One of the things that I like about Bob Ross is that when he was in the Air Force and stationed in Alaska as a Master Sergeant he had to act like a really mean character and yell at people for minor infractions and mistakes. When he left the military he decided that he never wanted to be the kind of person who yelled at others like that again.
While his outward appearance within the show is one of a casual sort of hippie, he was extremely regimented and self disciplined. It has been reported that he would practice some paintings a half dozen times, while reciting the script along the way. Every moment of his program was planned to the second.
I always thought he had a painting off camera that he would look at. I remember seeing him look away from the canvas bit and just assumed that's what he was doing.
I don't remember where I heard or read this, but he made three copies of every painting, one for practice and to look at while filming, another while filming, and a third for the sort of timelapse they would have at the intro/end.
I highly recommend learning to paint. I started last year and I've already had a lot of insights that I am applying to running my startup, Gumroad, and designing our product.
I used to watch him on Twitch where they would play a bunch of episodes back to back. This man was a gift to the world, the episode with his squirrel really hits me in the feels every time.
When I was a kid in the 80s I'd watch on PBS, mesmerized, before I inevitably fell asleep. My dad called him the "human Quaalude" because his voice would put viewers into a peaceful trance.
Today we have the older gentleman from Tips from a shipwright, and the british guy that rebuilds Tally Ho, and that "redneck" Izzy Swan, and that other guy that works in constructions, whos name I forgot, and the Canadian guy with the wooden gears and the pantograph, and soo many others. All of this because the Internetz. Oh man, I love this age...
While his outward appearance within the show is one of a casual sort of hippie, he was extremely regimented and self disciplined. It has been reported that he would practice some paintings a half dozen times, while reciting the script along the way. Every moment of his program was planned to the second.