Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Statistically Happy Trees

A statistical analysis of Bob Ross' The Joy of Painting. [Link]
Bob Ross was a consummate teacher. He guided fans along as he painted “happy trees,” “almighty mountains” and “fluffy clouds” over the course of his 11-year television career on his PBS show, “The Joy of Painting.” In total, Ross painted 381 works on the show, relying on a distinct set of elements, scenes and themes, and thereby providing thousands of data points. I decided to use that data to teach something myself: the important statistical concepts of conditional probability and clustering, as well as a lesson on the limitations of data.
So let’s perm out our hair and get ready to create some happy spreadsheets!
What I found — through data analysis and an interview with one of Ross’s closest collaborators — was a body of work that was defined by consistency and a fundamentally personal ideal. Ross was born in Daytona, Fla., and joined the Air Force at 17. He was stationed in Fairbanks and spent the next 20 years in Alaska. His time there seems to have had a significant impact on his preferred subjects of trees, mountains, clouds, lakes and snow.
And of course:

When it comes down to it, “The Joy of Painting” was never really about painting. Even Kowalski, who runs a company that sells Bob Ross-branded painting supplies, believes most viewers aren’t in it for the art.
“The majority of people who watch Bob Ross have no interest in painting,” she said. “Mostly it’s his calming voice.”

2 comments:

bunny42 said...

Rubbish. You've seen my mom's paintings on the walls in my house. She was entirely self-taught, but watched all of the painting shows religiously to learn techniques and hints. Bob Ross and his ilk "taught" her about a base coat of gesso and blending medium, into which the colors are blended to produce all those happy clouds, etc. She couldn't abide his sappy voice and silly commentary, but was able to pick up many hints about how to form her subjects. She would tape his shows and watch them over and over, mostly with the volume muted. They aren't masterpieces, but people seem to like Thomas Kinkade, so why not Bob Ross?

Jeff said...

Well, Sarah definitely likes the show for his calming voice more than the art. YMMV.

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