Live Demo 8 Nov 2020—Mastering “Negative Thinking”
Negative painting requires us to find shapes that are “not things”. Our brains resist! In this demo, I’ll show you a few strategies you can use to help yourself make that mental shift!
Blog
The Tiny Escape’s Big Adventure, in 5 Minutes
Just for fun, a quick little video “road trip” with scenes from my travels up and down the west coast in The Tiny Escape, my trusty camper van.
How I Use the Sketchbook Pro App to Plan Paintings or Changes to Paintings
Sketchbook Pro is a great tool for quickly planning changes to a painting in progress, and it’s free. This video introduces the small set of features I use in my planning process, so you can get started quickly without having to go through a lot of features you don’t need.
My Cure for Winter Blues
Wild and garish? Sure, but I can always paint over it (or parts of it) later. For now, it has the same effect on me as opening a brand-new box of 64 Crayolas. Just what I needed to get me past the “winter blues”!
Why Paint?
Considering why you are painting, in general or this particular painting, can help you create work with more impact and get more enjoyment and satisfaction out of the process.
Mining for Gems
When the Big Pile of Nope in your studio gets too big and discouraging, it’s time to go mining!
Glowing Jack O’Lanterns on the Porch
Fun and easy halloween postcard with a sense of glowing light.
30 min.
Reserving and Recovering Light Values: Strategies to Consider
Getting light color values in watercolor works a little differently than in other mediums, since watercolor is transparent. In watercolor, we rely on the white color of the paper to give us our lighter values, meaning that a watercolorist’s main options are reserving or recovering whites. This article lists some of the strategies you can use to reserve and recover whites and light values.
Postcard Paint-Along: Eggs in a Glass Bowl
An introduction to painting glass in watercolor, and a bit more practice with negative painting and soft-edged shadows to show “white” objects.
60 min.
Postcard Paint-Along: Crashing Surf
Learn how to create the effect of big waves crashing against rocks, and also an easy way to add small figures to your postcards for scale and interest (no drawing ability required!).
22 min.
Sunrise Joy!
Learn to simplify the complexity of a sunrise (or sunset) to make it work for a postcard. We’ll create a variety of sunrise skies and add landscapes to turn them into finished postcards. You’ll learn about creating delicate graduated sky washes that glow with light, and capture a bit of the character of a sunrise sky without getting overwhelmed.
40 min.
Full Moon Over the Ocean
What to do while you wait for me to hurry up and make a new Postcard Paint-Along? Try “stealing ideas” from a previous paint-along. Take the steps and techniques, change the colors and subject matter, and make something new! In this paint-along, we’ll use the techniques and steps from the Sunset Variations paint-along: https://youtu.be/XZFpFm-MA4k to create a completely different scene.
19 min.