Generating and refining a concept for a painting, tools and strategies for design, planning and evaluating work-in-progress.
Isn’t it a wonderful quirk of nature that just as the coldest months are about to begin, the days also begin to lengthen? The winter solstice is this Sunday night. After that, the days start lengthening toward spring. Why not take a little time from the rush and stress of the winter holidays and simply…
Have you ever noticed the cluster of words that sit in the sidebar of some websites, some of them bigger, some smaller, sometimes in multiple colors? Bloggers often “tag” articles with keywords to help readers search for topics of interest. The bigger the word in this “tag cloud”, the more often the author has used…
Some days, I wake up feeling the pressure of everything that has to be done that day, and taking time out to work in my journal seems like a luxury I can’t afford. Some days, I am so exhausted at the end of the day, I just want to crawl in bed and sleep. Some…
A couple of weekends ago, we had a beautiful 70-degree day with this year’s glorious fall colors just hitting their peak. On the spur of the moment, I grabbed my backpack and headed out to paint with a friend. I had forgotten to bring masking tape, so I couldn’t tape down my paper to keep…
For those who aren’t familiar with the phrase, painting en plein air is just a fancy way of referring to painting on location, usually outdoors. It’s a challenge! In addition to all the usual problems a painter has to solve (composition, color mixing, brush handling, etc.), there is the constantly changing light, the sun, rain and wind,…
As I was returning home from a reception Monday night, there was a spectacular light show from some large thunderstorms to the north. The storms were far enough away that the thunder wasn’t audible, and I couldn’t see ground strikes. Instead, the massive clouds were illuminated from within by flickering lightning. Overhead, the sky was…
A great way to practice mindfulness and open your eyes to the world you live in every day is to play “tourist” in your own town. Often artists keep sketchbooks not so much to accumulate sketches as to provide a way to focus their attention on the overlooked interest and beauty in their everyday lives….
These “creative seeds” are a great to warm-up, de-stress or generate new ideas for paintings. Creative Seeds If you were planting a garden, you would not simply go outside and wish for ripe tomatoes tomorrow and expect to have that actually happen. You understand that you have to work the soil, maybe add humus. Rake it smooth,…
Color always gets my creative juices flowing. Here are four ways to use the Color of the Day to unleash your creative spirit—(click the image to read on)
In the last post, I gave some ideas for dealing with a “too boring for words” problem painting. The one you were never excited about in the first place. Our “problem child” this time is the opposite of boring, it’s trying to do too much. When I’m running into trouble with one of my own…
If you’ve painted in watercolor for more than a day or so, I know you’ve been here: after hours of hard work, you’re struggling with a blotchy, overworked section that you know isn’t going to be right, no matter how much more effort you put into it. It’s tempting to conclude that you just don’t have what it takes . . . maybe it’s time to take up something easier to master, say, golf.
How do you deal with “problem paintings” like this? (click the picture to read more)
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