Gallery arranged in reverse chronological order, now giving you the new stuff first! Enjoy!
2026-09-06 I loved Season 18 Episode 2 of the Joy of Painting. The cloud painting demo kicked ass, so I had to try it! I dropped a super pale sky with a pale cadmium yellow, then an orangier cad yellow, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, permanent red, and topped with pthalo blue. Blended lots over homemade Magic White/Liquid White. It’s around 50/50 titanium white and linseed oil. Dark clouds, cloud highlights and some hills. Grassy meadow framed by bushes and trees. The bottom of the painting had been pre-treated with black gesso. I added some thin pthalo blue over the dry gesso. I got to the bottom thinking a smooth lake and then these waves exploded off the one inch brush!
My biggest challenge was the bush/tree highlights. Again. This is a regular issue for me. I want lacy snow on branches or lovely highlight leaves. I get:
a. nothing off the brush
b. wet blobs
c. occasional success
I heard Bob say, once or twice or 200+ times, that a thin paint will stick to a thick paint. If your paint won’t stick you need to thin it. Just a bit. A little bit of thinner or liquid white and off he goes. I use my homemade liquid white or liquid clear substitute linseed oil.
So when I’m in nothing off the brush town I thin my paint and end up in wet blobs city. I also heard Bob say you need quite a bit of paint on the brush, so I load on more colour. Blob. Blob. Scrape off the blob bushes. Try again. What do I do? I find the brush builds up a whole lot of paint as I load, thin, and load. If my darker colours were thicker I might not have this issue as much. If you have any suggestions please head over to the me page and scroll down, you can contact me from there!
Another leftover paint from previous session becoming the base paint for my next canvas. I encourage you to let this disturbing painting (from 2026-09-04 and 05) sit with you a while and then …
go outside in the sunshine? But stay safe.
Smashed.
I like this painting.
To start this canvas I painted it black, and not with gesso as is usual! Once that dried I added alizarin crimson to the top & mid, blending some phthalo blue on the edges. Then I started with titanium white on a one inch brush in some gentle curvy strokes. I added some cadmium yellow and blended, then added some more white and blended.
The cabin was a challenge. I scraped away bits and then added other bits, then scraped away bits over and over to get the proportion to be not horrible. It is not perfect, but I like it, and it is better than my previous cabin attempt. I think I can do better. I see the mistake in angles. I finished it 2026-08-12.
So.
I struggle with paint consumption. When I am done painting for the day and there is still paint on my palatte I do not know what to do with it.
I have scraped it up and put in a little jar, but it starts to dry over a few days since there is air in the jar. I tried putting the leftovers in a little plastic baggie, that worked a bit better.
I use that paint and experiment with it on a dollar store canvas,
then it might become something like this: My most recent portrait
attempt. This canvas had some leftover paint slapped on it, then more
paint, a dark colour. Finally covered in lamp black paint.
Then I started to build the portrait. I think it is better
than my self portrait.
Did you know that there is more than one kind of black paint? Lamp black and bone, aka ivory, black to name two. Bob Ross had his own midnight black for the Joy of Painting.
If you have ever purchased oil paints you might have noticed that one of the four Winton cadmium yellows is more expensize than the other three! Within the Winton line - Series 1, and Series 2. The Series 2 paints are more than double! the cost of Series 1.
To make matters worse the Winton line is the Winsor & Newton student/budget/beginner line. They have Artist’s Oil in 5 count em, 5 series. They are so expensive. Series 1 Artist’s is almost double Winton Series 1. Series 2 is more than Winton Series 2 of course and it only goes up from there.
On their site (https://www.winsornewton.com/en-ca/collections/winton-oil) you can see the Winton Series 1 listed for $13 for 37ml. This gorgeous Cobalt Violet Series 5 Artist’s Oil (https://www.winsornewton.com/en-ca/collections/artists-oil/products/artists-oil-colour-cobalt-violet) is $73 for 37ml. All prices in Canadian eh, accurate as of today 2026-08-13. One conclusion I can draw, hehe, is that if you ever want to give me a fancy present: buy some Artist’s Oil Colour. Holy smokes. That cobalt violet is so pretty though. Heck all the Artist’s Series 5 paints look phenomenal. At my local Mike’s they only had up to and including Series 4 out on the shelf.
I painted this a few days ago. I am pleased with the sky and clouds, the mountain covered up a nice cloud, but it is back there. I wanted a different mountain than usual, not as peaky or pointy. Then I made a rookie move, I added very dark hills in front of the mountain. The valley between those hills is my next issue. The hills either needed to be higher, or have a valley that was less steep. I quite dislike the blank bit of mountain that is almost in the center of the canvas. I should have fixed it right then but I didn’t see it/recognize it. Bob’s advice to stand back from time to time and look at your painting is good advice.
