Let’s talk edges! Edges don’t neatly fit into the usual categories of painting instruction- drawing, value, composition, color, technique. They are about all those things and much more! Edges are the place that all you know about drawing, value, color, composition and technique come together! First, what’s an edge? Quite simply, an edge is where […]
Poster Studies and Deconstructed Color Studies
Poster studies and deconstructed color studies are a great way to take color notes outdoors, choose a color harmony for a studio painting, and study color choices in master works. In this video, you’ll learn the difference and how to employ these useful tools in your own work! Our online course Practical Color Mixing for […]
Four Value Studies and Notan
Notan is a Japanese word for light-dark, and consists of a two value arrangement of shapes. It can be used to define and simplify shape and value patterns. Notan (two values) and four value designs are not based on how we actually see the world; they are constructs that we can use to see and […]
Fall Is Almost Here!
Hi Everyone! It’s hot as blazes here in Texas so it’s hard to imagine that fall is on the way, but it is. Autumn is my favorite season, and although it comes toward the end of the calendar year, it always seems like a new beginning to me. As the green facade in the woods […]
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 […]
Water: Color in Reflections
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 […]