Bob Ross is dominating Twitch

Yes, Bob Ross, happy little trees and all.

If you weren’t already aware, as a celebration of Twitch’s new Twitch Creative and a nod to the late painter’s birthday, Twitch has obtained all 403 episodes of The Joy of Painting, and they are streaming it in an eight and a half day marathon. The marathon’s been going for several days now, and surprisingly, it’s dominating pretty much everything else on Twitch right now, racking up well over a million views since its launch on October 28, and over 200k followers.

For the unfamiliar, Ross’ program is an instructional painting show that ran for a little over 11 years on PBS. Ross paints, and while he paints he explains what he’s doing, so viewers at home can paint along. And if even if you’ve never seen the show, it’s likely you’ve seen or heard references to Ross before. While Ross passed away in 1995 after being diagnosed with lymphoma, his legacy lives on in numerous references to his quiet demeanor and running dialogue about happy little trees, happy little clouds, and other little denizens of the happy, beautiful worlds that lived in his head.

Really though, there’s something immediately soothing about listening to the combination of Ross’s voice and the scrape of paint on canvas while watching landscapes pop into life almost impossibly within the course of a half hour or so. With the number of people watching the program, Twitch chat tends to fly at a frenetic pace, but it’s easy enough to just hide the chat and observe Ross without the running commentary. And it’s kind of nice to know that a little over 20 years after the show left the air, people are still fascinated — and amazed — by how easy Ross makes it look. If you’ve got some time, pop into Twitch and watch an episode or two before the marathon is over.