One sunny, breezy day over twenty five years ago, I was painting boats at a picturesque harbor on the Maine coast with my teacher and mentor Ned Jacob. There is some sort of special hell reserved for artists painting boats, especially boats that are moving. bobbing up and down and generally not staying still! But, […]
The Three Uses of Value
As we know, when we refer to value we are speaking about how light or dark a shape or form, or part of a shape or form are. Generally when we refer to value we are speaking comparatively, that is, how light or dark something is compared to something else. However, by using a value […]
Let it Snow!
Many of us are facing bitter winter weather just now. So, it seemed an appropriate time to talk about…painting snow! Two of the main concepts to keep in mind when painting snow are value and color temperature. When painting a light, highly reflective surface like snow we are hampered by the value limitations of our […]
Painting the Night
Painting the moonlit landscape has challenged artists for centuries. Depictions of night time motifs tend to be as much about the ideas we have about the night as they are about what we actually see. As Thoreau said, “the night is a different country” and the shifts in perception that occur in a dimly lit […]
When to Paint the Sky
“It is much easier to paint a sky to suit a landscape than a landscape to suit a sky.” Sir Alfred East, The Art of Landscape Painting in Oil Colour (1915). When should you paint the sky? Should it be the first thing you paint when you begin a landscape painting? The last? All at once? […]
The Art of the Garden
In the late 19th and early 20th century the “Garden Movement” in America was greatly influenced by French Impressionist paintings. The move to the suburbs by the middle classes also encouraged this new interest in gardening, and the “American garden”, not as formal as the English or Italian gardens of the Gilded Age, became popular. […]