What I learned about creativity from Bob Ross

Alyce and I have been on a Bob Ross kick lately, and it’s the first time I’ve watched him since I was home sick from school in the 1990s, back when I had to diligently check PBS every half an hour to see if I was going to be lucky enough to catch an episode.

I’m pleased to report that The Joy of Painting is just as mesmerizing as ever, and now more readily available than ever on PBS, Hulu and Disney+, YouTube… you name it, for your binging or ASMR pleasure.

Now that I’m older… yeah, okay, these paintings probably won’t be hanging in the Met, but that’s not the point. It’s magic to watch a painting take shape in twenty-six minutes, and some of them are genuinely inspired.

Here are some things Bob Ross taught me, then and now, about the creative process.

Anyone can should do it

Elitist, Bob Ross was not.

His entire orientation is toward encouraging everyone to try painting for the first time, and demystifying that painting belongs solely to creative types. (It helps that he makes it look far easier than it really is).

You can paint. You can create. Better yet, you should create, and what’s stopping you? Every single episode was evangelism for jumping in and trying your hand at art.

In one episode, his team put together a touching collage of many of the photographs people had sent him (and back in those days that meant taking a photo, getting it developed, typing a letter, and mailing it), a testament to just how many people he inspired.

Bob Ross gave a lot of people permission to create, and changed lives in the process.

There are no mistakes

A perennial Bob Ross catchphrase is that “there are no mistakes, there are only happy accidents.”

As someone who was deathly paranoid about rewriting earlier in my career, which I mistakenly saw it as wasted time, I wish I had better internalized this advice. Because it’s very true.

Just as you can paint over a mistake, you can revise a book, and nothing is truly lost. Every “mistake” is a learning opportunity that pushes forward your craft, a pursuit that never has to end.

Don’t psych yourself out. Happy accidents.

Get crazy

Midway through an episode of The Joy of Painting, there’s invariably a moment when Ross chuckles and says, “let’s get crazy” or “let’s have some fun” and he proceeds to put a massive, ugly-at-first tree in front of a painstakingly crafted background.

He sometimes refers to these as “bravery tests,” and they genuinely feel like risks! Midway through nearly every episode, I have a moment where I’m like, “I don’t know about this…” but he almost always manages to make that moment of bravery work in the end.

If you want to push your craft forward, you can’t stay in a safe, pretty zone. You have to take some risks and push forward even if it might not work out. Those crazy moves can quickly be an inspired moment of magic.

Take pleasure in every step of the process

There are few things Ross liked more than wetting his brush in odorless paint thinner and smacking it quickly against the easel to dry it, or, in his parlance, “just beat the devil out of it.”

He gets giddy every single time. (Probably because he was also splattering the studio and crew).

Ross truly enjoyed every step of the process, even one that might strike someone else as a somewhat unpleasant chore.

I’m not someone who always thinks writing is fun, and I wish I had a bit more of Ross’s orientation. Maybe I should beat the devil out of the periods at the end of every sentence.

Creativity changes your orientation

In the last episode of the nineteenth season, Ross shared an anecdote of a woman who told him it wasn’t until she took up painting that she noticed a big old tree that she’d walked past every day without ever really seeing it.

What a perfect encapsulation of the creative process. We sometimes get so hung up on the products of the creative process. Whether our books will sell, whether galleries will want to hang our paintings. The goal is over the horizon instead of in the moment.

What we can easily lose sight of is the effect creativity has on us, even when we’re not creating. I believe very strongly that writing is important not just because of the books that result, but because of the effect writing has on writers.

And, in aggregate, it changes the world.

Ross had a profound effect on the creative lives of so many people, and until this past week I had no idea we lost him so young, at just 52.

Whether you’re going to paint happy little clouds or give a tree a friend in your writing, I think we could all do well to channel Bob Ross’s spirit.

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