Yet Another Statistical Analysis of Bob Ross Paintings

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze a sample of clippings from paintings by the late artist Bob Ross. Previous work focused on the qualitative themes of his paintings (Hickey, 2014); here, we expand on that line of research by considering the colorspace and luminosity values as our data. Our results demonstrate the subtle aesthetics of the average Ross painting, the common variation shared by his paintings, and the structure of the relationships between each painting in our sample. We reveal, for the first time, renderings of the average paintings and introduce "eigenross" components to identify and evaluate shared variance. Additionally, all data and code are embedded in this document to encourage future research, and, in the spirit of Bob Ross, to teach others how to do so.