Bob Ross Painting With Least Colors
Whether or not you’re artistically inclined, there’s a acceptable adventitious that you—like millions of added bodies about the world—have been captivated by Bob Ross’s advisory mural paintings and abatement voice. On what would accept been Ross’s 75th birthday, we’re administration 35 facts about the blessed little legend.
A constant beastly lover, Ross was consistently rescuing blood-soaked animals and nursing them aback to health. As a kid growing up in Florida, this meant one rather aberrant accession to the family: an alligator, which he attempted to abettor aback to bloom in the Ross ancestors bathtub. Alike in his developed life, Ross was consistently arena host to orphaned and afflicted animals, including an epileptic accumulate that lived in his abandoned Jacuzzi.
Ross’s quiet articulation and affable address were two of his best iconic traits, which makes the actuality that he spent 20 years in the United States Air Force and retired with the rank of adept baker all the added surprising. Basically, he was the guy who told anybody abroad what to do.
Before he lent his adapted articulation to The Joy of Painting, Ross spent a lot of time yelling. "I was the guy who makes you abrade the latrine, the guy who makes you accomplish your bed, the guy who screams at you for actuality backward to work,” Ross already said. “The job requires you to be a mean, boxy person. And I was fed up with it. I promised myself that if I anytime got abroad from it, it wasn't activity to be that way anymore."
While stationed in Alaska during his assignment in the Air Force, Ross advantaged his artistic ancillary by painting his now-iconic landscapes assimilate aureate pans, which he awash for $25 apiece. Today, they can aback as abundant as $7500 on eBay.
From 1974 to 1982, German painter Bill Alexander hosted an art apprenticeship appearance on PBS, The Magic of Oil Painting, area he aggregate his “wet-on-wet” oil painting technique. Ross apparent the alternation while alive as a bartender, and became an actual fan of the artist. He concluded up belief beneath Alexander, who became his mentor. In fact, Ross committed the aboriginal adventure of his own PBS show, The Joy of Painting, to Alexander. “Years ago, Bill accomplished me this absurd technique,” Ross told viewers. “And I feel as admitting he gave me a adored gift, and I'd like to allotment that allowance with you.”
In the aboriginal 1980s, as Alexander was advancing to retire, he asked Ross to booty over teaching his painting classes. Ross agreed, and set out to bout the country on his own in a motor home, traveling and teaching bodies Alexander’s “wet-on-wet” technique. He told his wife Jane that he’d try it out for one year, and if he didn’t accomplish abundant money, he would acknowledgment to Alaska.
It was during Ross’s time on the alley that he adopted his iconic hairstyle. Back teaching painting wasn’t an acutely advantageous profession, Ross abstruse to amplitude every penny. One way he did this was to save money on haircuts by accepting his locks permed.
Though Ross reportedly hated the coiled hair, he was a agent first, which is why he kept it. “When we got a band of paints and brushes, we put his account on,” Bob Ross Aggregation co-founder Annette Kowalski told Mental Floss. “The logo is a account of Bob with that hair, so he could never get it cut. He wasn’t consistently blessed about that.”
(You can see what he looked like afterwards his brand perm here.)
Though it was Alexander who got Ross started on his career aisle as an artist, it was Kowalski—one of Ross’s students—who put him on the pop ability map. Kowalski, who is generally accustomed as the woman who "discovered" Ross, took a five-day advisory advance with Ross in 1982, and bound became amorous with his abstracted articulation and absolute messages.
In accession to newfound painting skills, Kowalski larboard the chic with a new client: she became Ross’s manager, allowance him agent the accord for The Joy of Painting television appearance with PBS, and later, a band of Bob Ross art supplies.
The Joy of Painting ran new seasons on PBS from 1983 to 1994, so alike at accessible broadcasting ante the appearance charge accept fabricated Ross absolutely a bit of loot, right? Not quite. Ross absolutely did the alternation for free; his assets came from Bob Ross Inc.
Ross's aggregation awash art food and how-to videotapes, accomplished classes, and alike had a affiliation of traveling art advisers who roamed the apple teaching painting. It's boxy to anticipate of a bigger advertisement for these articles than Ross's show.
How did Ross acquisition the time to band all of those shows for free? He could almanac a division about as fast as he could paint. Ross could blast out an absolute 13-episode division of The Joy of Painting in aloof over two days, which freed him up to get aback to teaching lessons, which is area he fabricated his absolute money.
In accession to actuality agitated by about 95 percent of all accessible television stations beyond America, extensive admirers in added than 93.5 actor homes, The Joy of Painting was a hit alfresco of the U.S. as well. The appearance was advertisement in dozens of adopted countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, South Korea, and Turkey.
The Joy of Painting was a big hit in Japan, area it aired alert a day. (His voice, however, was dubbed.) On a appointment to the country, Ross was reportedly chock-full by fans.
"We're like biologic dealers,” Ross already said of the acceptance of his painting technique. “Come into boondocks and get everybody absolutely absorbed to painting. It doesn't booty abundant to get you addicted.”
Though he was assuredly a pop ability phenomenon, the art apple didn’t absolutely embrace Ross. “People absolutely apperceive who he is," Kevin Lavin, a “struggling” painter, told The New York Times in 1991. "In his own way, he is as acclaimed as Warhol.”
"It is formulaic and thoughtless,” sculptor Keith Frank said of Ross’s assignment in the aforementioned article. “Art as therapy."
“I am abashed by art apprenticeship on television," added Abstract Expressionist Richard Pousette-Dart, who anesthetized abroad the afterward year. "It's terrible—bad, bad, bad. They are aloof bartering exploiters, non-artists teaching added non-artists."
The New York Times paid a appointment to Pearl Acrylic Company, an art accumulation abundance in New York City, area an agent acicular to the “happy little corner" area they kept Ross’s products. "We adumbrate them," he admitted, "so as not to offend."
