I twisted this assignment a little bit because it’s been a while since I’ve done a post relating back to Bob Ross and I found the perfect picture for this kind of assignment. I wanted to create this idea of Bob Ross still being alive but off in a magical land with others that are equally as heartwarming. My original thought process was to grab a picture of Santa and a picture of Bob Ross and combine them together at a barbecue, but when looking for photos of Bob, I found one that could instead be a bit romantic and funny. In the picture, Bob is reaching out to paint on a canvas, but it almost looks as if he is sensually caressing someone’s cheek…or beard. In that very moment of realization, I knew that Bob Ross and Santa Claus had to be in a loving relationship, hiding away in a tropical paradise, leaving their old lives behind to spend valuable time together. You can see by Santa’s expression that he is consistently shocked by the passion that Bob puts into everything, even relationships.

This took me quite a bit of time to create, regardless of how simple it may look. I’ve only recently begun using GIMP, specifically the selection options to crop things out of images, so this has certainly been a learning process. I spent a long time trying to smooth out the edges of Bob and Santa using the lasso tool and I believe it paid off. I also had to figure out how to set the image to grayscale in order to make everything look as cohesive as possible. Unfortunately, this is the highest quality image of Bob Ross looking this specific way that I could find, so the crispness of Santa against his smudginess is a bit off-putting, unfortunately. Regardless, I couldn’t pass up this opportunity because the two images simply work too well together. The only reasoning I had for a beach in the background is that it seemed like the most romantic and private setting for this interaction. Honestly, if anything, this assignment has turned into a bit of a fan fiction assignment, but at the end of the day I’m happy with it and I hope you get a kick out of it!