The next waterfall I paint should either be higher, or wider or both!
I painted this a bit before that one. Check out the blog post (https://stubbornhope.ca/posts/sixth-post/) for photos taken along the way.
I rediscovered this canvas and realized it was not posted here. I quite like the colours.
This image represents the most magical night. Living in Yellowknife for almost seven
years we saw plenty of spectacular nights with the sky full of aurora. One beautiful
March 21st my excellent coworker Ben invited me to a fireworks display.
We went to V lake, cleared snow off the frozen lake and setup. Someone brought a
load of palattes and scrap wood. On the way in for the evening, as the sun went down the
aurora was coming out. This painting tries to capture a sliver of that majesty showing
only the aurora and bonfire. If I keep practicing someday I may be able to paint something
that really evokes that magical night!
Moving along to a landscape! Red sky, red water, green mountain. Check.
I quite like the mountains.
Every painter has to do a self portrait at some point right? It’s expected. Um.
I like the blue background a lot.
I love several things about this one. The simplicity speaks to me, I love birch
trees so it was great to include a few. Waterfalls are so fun to paint. I really
enjoyed painting this one, even if my foilage is a bit blobby. There probably is
too much oil mixed in to thin the highlights. Why is the sky green?
This one is simple and very much in the sky plus mountain plus foreground foilage
and water template Bob often used. I am pleased with the mountain top on this one.
the evergreens less so. Oh how I struggle with those. I’ll need to paint a couple
practice forests just to get them locked in.
Which Bob Ross episode was I watching here? Kind of a trick question. This is based
on the special one hour long episode! It sounded to me like it came from their
instructional tape or DVD, and I would highly recommend it for anyone starting out.
Bob uses the extra hour to really break things down. Super episode. This is the second
of two square canvases.
Ansel Adams shaped my visual education as I learned photograhpy in the 1990s.
He photographed in Yosemite many times. This oil painting is of Half Dome in
Yosemite National Park. I have never been there. I used Thomas Wolf’s photograph
on the Half Dome wikipedia page as inspiration. This is one of two square canvases.
The bison here is an attempt to capture the feeling and atmosphere of a very special day.
Way back in 2010 my lovely wife and I left Kugluktuk, NU and went on a road trip. Near
the end of the trip we got up super early one day and went to Wood Buffalo National Park
in Alberta, Canada. There in the misty light of dawn we watched this magnificent bison
who was steaming hot on this July morning. How did he cope? He peed in the dirt making
mud, and then rolled around in it. There’s a lesson for us all there somewhere.
I would imagine it would be cooling, and the mud might keep some of the biting insects
at bay.
DCC by the Sea is my title for this very special painting. For Christmas in 2025 I
received a lovely canvas, a good step larger than the normal 18 x 24 size that is my norm.
It was also of a much higher quality manufacture than my normal el cheapo canvas too.
What should I put on it? It’s bigger and more expensive than the canvas I usually buy
so it has to be something special.
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman is my favourite book series of 2026,
so it should not be a surprise that this canvas features Carl taking a very rare nap,
Mongo is curled up nearby, and Princess Donut is on overwatch up a tree. She doesn’t
like the ocean or sand, so where else could she be?
That one did not quite feel “right” to me so I tried again. I like this second attempt
better than the first, but I feel like I made one major error. The dragon’s wings do
not feel nearly large enough. Should I take this painting back to the easle and enlarge
the wings?
Back in fantasy-land this original oil painting combines the arenal volcano of
Costa Rica with a wizard vs. dragon battle, oh my!
If you’ve watched a few episodes of the Joy of Painting you probably heard Bob Ross say
that it’s great practice to take a canvas and fill it up with mountains. So I did.
Continuing in a more generic fantasy vein we have this painting of a black dragon flying over a lake, the lake reflecting the red sunset sky.
This is a rare smaller canvas, only 8x10 instead of the usual 18x24. I thought it was
a good size to test painting my favourite dinosaur Mongo! I have no clue how to paint
feathers. Yet! Princess Donut rides Mongo and Carl’s beautiful foot snuck into the
frame somehow! Yes I love the Dungeon Crawler Carl series of books by Matt Dinniman.
The audiobook read by Jeff Hays is phenomenal.
Around this time I discovered an amazing book series Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt
Dinniman, audiobook narrated by Jeff Hays. This painting is my first attempt at a
salute to that series with a rendition of GC BRW NW Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk.
