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!
Technical How-to
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.
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.
Simple Ways To Show Your Worktable in Zoom
Are you wondering how I can see your work and give you feedback in Zoom? I’ve been doing watercolor coaching via Zoom for almost two years now—I’ve got a system! Here’s a short video to show you how it works.
Using Colorways
Even if you do as I do and have a “(home)base palette” of 8 or 9 colors, there are times when you want to bring in other colors for a particular painting or series. Here’s how I do it to make sure I still have color harmony.
May 2019: Tips and Tricks for Florals
Some tips for creating bold, lively florals in watercolor.
What is Creative Energy Journaling?
So many of us are over-busy, stressed and fully occupied with just getting a few more things crossed off our to-do lists. Deep down, we know we need a way to keep our thinking creative and flexible. We need a way to recharge and get back in touch with our dreams. But we get stuck on the “not enough time/space/skill” stumbling blocks. Creative Energy Journaling is a collection of the activities and practices I use and share with my students to keep my creative energy flowing even when life is biting me in the butt!
Phthalo Green—How To Tame It
In the last post, I offered some tips for mixing natural-looking landscape greens, the first of which was “avoid tube greens involving phthalo green”. So, what do you do with the phthalo green (and mixtures using it) you already have? The secret is to tame it a bit so it works for you instead of…
Better Landscape Greens
The weather is beautiful here. It’s the time of year when a lot of us are feeling that pull to take our paints and sketchbooks outside. It’s also the time of year that a lot of people struggle with GREEN! Do the greens in your landscapes look flat and unnatural? The likely culprit is a…
Line and Wash – Watercolor Painting Anyone Can Do
Line and wash is a combination of line drawing with watercolor washes to suggest a scene. It’s a great way to get started with watercolor, or with travel sketching, even if you “can’t draw” and have never tried watercolor before!
Paint Shapes, Not “Things”
Want your paintings to look unified? It helps to combine “things” into larger shapes, and then use smaller shapes to (partially) separate them. Here’s an exercise to help you practice. First, set up a still life with a couple of simple objects. Avoid anything that has a lot of pattern, texture, reflections or complicated edges—you…
Present Your Watercolors Without Glass!
I’ve been presenting my watercolors without glass for quite some time. I love the clean look! Here’s everything you need to know to present your watercolors using this method. In the video, I demonstrate one way to do this, using the method (and products) I use myself. Below the video is a description of other…