How Did Bob Ross Influence Art

The infamous painter of the oh so popular television program, Bob Ross, has created at least 30,000 paintings throughout his life. This children’s painter is one of the most known artists through all populations in our time. The famous television program The Joy of Painting has concluded at 403 episodes, he has since passed away from lymphoma in 1995. Even though he has died almost two decades ago, he still has a huge impact on people’s lives. Bob Ross is not forgotten, he has had a positive influence on many artists and touched millions of hearts through his positive outlook on life, calm demeanor, and his happy trees.

Bob Ross’ paintings mostly consisted of nature and alaskan sceneries through his imagination. There were hardly any

Ross took lessons from Bill Alexander whom they will become rivals later on as Alexander had a painting series on PBS before Bob Ross did. However, the the major difference between Alexander’s performance on PBS and Bob Ross’ performance was clearly evident. Bob Ross was significantly more popular than Alexander because of the way he spoke in a mellow tone voice, his way of engaging the audience with his positive outlook, and his signature Afro. He was the type of guy that you would invite over for some tea and music anytime. He had infamous quotes such as “There are no mistakes, there are just happy accidents” and “Let us put a happy little tree right there, yeah there’s the little guy”. He made it seem as though you were in a one-on-one session with him even though 90% admit to never having painted with Bob Ross but just enjoyed watching him and his gentle manner. Bob Ross was seen almost all over the world and most popular in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, the U.K., Germany, Mexico, and

Actually, Bob Ross was my role model while I was growing up. I was already a very creative and artistic kid in elementary school so I was instantly hooked when I first watched Bob Ross. He would always say, “I think there’s an artist hidden in the bottom of every single one of us, and here, we will try to show you how to bring that artist out, to put it on canvas”. This saying that he would say at the introduction of his lessons made me even more motivated to become an artist myself. In the show, he always looked so happy and joyful (hence the name) when he painted and I wanted to be like that. Just watching him paint in this relaxed aura made me happy and was very therapeutic to me. I wanted to make people feel the same way, so I started drawing for people and seeing smiles on their faces made me smile. During middle school I had forgotten him but he was always lurking in the back of my mind. Starting High School, I started to rewatch him and was instantly captivated by him again. I started actually following his painting tutorials and realized how simple but beautiful the finishing product came out. An article written by Laura Santhanam also agrees with my opinion. She wrote about how she tried to start painting like Bob Ross and her thought process through it. She also felt charmed by him as when she watched The Joy of Painting as a child. “His soothing voice and gentle demeanor encouraged [her] to