This is what Bob Ross would call a Happy Accident! I was trying for
a waterfall or something like that, but then it turned into this water elemental
or water spirit kind of thing. I like it better. It is the point where I realized
I can paint nature scenes, and I can also paint fantasy scenes.
We’re back to some traditional Bob Ross mountains now.
We have four of five Magic: The Gathering basic land types already, all that was
left for me to paint was Island. How did I do?
Painting is fun. This forest painting is a continuation of the MTG lands series.
The paintings in this series correspond to one or more Bob Ross paintings,
I wonder which ones?
This swamp painting is a continuation of the Magic: The Gathering lands series.
I think this was my attempt at a Magic: The Gathering card mountain. I think my mindset
was if one mountain range is good, several are better.
This is my attempt at a painting that I could possibly turn into a custom
Magic: The Gathering card. A Plains possibly, or the OG dual land Island + Plains
card known as Tundra.
Almost every part of this one was painted using a palatte knife! Neat eh!
This original oil painting has a special place in my heart. Here I was inspired by
our view of Great Slave Lake, from when we lived in the Northwest Territories. There
are houseboats on the lake now, but maybe 100 years ago it looked something like this.
Like Bob Ross would say over and over again anyone can paint a picture. I believe it too.
Before I started watching his videos and painting along I had never oil painted before,
and my acrylic paintings from years ago sometimes were started and never finished!
I don’t recall if this is based on S2E13 or some other one that is similar.
S2E12 of Bob Ross’s Joy of Painting - Mountain Waterfall.
But a black canvas is a challenge as well. Sometimes you don’t brighten it up enough.
Oh gosh how I struggle with foreground tree trunks. I’ll add that to my practice list
next to evergreens. I think it is important to show the less successful canvases
too. Like this one.
S2E11 Black Waterfall. Black canvases are so much fun to paint.
S2E10 Lazy river.
S2E9 Bob’s Black and White seascape, it’s getting stormy! The frame under the
stretched canvas is quite visible in this one. Is that fixable? Or should I ignore
it unless I’m trying a serious canvas or someone is paying me?
S2E8 Things are getting fun fun fun! Reflections!
S2E6 Black river I feel like I am getting somewhere with my trees! Around here I
bought some new brushes to help create the happy little trees.
In my next painting I wanted to paint some mountains, but differently than usual.
I didn’t want them all snow covered and I didn’t want the light coming from the right
like in previous mountain paintings. Here we have brown mountains instead of snow covered
with little glaciers way up high. I may have skipped ahead many seasons to find an
episode with these mountains. It was real challenge getting the light to come from the
left side instead of the right! I am not pleased with the result, it might be a good
one to try again! Probably inspired by S2E7!
In S2E4 Shades of Gray I was intrigued by the monochrome idea and decided to try it with
crimson!
Do you like green clouds? Me neither. Blue plus yellow equals green and this sky
had too much blue. I think my canvas was too wet here too, the streaks are either
due to that or me being too heavy handed on the blend. Bob would say to use three hairs
and some air to give you an idea of how light the pressure should be.
After Ebony Sea I wanted to create something all my own. So we have a desert scene
with funky cacti that might be cactus people. We have a weird wispy dragon thing
due to a happy accident with a cloud.
S2E3 Ebony Sea.
Skipping ahead to Season 2 we have S2E2 Winter Sun.
What comes after 11? Yes, S1E12 Snow Fall!
Here we have my version of S1E11 Winter Glow.
This one I painted along with Bob Ross’s Joy of Painting Season 1 Episode 2.
S1E2 was probably my third or fourth oil painting ever.
This early attempt is Season 1 Episode 1 of Bob Ross’s Joy of Painting
named A Walk in the Woods. I learned that it is not a good painting for a beginner
to try. Later seasons have some much simpler and better explained paintings.
I created these paintings in the Bob Ross style. What is the Bob Ross style? This method is not new, nor created by Bob, but certainly popularized by him. Bob learned from Bill Alexander. Known as wet on wet or alla prima the method is centuries old. Both painted on a canvas that was prepared with a thin/oily coat of paint. Bob called it Liquid White. You can make your own, internet paint sleuths experimented and came up with 50% Titanium White and 50% linseed oil mixture that works for them. Use it as a starting point and adjust as needed by your painting style as you develop it.
Why do that? Then the painter has a few advantages, the paint will take longer to dry, wet paint can be manipulated and blended in exciting ways! Also the painter can walk away for a while, and come back to continue working with wet-ish paint!
Want to learn more about the method? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-on-wet) can help.