For over twenty years I have taught what I call the nuts and bolts of landscape painting—foundational concepts like values, color, drawing, and composition, as well as techniques like indirect painting, brushwork, and direct painting. I also wrote a book called Painting the Woods in which I wrote about how my process is tied to a deep […]
Values are like Vitamins, Color is Dessert
Often I hear teachers, including myself, describe values as the structure, framework or foundation of a painting. And it’s true, they are. But, how excited can we get about that? It sounds more like something we have to do or should do to get to something more exciting or interesting. Sort of like taking your […]
Speed of the Line and Stoppers
“Speed of the line” is a concept that plays an important part in landscape design. Often we see strong diagonals at work in Nature- a mountain, a line of trees, or even a roofline of a building. The more steep and uninterrupted that line is, the “faster” it moves the eye- and often it will […]
Value, Color and Movement
One of the most powerful compositional tools we have as landscape painters is our ability to move the eye of the viewer around the picture plane and even create the illusion of movement into the picture plane by creating the illusion of depth. Movement is a visual pathway through the painting that the artist creates […]
Mixing Fall Foliage Colors
When mixing fall foliage colors, it’s important to keep value in mind (as always!), best ways to maintain chroma, and overall color harmony. Take a look at this video for tips on mixing autumn colors that sing! P.S. Our online course Drawing and Painting Trees starts September 30th! Join us!
Sky Values- The Key to Big Atmospheric Skies!
One of the most important ingredients for painting big atmospheric skies is getting the values right. We know that generally speaking the sky will have the lightest values in the landscape because it is the source of light (think Carlson’s Theory of Angles- if you don’t know about that you should!). The value of a […]