Just Try It

The Joy of Painting

Hello Fort Bliss Community!

I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy during this unprecedented time. The last few months were incredibly challenging as the world came to a halt bringing a huge change in our lifestyles. With limited opportunities to try some of the MWR programs, I came to realize that I was lucky to participate in one of the Art and Hobby Shop classes, before the “Great Pause” started. Today, I wanted to share with you my experience and the joy of painting with Bob Ross.

Bob Ross is a well-known TV personality and art instructor famous for showing how to paint a landscape masterpiece. I was tremendously happy with this choice as I do enjoy scenic photography. Thus, I thought how fun would it be to create my own scenic painting?

Tara, the class instructor, articulated that Bob Ross promotes the vision to “enjoy the beauty and try something new.” So, everything you do, is good enough, no matter what! During this two-hour class, I was able to discover — for myself — how easy it was to paint!

The class provided the necessary equipment to include brushes, acrylic paint and a canvas board.

We used acrylic paint as it is fast, safer and dries quickly. Oil paint on the contrary, takes longer to dry and might be more challenging to use for beginners. Tara prepared the paint colors, and with such a great set-up, I was ready to go! We watched video instructions to demonstrate the techniques used to paint a landscape scenery of a mountain.

As a beginner, this tutorial gave me more comfort, and surprisingly it was such an easy style to paint! As instructed, I started to paint with far away objects, with this particular class we did a landscape of mountains. Then, I gradually painted objects that were closest onto the canvas. As the class progressed, Tara would pause the video, so we could mimic the steps explained on-screen. Truly, it was so much fun and your creativity is limitless!

This class gave me an opportunity to learn that each landscape begins with a simple paint stroke, and evolves into colorful scenes of forests, mountains, cloudy skies, or the ocean in just a matter of minutes! And don’t worry, if you make a mistake you can still make the best art! I learned a gentle reassurance, “do not give up, you can do it.” The best part of this really great experience was it got me to paint, and secondly, the whole idea is that anyone can paint. After all, everyone is an artist, you just have to get out and paint. Talent is not necessary, just be creative and make your vision come true.

Aneta Veedmont displays her landscape painting.

Due to COVID-19 Art & Hobby Shop is currently closed, however, they have been selling art kits for Soldiers and Families to do at home. If you follow them on Facebook at Fort Bliss Resiliency Through Art, you’ll see the live video streaming of their classes. If you would like to develop an interest in painting, give it a try!

For more information, call the Art & Hobby Shop at 915-568-5563.

Until next time,

Aneta