Trivia / The Joy of Painting

• Died During Production: Production of a 32nd series was halted when Ross was diagnosed with lymphoma. He passed away from the disease on July 4, 1995. According to a 2011 PBS documentary, Ross actually had reference paintings ready for the 32nd series, but was too sick to continue. One of his final acts was to certify other people to teach his methods, so that they could establish workshops across the U.S. Given the ease of this teaching method, you can usually find a similar workshop at a local hobby center.
• Doing It for the Art:
  • Aside from being a really Nice Guy, this was also part of his shtick. Ross just really liked painting, and a lot of the money he made went to various charities. When he died, nearly every painting he had not yet sold was either donated to various non-profit organizations or auctioned off with the proceeds going (again) to charity.
  • Ross would mention this trope in a tongue-in-cheek fashion whenever he was about to explain something that would help sell a painting. He always prefaced it by saying something like "Now, of course you're not doing this for money, but if you were..."
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: While this series is itself readily available on DVD and the Internet to this day, particularly through Ross's official website (and regularly streamed on Twitch since November 2015), its predecessor, KOCE-produced The Magic of Oil Painting with Ross' mentor Bill Alexander, hasn't been so lucky, and to date, very few episodes in its run are available even on online video streaming websites.
• Long Runner:
  • Continuously rebroadcast in Germany since 2001.
  • Twitch and YouTube have kept episodes available for the foreseeable future.
  • Many PBS stations also air episodes.
• Money, Dear Boy: Apart from not wanting to become a mean person, Ross left the Air Force because his paintings soon earned him more money. He's also not shy about pointing out which techniques attract the most buyers. However, given his noted tendency of Doing It for the Art his encouragement was always less along the lines of "painting will make you money" than "There's nothing wrong with making money doing something that you love."
  A lot of people buy paintings more for color than for content, because they're looking for something to fit a specific need. (S.18, Ep. 8)
• Newbie Boom: The series saw a major resurgence in popularity after the smash success of its Twitch marathon in 2015, which prompted a huge following among viewers who weren't even born yet during the show's original run.
• No Budget: The show's presentation is deliberately minimalist, particularly from the second season on, featuring only Bob and his canvas against a stark black background with no background music until the credits. The first few seasons didn't even have an animated title sequence, instead often using a step-by-step slideshow of one of the paintings.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: The rumors that fellow PBS Nice Guy Fred Rogers was in the military apparently started when someone got him and Bob Ross (who did serve in the military) mixed up, with the other details such as Rogers being a sniper or wearing sweaters to cover his tattoos growing from there.

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