Bill Alexander was one of the artists who wasn’t captivated with Ross’s success, alike admitting he had been his protégé. “He betrayed me," Alexander told The New York Times. "I invented 'wet on wet.' I accomplished him and he is artful me—what bothers me is not aloof that he betrayed me, but that he thinks he can do it better."
Though allotment of Ross’s address was his communicative tone, all his allocution of blessed accidents and added blessed little things wasn’t ad libbed. “He told me he would lay in bed at night and plan every word,” Kowalski already said. “He knew absolutely what he was doing.”
Though you’d never apperceive it from his painting technique, not all of Ross’s digits were intact. He absent allotment of his larboard basis feel back he was a kid in a woodworking blow while alive with his dad, who was a carpenter.
While copse and wildlife generally helped accompany Ross’s paintings to life, he rarely corrective people. In fact, he admired to accumulate his assignment as people-free as possible.
“I will acquaint you Bob’s better secret,” Kowalski told FiveThirtyEight. “If you notice, his cabins never had chimneys on them. That’s because chimneys represented people, and he didn’t appetite any assurance of a actuality in his paintings.”
The Joy of Painting consistently featured a alternating casting of blessed little animals, with a tiny accumulate alleged Peapod apparently accepting the aggregate of airtime. According to Ross, Peapod admired to sit in his pocket.
Though The Joy of Painting was a admired series, bodies didn’t assume to be watching it to apprentice how to be the abutting Picasso. It was already estimated that alone 10 percent of admirers were absolutely painting forth with Ross.
In 2014, FiveThirtyEight did a statistical breakdown of Ross’s assignment on The Joy of Painting and begin that 91 percent of them included at atomic one tree—by far the best accepted element. (And if he corrective one tree, there was a 93 percent adventitious he’d acrylic a added one—though he referred to any added copse as “friends” on the show.)
On a few occasions, Ross’s son Steve subbed for his dad as a bedfellow host. That aforementioned abstracts set apparent that Steve admired blessed little lakes: 91 percent of Steve’s paintings featured one (as against to Bob’s 34 percent).
Ross attempt 403 episodes of The Joy of Painting and fabricated three near-exact copies of anniversary painting per episode. The aboriginal archetype consistently hid off screen, and Ross referred to it while the cameras formed (none of his on-air paintings were spontaneous). Ross corrective a third archetype back filming finished. This time, an abettor would angle abaft him and breeze photos of anniversary brushstroke; these pictures went into his how-to books.
For all his accepted popularity, there aren’t a lot of interviews with Ross. It has annihilation to do with the artisan actuality publicity-shy—it’s aloof that bodies rarely asked. “I never about-face bottomward requests for interviews,” he already said. “I’m aloof rarely asked.”
For all his hokey-ness, Ross was air-conditioned abundant to be asked to be a bell-ringer for MTV—which he accounted “The acreage of blessed little trees.”
Though some anticipation it was an April Fools’ joke, Nintendo had affairs to actualize a alternation of video amateur based on The Joy of Painting. Unfortunately, the activity ran into assembly problems appealing aboriginal on, so we’ll never apperceive what ability accept been.
In 2001, Bob Ross Inc. media administrator Joan Kowalski told The New York Times how bodies about seemed ashamed to accept that Ross’s articulation was the absolute band-aid to insomnia. “It's funny to allocution to these people,'' she said. ''Because they anticipate they're the alone ones who watch to booty a nap. Bob knew about this. Bodies would appear up to him and say, 'I don't appetite to aching your feelings, but you've been putting me to beddy-bye for 10 years.' He'd adulation it.''
Even today, Ross has become an ASMR star: On the ASMR cilia on Reddit, “Bob Ross” is listed as a accepted trigger. A video of Ross painting a abundance has a amazing 7.6 actor views, with others before 2 or 3 actor appearance marks. Of course, not all of those are ASMR viewers, but a ascent online attendance suggests they absolutely deserve some of the credit.
In a 1991 account with The New York Times, Ross claimed he'd fabricated over 30,000 paintings back he was an 18-year-old stationed in Alaska with the Air Force. Yet he was not one to militarist his own work. So what happened to them? Back Ross died of lymphoma in 1995, best of his paintings either concluded up in the easily of alms or PBS.
“One of the questions that I apprehend over and over and over is, ‘What do we do with all these paintings we do on television?’ Best of these paintings are donated to PBS stations beyond the country,” he said. “They bargain them off, and they accomplish a blessed blade with ‘em. So if you’d like to accept one, get in blow with your PBS station, account … we accord them to stations all over the country to advice them out with their fundraisers.”
The actuality that Ross didn’t try and about-face a accumulation from his own assignment doesn’t beggarly that you can’t acquisition one for sale. At one point, added than a dozen of his paintings hit the atramentous bazaar back accession blanket 13 advertence paintings from Ross’s van during the show's added season.
In the aboriginal 1990s, Ross was attractive to annex out from art and had an abstraction for a kids’ appearance alleged Bob’s World, area he planned to go out into attributes and advise kids about wildlife.
The Bob Ross Art Workshop in New Smyrna Beach, Florida is a must-visit destination for Ross die-hards: In accession to alms art classes in Ross’s method, you’ll acquisition a accumulating of the artist’s aboriginal paintings.
Two Inch Brush—named afterwards Ross's besom of best for the wet-on-wet technique—is an actionable database that organizes all 403 paintings from The Joy of Painting by division and episode.
Funko
In August, Funko appear a vinyl baby of the iconic artist/television personality. It depicts Ross dressed in his brand jeans and accepted shirt, captivation a painter’s palette. Sadly, it doesn’t appear with any miniature paintings of "happy little trees."
