There's only so much a guy can do for you in a one-way medium. It's probably like doing tech support with a clueless relative over the phone.

His technique for a lot of this stuff is impressionistic, where you just do dabs of color that happen to look like things. It's like making squished "m" shapes with a pencil, and if you make enough of them, they start to actually look like flying birds in the sky.

This is going to sound kind of patronizing, but you could have been trying too hard to make it look real. Fast and easy is the way to do this stuff, and if you're making tons of little jabs at the canvas instead of a few, it's probably going to look bad. If you play an instrument, it's the difference between someone who obsessively stares at their hands, the music, their hands, etc. and even if they know how to play the piece, it's jerky and doesn't seem to flow.

It's also something you'd really have to practice at.

As good a place to reflect on painting as anywhere. I went to art school and took a number of painting courses with professors who were very much of the modern school of "just slap paint on the canvas and develop your own style!" Through the courses i learned nothing of technique, and just felt like money was being flushed down the drain every time i attended class. (I'm also colorblind and the prof wouldn't let us buy black, so i would just mix a bunch of acrylic into a deep gray green that would taint everything i tried to apply a shadow to.) That said, I think bob ross would have been a much better teacher than the ones I had who were only good at pulling talent out of people who already had a lot of it (because most of them went to art highschools...the freaks) His demeanor is everything, and his focus on positivity is what you should look at. Painting is a wonderful activity and even if all your hard work amounts to something that sucks, hey at least you made a painting, right?

It's funny, I went to an art school within a state school, and I feel like I had the opposite problem: too much technique. I remember in one watercolor class the assignment was "make 200 shades of green". I was kind of aggravated by it. To be fair, right now I appreciate knowing that I know how to make 200 shades of green.

In art you have to fall on your face a lot, in a very visible and embarrassing way, before reaching whatever your criteria of a competent artist is. Bob really could explain more technique, but I think his main goal is to keep pushing people to put in the brush miles, which is the only way to improve (preaching to the choir: but contrary to what everyone else thinks, talent helps, but rarely trumps hard work). Probably secondary is getting people to relax while falling on their faces practicing. People can have all kinds of hang ups and anxieties before they even put a mark on their canvas. Just relax. Failure is okay, as long as you learn and try again. Third is probably getting paid to paint on PBS.

also, paint really weird shit. it helps if you have demons.

nobody can tell you your painting sucks if it has enough realistic penises in it

That was just about the most interesting dialogue I've ever read on this site. Well done.