Mt. McKinley. Painting #57. Bob Ross’s First Mountain Painting

Mt. McKinley is painting #57. This is a replica of Bob Ross’s first mountain painting and it marks sort of a milestone, if you will, in my painting hobby. It is the first painting I did on Twitch, the live streaming platform. This is not the first time I have painted live in front of people. If you recall in some of my earlier posts, I did a few paintings on Facebook Live for my friends and family. The difference with Twitch is that the audience was mostly strangers.

Let’s Get Started

This post is about my version of Mt. McKinley by Bob Ross. This is Bob Ross’s first mountain painting he did on the show. First, I’ll talk about the inspiration for this painting. When I talk about inspiration in this blog, it will normally be why I chose a certain subject or Bob Ross episode to follow. Then, I will go over the colors and equipment I used and that you will need if you want to try your hand at it. Next, I will expound a bit about my process and how to paint Mt. McKinley even if you are a beginner and new to painting with Bob Ross. Finally, I’ll wrap up with some lessons that I learned from painting this picture and things I could have done better or wished I had known. So join me on this trip down memory lane as I recap my 57th oil painting. 

The Story Behind Streaming Art on Twitch

Back in December 2018, while I was still displaced from Hurricane Michael, I received a direct message from an old co-worker, Nick. Nick and I were stationed in Germany together. This was the same person that commissioned Kodiak Spring. In his message, he suggested that I consider streaming my art on Twitch and that he thought I’d be good at it. He had a bit of streaming experience himself and has purchased art from Twitch artists. So, he planted a seed. I started doing the research about what I would need to put into it and it turns out, not really a whole lot. 

Ever since that message, I started watching art on Twitch channels. I started watching some Twitch artists to get an idea of how they did things, using an old Twitch account I created to watch the CRI Fridays that I mentioned in a couple of my previous posts. I watched a bunch of how to and Twitch tip videos on YouTube as well and was getting so excited that I started editing my channel.

Influences

One particular channel I stumbled on one night was an artist by the name of Kitslam. He was drawing a very realistic looking crocodile with colored pencils. I started watching and interacting in the chat and became a regular viewer. In time, I mentioned my streaming intentions and shared some of my past artwork. Kitslam and his community were immensely supportive by following my channel, offering me tips, and helping out with the channel. Them along with Nick helped get my channel off the ground and got me a lot of followers before I even did my first stream. Nick was especially helpful with the technical aspects of setting up my stream.

Eventually I moved back into my home, even though it wasn’t 100% complete, in late February and did this one about two weeks later. So here we are now, at Mt. McKinley.

The Inspiration

For my first stream, I didn’t want anything too complicated or challenging. I just wanted to get a feel for painting and streaming at the same time. I followed along with the 2nd ever episode of The Joy of Painting. This is S1E2, Bob Ross’s first mountain painting! I didn’t watch it as I did the painting. I watched it first then did it from a reference photo.

Materials Required

Here are the colors and equipment I used.

Whether you want to continue on your journey after painting your first masterpiece from the Bob Ross Master Kit DVD or painting for the first time, here are the colors and equipment you will need for this painting. The kit includes everything you need to paint this painting in particular as well as many other spectacular Bob Ross masterpieces. Getting this kit will eliminate the anxiety of buying the right brushes made of the right materials or the right oil paints with correct firmness or pigment ratios. Everything you need is there and ready to go. 

Colors (included in the master kit)

• Alizarin Crimson
• Cadmium Yellow
• Midnight Black
• Phthalo Blue
• Sap Green
• Titanium Hwite
• Van Dyke Brown
• Don’t forget the Liquid Hwite!

• Yellow Ochre
• Indian Yellow
• Dark Sienna

Equipment

• 2 Inch Brush
• 1 Inch Brush
• #6 Fan Brush
• Large Palette Knife
• Script Liner Brush

Before We Begin

Every Bob Ross painting begins by covering the canvas with a medium. In most paintings he starts off with the medium known as Liquid White. Liquid White is a thin, fluid paint. Much thinner than the normal oil paint. This makes it easy to apply and mix with other colors right on the canvas. Learn how to apply Bob Ross mediums in this post. 

Tips, Tricks, & Lessons Learned

Nothing in this painting gave me fits or anything. The composition was rather simple. Foliage highlights, normally one of my weaknesses, actually came out great! What streaming and painting helped me do was to slow down and take my time. I wasn’t rushing at all. That may be why the highlights came out the way they did.

Since this is straight from a Joy of Painting episode, I’m sure many people have attempted this one before, especially since it’s Bob Ross’s first ever mountain painting on the show. Here are a couple of tips to remember if you attempt it.

– Bring the highlights and shadow all the way down to the bottom of the mountain. This is something I’m guilty of not doing often and I didn’t do it here either. I often think that the bottom will get covered up. Most of the time it does but to be on the safe side, bring at least a very thing layer of highlights/shadows all the way to the bottom. Then you can mist it out later.

– The mountain in this episode has a particular shape. When doing the left side of the mountain, I would put the shadow in first, then add the highlight. If you do it the other way around, the knife will be awkward to work with.

– I added a couple little extra things to my version. There a little flower patch in the bottom left corner. I also added a dead tree that looks like the wind is blowing it and only it and no other foliage in the painting. Not sure if that was intentional but I think it’s fitting since this is the first painting since moving home after being displaced by Hurricane Michael. A lot of trees still look like that around my town.

Additional Tips

Pay attention to where he places features. Sometimes Bob doesn’t explain the why behind the how. He always says to paint whatever you want because it’s your world but there’s a reason he does what he does. After a while, you’ll start to figure out why he does certain things and be able to do it on your own. 

This was a lot of fun to do on Twitch. I couldn’t have asked for a better stream and what better painting to stream than Bob Ross’s first mountain painting. I had a lot of viewers for a first time stream. A huge thanks goes out to the Kitslam community, aka the Slam Fam, the Sports Misc Discord, xxDoucheBagginsxx, and of course my wonderful wife, who, skeptical of the whole Twitch thing at first, came around and was a huge support.

Afterward, I downloaded the video from Twitch, chopped it up, sped it up to create a time lapse and put it on YouTube. I started doing these with a lot of my streams. I think they’re pretty cool. The music I use in them is original and composed by my very good friend from way back to our days living in barracks in England, Marty. He and his best friend Theresa had a podcast called the Disaster Digital podcast and he created his own music for that. You can check out his music at https://soundcloud.com/disasterdigital .

Here’s the video for the time lapse of this painting. While I have no ambitions of becoming a big YouTube star or anything, go ahead and hit the subscribe button as I upload more painting time lapses. 

Final Thoughts 

This was a lot of fun to do on Twitch. I couldn’t have asked for a better stream. I had a lot of viewers for the first stream. A huge thanks goes out to the Kitslam community, aka the Slam Fam, the Miscord brothers, xxDoucheBagginsxx, and of course my wonderful wife, who, skeptical of the whole Twitch thing at first, came around and was a huge support.

So yeah, I’m doing a lot more with my art nowadays. If you want to keep up, follow me on all my social media sites. Hit that like, follow, subscribe or whatever. Certainly give me a follow on Twitch if you want to watch me paint live. Domkizzle . If you want to buy some of that art, you can find it in my new Art Store. And as always…

Happy painting!