Bob Ross Paintings

Code

# Packages
library(ggplot2)
library(treemapify)

# Data
bob_ross <- readr::read_csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/main/data/2023/2023-02-21/bob_ross.csv") |>
  dplyr::mutate(id = dplyr::row_number())
all_imgs <- readr::read_csv("bob_ross_paintings.csv")

# Wrangling
plot_data <- all_imgs |>
  dplyr::group_by(id) |>
  dplyr::mutate(tot_n = sum(n)) |>
  dplyr::ungroup() |>
  dplyr::mutate(prop = n / tot_n) |>
  dplyr::left_join(
    dplyr::select(bob_ross, id, season, episode),
    by = "id"
  )

# Plot
plot_data |>
  # filter(season <= 13) |>  # for square featured image
  ggplot(
    mapping = aes(
      area = prop, fill = hex, label = hex
    )
  ) +
  geom_treemap() +
  facet_grid(season ~ episode) +
  scale_fill_identity() +
  theme_void() +
  theme(
    legend.position = "none",
    strip.text = element_blank(),
    panel.spacing = unit(0.1, "lines"),
    plot.background = element_rect(fill = "white", colour = "white")
  )

Bob Ross was an American painter, art instructor, and television host best known for The Joy of Painting, a PBS series that ran from 1983 to 1994. His work focused on quick, wet-on-wet oil painting techniques, creating serene landscapes with mountains, trees, and lakes, often featuring his signature happy little clouds. Beyond his art, he became a cultural icon for his soothing voice, gentle teaching style, and encouragement that there are no mistakes, just happy accidents.

Bob Ross created over 400 paintings, across 31 seasons of the show each with 13 episodes. Each painting featured a variety of paint colours, and this grid of treemaps represents those colours. Each row of the grid represents a different season, with columns representing episodes. Each treemap shows the 5 most common colours used in each painting with the areas representing the area using each colour.

Return to Data Art Gallery.