Twitch TV's decision to re-air Bob Ross' "The Joy of Painting" episodes was a huge success. The streaming site received over 7.6 million views during its nine-day airing of the series. The audience was so pleased that Twitch TV decided to run the episodes again on Mondays. Now there are plans to make new episodes featuring the painter's protégés, according to Vocativ.
There are 3,549 certified Bob Ross painting technique instructors all over the world, according to the Bob Ross site. To be a bona fide Ross painter, you must pass a certification test that is conducted during a three-week $395 course in Florida, according to Huffington Post.
"You make 26 or 27 paintings. It's pretty fast-paced and pretty hard. If you are not paying attention, you get lost," said instructor Mickey Cline.
But despite the challenging classes, many artists from around the world join the workshops and some come back to learn more as there are different certifications for category, theme or subject. An artist may spend as much as $10,000 to complete the classes, the Vocativ report indicated.
Ross' business partner Annette Kowalski has been managing the workshops under Bob Ross Inc., and she's also partly responsible for the painter's resurgence on Internet TV. Through the company's partnership with Janson Media, they will soon be creating new "The Joy of Painting" episodes with the certified instructors. These art classes will be streamed by early 2016 on Twitch TV.
"We just have to communicate with the teachers and figure out how best to roll it out...It's totally green-lit. Bob Ross Inc., is on board with it. Twitch is on board with it. We just have to get the logistics down right. I would say we would start doing that in early 2016," said Jesse Janson of Janson Media via Vocativ.
"The Joy of Painting" ran from 1983 to 1994 on PBS. Ross died in 1995.
