Bob Ross and his Paintings. A Multimedia Story.

I remember the first time watching “The Joy of Painting” with Bob Ross, hearing his calm voice coach me through brush techniques. On July 12, 2019, the New York Times posted a story titled: Where Are All the Bob Ross Paintings? We Found Them. 

The story describes how instead of selling his art, Ross made Bob Ross Inc. where they house almost all of his paintings, as well as distribution for his oil paint brand. Besides the company, the only other person who houses the rest of his paintings is Annet Kowalski, who was a close frond to Bob when he first started his show. Additionally, the Smithsonian wanted to showcase his art within their permanent collection, which would solidify his impact on our culture.

 The forms of media that they use are video, text, hyperlinks and photos. The main story is told though video, which was effective as most of the things described in the video are visual (paintings). 

The text gives additional information underneath the video, answering many frequently asked questions. Photos then go along with the text giving examples of Ross’s artwork.

“They don’t really plan on selling them, it wasn’t Bob’s thing” -New York Times, Emily Rhyne

The writing style for the rest of the NYT article is a question and answer format. The question is used as a header in bold, then the answers are underneath. The writing is short. They give simple answers that get to the point. 

For example, they have a question “How many Bob Ross paintings are there exactly?” Their answer begins with “We don’t know.”, but then follows up with a short paragraph giving their best estimate, including evidence from a website (that was hyperlinked). I think this was very effective as it is to the point. 

The storytelling elements they used were definitely shown in the video. They used a story arc, beginning of Bob Ross’s career journey all the way to current times. 

I think that the multimedia package was pretty successful because many parts of Bob Rosses’ life were visual, it was a good idea for most of the story to be on video. 

However, I do feel like due to the very large photos, I broke up much of the text, making it much harder to read. I would have preferred the paintings to be in a gallery or collage form because it would be easier on the eye. 

The hyperlinks were useful as you were able to see where NYT was using to support their claims, or if you wanted more information regarding the question. 

Overall, the story was aimed at younger audiences due to Ross’s cultural trend right now He has been trending on YouTube as people try to follow one of his lessons. This is what made the video the most successful in conveying the story to the intended audience.

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