Every time I lead a class or workshop, more than half of the participants mention the goal of “loosening up”. Here’s a skill-building exercise to help you move in that direction.
Three loose little bottle sketches, done right on top of previous “test scraps”. All the stray marks already on the page help you let go of “blank page” anxiety.
Planning an entire meal involves more than just knowing cooking techniques. Chances are, you’re all quite familiar with this sort of planning, so let’s see how it connects with planning watercolors.
Color-mixing is often discussed as if the only consideration is getting “the right color”, but watercolor pigments each have their own physical and chemical properties. This video presents some activities to help you develop a more sophisticated understanding of color-mixing so you become better at choosing and mixing pigments to create the artistic effects—including perceived color—you desire.
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.
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”!
When the Big Pile of Nope in your studio gets too big and discouraging, it’s time to go mining!
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.
Make your inner critic work for you, instead of against you, by challenging lazy thinking and asking the right questions.
This article is the fifth in a series about creating paintings with more emotion, power and personal meaning. Here are links to the first four: Is My Painting Done?Are You a “Photocopier”? There’s a Better WayThe Lazy Way to Build Painting ConfidencePainless...
This article is the fourth in a series about creating paintings with more emotion, power and personal meaning. Here are links to the first three: Is My Painting Done?Are You a “Photocopier”? There’s a Better WayThe Lazy Way to Build Painting Confidence I know that...
This article is the third in a series. The preceding articles are: Is My Painting Done? Are You a "Photocopier"? There's a Better Way In response to the last article, a reader made a couple of excellent points about why it's sometimes difficult to deviate from a...
