Painting water is an endlessly challenging subject. In addition to understanding the visual science of how we perceive reflections, as artists we also need to think about how to best depict those perceptions in color! Here are a few helpful color notes to think about when painting reflections: ~the depth of the water (the deeper […]
Scumble!
For landscape painters one of the challenges of depicting the outdoors is getting a sense of “air” and atmosphere into our work. A scumble is a useful technique that can add that look of distance and “bigness” we want. Use a scumble to create atmosphere. Here’s a short video to show how that works! P.S. […]
Simplify Mixing Greens
It’s spring, soon to be summer, and one of the best ways to get a strong start on your landscape paintings is to simplify your palette. Mixing beautiful naturalistic greens can be challenging. Here’s a short video on mixing naturalistic greens to show you how! P.S. If you’d like to know more about how to […]
Premix Your Palette
One of the many concepts, techniques and strategies I teach is premixing your palette, whether working in the studio or in the field. I often encounter resistance to this idea, but more often than not, once students try it, they understand and appreciate the advantage it gives them. Why is premixing helpful? Premixing requires the […]
Gradation
Painting students are often encouraged to think of Nature in terms of shapes of color and value. That is a useful idea because it helps to build a solid foundation of design, value structure and drawing into our paintings. But, what to do after our flat color shapes are in place and we wish to […]
Painting Fall Foliage
It may be hard to imagine right now, but soon it will be that time of year– when we are all tempted by the bright colors of fall foliage to throw every high chroma color we can lay our hands on onto a canvas! In many ways, painting this season can be even more daunting […]