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in: Seasons, Episodes

The Joy of Painting

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The Joy of Painting was an American half-hour instructional television show hosted by painter Bob Ross which ran from January 11, 1983 to May 17, 1994, with a total of 403 half-hour episodes produced over 31 seasons. In each episode, Ross taught techniques for landscape oil painting, completing a painting in each session.

Production[]

Broadcast by non-commercial public television stations. The first season aired in 1983, and was produced by WNVC in Falls Church, Virginia, and then, by WIPB in Muncie, Indiana from 1984 until the show's ending in 1994, and then, by Blue Ridge Public Television, and currently by American Public Television. WGN, a television station in Chicago aired reruns of The Joy of Painting, between 1994 and 1996. The same year, reruns began to air in syndication in the United States under the title The Best of The Joy of Painting. This syndicated package featured a collection of Bob Ross's favorite paintings from past seasons. By the early 90s, nearly 300 episodes of The Joy of Painting were on the air in the United States, and then Canada. Soon, The Joy of Painting began broadcasting in many countries and translations around the world, such as Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Turkey, Iran, South Korea, Europe, Latin America, Greece, France, and Japan.

Format[]

Each 30-minute show usually begins with Ross, as well as a guest painter, standing beside a blank white canvas against a black background. The show would often feature guest appearances from other painters, who paint alongside Ross, such as Dana Jester, Steve Ross, John Thamm, his pet squirrel Peapod, Bobette, and many others. Within 30 minutes, Ross (or a guest) would graphically run the colors across the screen (this was not done in early seasons), as he turned the blank white canvas into a landscape oil painting, as well as a seascape, and winter scenery, using the wet-on-wet oil painting technique, in which Ross continued to add paint on top of still went paint, rather than waiting for each layer of paint to dry. Combining this method is the use of 2-inch and other types of painting brushes, as well as palette knives, which allowed him, and some guests, as they paint various trees, water, clouds, mountains, seascapes, log cabins, and winter scenery in a matter of seconds.

Each painting would start with simple criss-cross strokes that appeared to be nothing more than the smudges of color. As he and the guests added more and more criss-cross strokes, the blotches transformed into intricate landscapes, as well as seascapes, and winter scenery. The paintings featured colors, such as titanium white, phthalo green, phthalo blue, Prussian blue, midnight black, dark sienna, van dyke brown, alizarin crimson, sap green, cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, Indian yellow, and bright red. In the show's early seasons, Ross used burnt umber, and permanent red. As he painted, he instructed the viewers regarding the techniques. He added comments describing the "happy little trees", and "happy little clouds" that he was creating with his munitions. He would also have home video footage of Ross with a baby squirrel, as well as a deer, a raccoon, and another small animal. At the end of each episode, Ross was known for saying something akin to "So from all of us here, I'd like to wish you happy painting, and god bless, my friend". And then, the credits roll over a shot of the day's painting, with the show's theme song being heard.

In popular culture[]

In 1994, Bob Ross appeared on the last episode of the first season of Bill Nye the Science Guy (season 1, episode 20 "Eyeball"), where he did a self-parody segment entitled "The Artistic Eye with Bob Ross". In it, he talks about what rods and cones do, and paints rods and cones inside an outline of an eyeball. In 1995, he teamed up with a crew from Muncie, to produce a children's show called The Adventures of Elmer and Friends, but he was too ill to travel to Indiana to shoot the pilot, so the crew came along, and recorded Bob's parts from his home. Then, in 1994, about a year before his death, Ross made a guest appearance on the daytime talk show Donahue, and then, in 1989, Ross appeared on the daytime talk show The Joan Rivers Show, promoting his hardcover book The Best of The Joy of Painting. In 1992, Ross made a guest appearance on the daytime talk show Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, to promote his hardcover book More Joy of Painting. In 2021, Ross appeared in a commercial for Mountain Dew, where he paints happy little droplets, and takes the Mountain Dew off of a landscape oil painting.

Season List[]

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