taught me not to baby my brushstrokes.
He taught me that the canvas isn’t something to fear.
The take away: Trying something unfamiliar gives your brain a different job. Sometimes that’s all you need to unlock the work you actually want to be making.
