

A Statistical Analysis of the Work of Bob Ross - robdoherty2
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-statistical-analysis-of-the-work-of-bob-ross/

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Splendor
I use this for inspiration throughout my day:

alias bob="curl
[http://bobrossquotes.com/text.php"](http://bobrossquotes.com/text.php")

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groovy2shoes
Sweet.

I made fortune (6) file with these quotes, if anyone is interested:
[https://gist.github.com/anonymous/10669320](https://gist.github.com/anonymous/10669320)

Just stick it at /usr/share/games/fortunes/bobross and be sure to do `strfile
bobross` on it, then you can do `fortune bobross` any time, without having to
make an HTTP request :)

~~~
joveian
And along those lines does anyone have a fortune(1) for spoken quotes?

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corysama
If you like this, you might also appreciate "Automated Landscape Painting in
the Style of Bob Ross"

[https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/2761](https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/2761)

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ctdonath
How about a Markov Chain analysis? Given position and known adjacent color(s),
pick a pixel color, repeat for all pixels. Given the number of source pictures
and distinct similarity, might give interesting results.

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gms7777
That sounds like it might be a really interesting experiment. A potentially
even more interesting result might be doing something like this for multiple
artists and comparing results. I just need to find a corpus of decent quality
photos of artwork for various artists.

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sogen
there you go:

[http://www.artic.edu/databases](http://www.artic.edu/databases) (TONS!)
[http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/paintings/all-p...](http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/paintings/all-
paintings.html)

~~~
gms7777
Awesome, thanks. I've already downloaded 134 Van Gogh's to start from a
different site, but it looks like these might be great resources.

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themodelplumber
My high school art teacher absolutely hated Bob Ross, and routinely encouraged
us to look beyond symbol and watch out for "happy little trees" appearing in
our paintings. But somehow I can't fault Bob Ross even now that I'm doing
professional graphics & illustration work, and maybe the last line of this
article explains why. There was a bigger picture and a more substantial social
contribution that didn't really have anything to do with the art style.

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yock
Can you expand on why your art teacher didn't like him? I realize that
landscapes aren't the most interesting subject to most people, but I can't
seem to find fault in taking the time to create art by hand, even if the
process is a bit formulaic.

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leviathant
I think the key phrase there is "look beyond symbol" \- when you're
illustrating something that has lettering, for example, one often starts
writing out the letters instead of illustrating the shape of the letters. The
same thing commonly happens when drawing eyes - people learn a technique for
"how to draw an eye," and when they move on to a full portrait, instead of
trying to reproduce or illustrate the image they see before them, they call
their internal "draw an eye" function.

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evanlivingston
Does this help us understand the work of Bob Ross any better?

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edkennedy
Indeed, it does. I found the bit about the chimneys interesting. His denial of
society in his paintings and focus on nature was new to me, as I never had a
comprehensive analysis of his work. This could be related to his time in the
army.

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mediocregopher
Someone posted the bobrossquotes linke above, and it had this little gem in
it:

Oooh, if you have never been to Alaska, go there while it is still wild. My
favorite uncle asked me if I wanted to go there, Uncle Sam. He said if you
don't go, you're going to jail. That is how Uncle Sam asks you.

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tarblog
I googled "Bob Ross cabins" and found chimneys.

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atom-morgan
The author of the article did as well.

