The Joy of Painting

This time around I'm doing a subject that's a little different. It's the TV painter, Bob Ross. Bob was the creator of The Joy of Painting,  that somewhere in the world is still playing to this day despite him passing away in 1995. 
The kit is from Goodfella's Resin, and comes in 4 parts - the body/base, the head, and two arms. In one hand he's holding his palette with paints on it, and a brush in the other. 
One sidebar is that this must have been a very good seller. The Goodfella's Resin guys got together with the Admins of Resin Maniacs Group on FB to have a Bob-Off. With everyone completing their Bob by mid February. 

As Bob often did landscapes, there is a landscape sculpted into his base.

After initial clean up - there was the faintest seam line running along his famous afro - one thing that jump out at me was the lack of an opening for the hand hold. I suppose that area filled in made casting easier, but the extra resin needed to go.

I started by doing a little investigation. Despite watching him for years, I needed to look up specifics. The first being the shirt. Nearly all the time he wore a blue shirt. Some were lighter than others but it was a blue hue. Only after I painted mine did I find he also wore a white and a very pale pink shirt. No matter. Putting down some medium blue for the shadows, then added V's Blue Gray for the highlights. I shot it from the top down to emphasize those shadows. 

Moving on to his head and face, it seems color depends on when you want to represent him. He was on TV from '83 to '94 so his hair went back and forth from brown to a reddish brown and back again. His beard as one would expect got a little more gray as time went on.  
But let me start with base coating it.  I started out with a dark brown for the shadows in the hair, and layers lightened and reddened as I went on. I started with the tan color for the face, but that seemed a little too yellow in this case. So the face, and hands were redone in Vs Beige Red.

Moving on I tackled the next biggest piece which was the palette. Now Bobs palette was clear, but scuffed up to eliminate reflections from the TV lights. If I wanted to go all out I could have given the part to a caster friend of mine to have it molded and cast with clear resin. 
A saw a few guys trying to mimic that scuffed clear by painting their gray. So I thought I would go WAY the other way and paint mine woodgrain. It's also good practice for painting large area of woodgrain. 
Looking at his brush I saw that it was white with yellowish bristles. On the show he once mention that he used duct tape around the silver metal part around the bristles, again, to eliminate reflections.  I was thinking about using duct tape, but thought it probably would look out of scale. So I used V's Gunmetal, and then just put a matte coat on it to dull it down.

 Turning back to the head, I lightened the hair, put the first layer of grays on the beard, and had to tackle the eyes. Looking online there was no mention anywhere of what eye color he had.  I finally found one site that said blue. Ok, I get out V's Azure and created the irises.  

In a subsequent online search  I wanted to see about the wrinkles on his face. Being on TV I was certain that he wore makeup for the camera.  I finally found a large image of Bob and the first thing that jumped out, was that he didn't have blue eyes!! The are brown!!  Dang it!!  I'll have to go and fix that next time. Also the wrinkles were lessened for the camera.
Check back next time for the finale.