‘Making art is good for you’: During lockdown I discovered the joy of painting

At the beginning of lockdown I bought a TV after years of being the person ‘who didn’t watch television’ what I found was The Joy of Painting by Bob Ross, and was captivated, writes Christine Manby

Illustration by Tom Ford

At the beginning of lockdown, I bought myself a new telly. I used to be one of those smug people who “didn’t watch television”. My set was more than 15 years old. It could only get two channels – BBC2 and Channel 5 – and then only if I could persuade someone to stand next to it holding the portable aerial aloft in the manner of an eighteenth-century footman lifting a candelabra.

Lockdown changed everything. Though I had a “to be read” pile of books the height of the average 12-year-old, I couldn’t focus well enough to read anything more challenging than a book about lists (L’Arte De La Liste by Dominique Loreau. I recommend it highly). So I gave in and swapped my old TV for a new one. A week later, the TV arrived and instead of two channels, I had hundreds. That old Springsteen song, “57 Channels and Nothin’ On” proved truer than ever but at least I finally had BBC 4. And that is where I found The Joy of Painting.

Happening upon The Joy of Painting for the first time, I assumed I’d found a comedy show. A man with a big beard and even bigger hair, dressed in tight double denim, was splashing paint on a canvas. I expected an unfunny sketch parodying Australia’s former favourite artist and children’s television star. But after a minute or so, it became clear that this painting show was entirely serious. For the next twenty minutes, I watched as the bearded painter transformed the blank canvas into a mountain scene, deftly creating shadows and ski-slopes by merely changing the direction of his paint brush.

The painter was Bob Ross, a former sergeant in the US Air Force who taught himself to paint during his lunch breaks. Ross first introduced The Joy of Painting to the American public in 1983, which explained the hair, the beard and the outfit. In each show, Ross would create a complete landscape from scratch, using a “wet on wet” oil painting technique. The set was incredibly simple. Just Ross and his canvas against a plain background.

As Ross painted, he would explain his technique, showing viewers the paints mixed on his palette before he applied them to the canvas. With the simplest of brush strokes or the swish of a palette knife, he could create a “happy little tree”. “Happy little trees,” became something of a catchphrase for Ross.

The half-hour programmes were shot in real time, though Ross did employ something like the Blue Peter “Here’s one I made earlier” technique. He actually painted three versions of each landscape – one to act as a template, one to be painted in real time for the show, and a more polished version to be photographed for his books.

Ross’s trademark painting style was easy to follow and spawned thousands of imitations. If you’ve ever wondered how the sort of art you see in charity shops all over the world came into being, now you know. But it’s not so much the product as the process. Ross’s quiet and gentle delivery was (and still is), a huge part of the appeal. Apparently, upon leaving the air force, he vowed never to raise his voice again.

The Joy of Painting ran for 31 seasons and took home three Emmy awards. Ross filmed his last show in 1994 – he died a year later – but YouTube allowed The Joy of Painting to live on. In 2016, Netflix started streaming the show and now, for lockdown, you can watch it on BBC iPlayer.

But The Joy of Painting isn’t the only art show that’s been captivating audiences during lockdown. Over on Channel 4, in Grayson’s Art Club, Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry talks to artists, celebrities and viewers about their lockdown inspirations. When lockdown ends, he’ll be curating an exhibition of the art his guests and viewers have created. Meanwhile, in Life Drawing Live on BBC4, hosted by Josie d’Arby, locked-down viewers were offered the opportunity to sketch nude models in a real-time art class with artists Lachlan Goudie, Diana Ali and Nicky Philipps.

If you’re still not inspired to pick up a pencil, just watching the process can be absorbing. Half an hour of The Joy Of Painting felt like a little holiday

As Goudie pointed out at the beginning of the April class (which is available on iPlayer until 11 June), making art is good for you. The health benefits are scientifically proven. In 2014 German researchers from the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg studied the effects of participation in an art class compared with looking at art in a museum and discovered that those subjects who made art experienced an improvement in neural connectivity that was related to psychological resilience. The subjects of the experiment had an average age of 63, pointing to the usefulness of art as a means of arresting age-related cognitive decline.

At the University of Gothenburg, occupational therapist and art therapist Christina Blomdahl, tested a system of practical art therapy on 43 patients with severe or moderately severe depression. After 10 hour-long sessions, the patients saw an average improvement of five points on a depression rating scale.

Even though we know it could be beneficial in a time of high stress, sometimes the thought of picking up a brush or pencil can be daunting. What all three of these lockdown TV shows offer is a demystification of the process of making art. There’s no magic to the way Bob Ross paints. If you follow his instructions, you can achieve the same results. Meanwhile, Grayson’s Art Club shows just how broad the definition of art can be. His viewers send in photographs of work created in every medium from paint to plasticine. And the idea of a life drawing class on television is genius, stripping away (pun intended) the embarrassment of facing a nude model in a room full of other people, so you can just concentrate on the shapes and lines in front of you.

If you’re still not inspired to pick up a pencil, just watching the process can be absorbing. Half an hour of The Joy of Painting felt like a little holiday from the sometimes scary/mostly dull reality of Spring 2020.

In one of his shows, Ross tells his viewers, “I got a letter from somebody here a while back, and they said, ‘Bob, everything in your world seems to be happy’. That’s for sure. That’s why I paint. It’s because I can create the kind of world that I want, and I can make this world as happy as I want it. Shoot, if you want bad stuff, watch the news.”

If you want to feel better on the other hand, watch some art. If you want to feel fantastic, try to make some.