Adobe Revives the Joy of Sketching with Bob Ross Homage

Just when we thought Bob Ross’ inspiration ended with the paintings in your mom’s basement and last year’s Halloween costume, the people at Adobe and Lekker Media decided to prove us wrong. Adobe got together with the people at Bob Ross Inc. to produce the “Joy of Sketching” project: a series of video tutorials for Adobe Photoshop Sketch on the iPad Pro.

The project was meant to be an homage the late TV-painter, not a parody; Bob Ross died at 1995 at the age of 52. The tutorials come just in time to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Ross’ “The Joy of Painting.”

Children’s book illustrator Chad Cameron was chosen to play Ross in the video series to give future creatives a tutorial of Adobe’s Photoshop Sketch digital painting app. The likeness to Ross is uncanny, from the afro to the way Cameron dismisses the use of the Undo button because there’s “just happy accidents” in sketching.

The people at Bob Ross Inc. were totally on board with the “Joy of Sketching” campaign. As Joan Kowalski, media director at Bob Ross Inc. said, “Bob’s wish was to inspire as many people as possible to be creative and to share it with others,” which is what each episode was trying to accomplish. And we think watching these videos just might inspire you to pick up an Apple Pencil and start sketching your next masterpiece.