Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting: Now Free on YouTube

Last year, we let you know that the first sea­son of The Joy of Paint­ing, the pub­lic-tele­vi­sion paint-along show host­ed by the neat­ly permed and per­sis­tent­ly reas­sur­ing Bob Ross, had appeared free to watch online.

Pro­duced by WNVC in Falls Church, Vir­ginia, that sea­son aired in 1983, and had some rough edges — the audi­ble move­ments and mur­murs of the crew in the back­ground, the nat­u­ral­ly impro­vi­sa­tion­al Ross’ occa­sion­al stum­ble over one of his script­ed lines — that would get thor­ough­ly smoothed away as the pro­gram rapid­ly became an inter­na­tion­al TV insti­tu­tion, a process you can wit­ness again for your­self now that Bob Ross’ Youtube chan­nel has made avail­able all 31 sea­sons free online.

Sea­son Two

“Bob Ross died in 1995 at 52 after a bat­tle with lym­phoma,” writes the New York Times’ Fos­ter Kamer, “but his cul­tur­al lega­cy has grown in his absence. He was around to wit­ness the begin­nings of his own cult sta­tus. In the ear­ly ’90s, he was big in Japan. And MTV, cater­ing to the Gen X pen­chant for irony, ran a series of pro­mo­tion­al adver­tise­ments that fea­tured him.”

Gen Xers across Amer­i­ca would sure­ly all have caught glimpses of Ross — and more impor­tant­ly, heard a few of his mes­mer­iz­ing­ly deliv­ered words — dur­ing late-night or mid­day chan­nel-surf­ing ses­sions, but now, thanks to the increas­ing avail­abil­i­ty of The Joy of Paint­ing’s archives on-demand and online, it’s made new fans even of those born after Ross had already depart­ed.

Sea­son Three

The show always made it easy for its view­ers to paint as they watched, with Ross always tak­ing the time to run down the short list of required tools, mak­ing tire­less­ly sure to empha­size that under no cir­cum­stances should they buy nylon brush­es or clean those brush­es with tur­pen­tine. As the pro­duc­tion val­ues increased, so did the num­ber of col­ors on the palette, though they nev­er expand­ed too far beyond the core set, which The Joy of Paint­ing die-hards can rat­tle off like a mantra, of Bright Red, Phtha­lo Blue, Mid­night Black, Alizarin Crim­son, Cad­mi­um Yel­low, Van Dyke Brown, Tita­ni­um White, Sap Green — and, as Ross him­self might say, the “almighty” can­vas-cov­er­ing Mag­ic White, the foun­da­tion of the “wet-on-wet” tech­nique he learned from men­tor, and lat­er bit­ter rival, Bill Alexan­der.

Sea­son Four

The New York Times arti­cle quotes Annette Kowal­s­ki, a one­time stu­dent of Ross who now helps run the Bob Ross, Inc. empire, on the host’s endur­ing appeal as a teacher: “If you lis­ten close­ly to Bob’s pro­grams, he nev­er says ‘I’m going to teach you this. He nev­er assumes that he knows more than you do. He says: ‘We’ll learn this togeth­er.’ And I think — even though peo­ple don’t real­ize it — I think that’s what his big turn-on is.” But it almost goes with­out say­ing that not every­one fas­ci­nat­ed by the show, and maybe not even most peo­ple fas­ci­nat­ed by the show, actu­al­ly have any desire to paint them­selves.

Sea­son Five

So why do they still tune in, on what­ev­er plat­form they might tune in on, and in such large num­bers? The key must have some­thing to do with Ross’ oft-repeat­ed reminders to his view­ers that, when it comes to the land­scapes on their own can­vas­es, “this is your world, your cre­ation,” and in your world, “there are no set, firm rules — you find what works for you, and that’s what you do.” On The Joy of Paint­ing, Ross cre­at­ed a world, or per­haps a real­i­ty, of his own, one where “any­body can paint; all you need is a dream in your heart and a lit­tle prac­tice,” where “there are no mis­takes, just hap­py acci­dents” (plen­ti­ful­ly inhab­it­ed, of course, by “hap­py lit­tle trees”), and one which many found they enjoyed liv­ing in, brush in hand or not, even if only for 26 min­utes at a time.

Sea­son Six

We will con­tin­u­ing adding sea­sons to this list as they become avail­able.

Sea­son Sev­en

Sea­son Eight

Sea­son Nine

Sea­son Ten

Sea­son 11

Sea­son 12

Sea­son 13

Sea­son 14

Sea­son 15

Sea­son 16

Sea­son 17

Sea­son 18

Sea­son 19

Sea­son 20

Sea­son 21

Sea­son 22

Sea­son 23

Sea­son 24

Sea­son 25

Sea­son 26

Sea­son 27

Sea­son 28

Sea­son 29

Sea­son 30

Sea­son 31

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing Is Now Free Online: Watch Sea­son 1

Icon­ic Artists at Work: Watch Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et and More

Watch Picas­so Cre­ate Entire Paint­ings in Mag­nif­i­cent Time-Lapse Film (1956)

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

Jack­son Pol­lock 51: Short Film Cap­tures the Painter Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art

Aston­ish­ing Film of Arthrit­ic Impres­sion­ist Painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1915)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.