The joy of painting

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the inspirational aspects of watching „The Joy of Painting“.

On October 29th, the birthday of Bob Ross, Twitch began to broadcast an all-episodes marathon of „The Joy of Painting“ in order to inspire and entertain the internet, as well as to bring some attention to the just launched „Twitch Creative“ branch [1]. Twitch is a social video platform for gamers that allows vested computer game players to broadcast their gameplay as livestreams. In addition, Twitch is commonly used to broadcast coverages of major e-sport events and computer game conventions. Since October 28th, Twitch features „Twitch Creative“ which targets artists as well as creators and allows them to share their work with others by broadcasting livestreams of their creative processes.

The Bob Ross marathon was a huge success and attracted more than 50.000 people within the first few hours. After 8.5 days, as the end of the marathon was approaching, a lot of people have been sad and wished the marathon would continue. As a result of this phenomenon, Twitch came up with a new plan and introduced the Bob Ross Monday night. From now on, Twitch will broadcast one season of „The Joy of Painting“ every Monday twice in order to allow the whole world to catch the broadcast. The first Bob Ross night, broadcasted on November 9th, attracted more than 81.000 viewers within the first 30 minutes.

Although some episodes are already more than 30 years old, the concept is still valid, relaxing and inspiring. In less than 30 minutes, Bob Ross paints a beautiful „happy“ painting, invites his viewers to paint along and explains his painting technique to teach others how to paint. The TV Show is not only educational, but also very relaxing. This is due to Bob’s very calm voice and the „happy“ and „positive“ colors he uses to compose his paintings. Furthermore, Bob adds to most elements he paints the adjective „happy“ and emphasize the positive effect of the show. „A happy little cloud„. „Happy little trees„. Finally, Bob inspires and encourages his viewers to start painting and to be creative. „You too can paint almighty pictures.“ „You can do anything you want to do. This is your world.“ „We don’t make mistakes. We just have happy accidents.“ By saying those words, Bob takes away the fear of doing something wrong and encourages his viewers to just start painting and follow their feelings.

The inspirational aspect of „The Joy of Painting“ can also be applied to our daily life. It’s our life and we can do anything we want to do. If something goes wrong, we should not take it too serious as mostly positive things will result of a „happy accident“. Finally, the huge success of the Bob Ross Monday is also a good indication that, especially in our fast paced time, we need to have something that allows us to relax and to calm down so that we can regain strength to tackle the next challenge.

„The secret to doing anything is believing that you can do it. Anything that you believe you can do strong enough, you can do. Anything. As long as you believe.„