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.
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...
This article is the second in a series. To read the first article, "Is My Painting Done?", click here. In the next few articles in this series, I'll introduce some ideas you can use to help you plan paintings that are more expressive, powerful and meaningful to you....
This article is the first of a series on creating more powerful, personal and expressive paintings. When I teach watercolor classes or workshops, there is often a moment where a student comes up to me, thrusts a painting into my face and demands: Tell me what's wrong...
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...
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...