The marks you are drawn to in doodling, Zentangle, making patterns, or other types of meditative mark-making can become part of your style, even if you don’t exactly doodle while painting. Each of us has certain shapes we like to make, and this is often reflected in our brush-handling and drawing style. You can choose…
It’s easy to spend all your time thinking about what you (and your viewers) are looking at and overlook the question of who is doing the looking, from what vantage point. Changing the point of view—close up, far away, low horizon, high horizon, and so on—can dramatically change the experience of a sketch or painting. …
In the last module, we explored making different design choices to affect the mood of a painting. But wait! Aren’t there rules you have to follow for good design? Are there? Module 24 Thinking Prompt—Principles of Design What Are “Elements” and “Principles” of Design? Most people take the “elements of design” to be the building…
When you work in your studio journal, do you ever feel cramped by the page size or type of paper? Or hesitant to practice challenging subjects, where your first attempts might be ugly and awkward? Are there times when you feel uninspired by painting inside your studio? Or by painting your usual type of work,…
When we start out with a creative medium, it’s often all about fun and relaxation. After you’ve been doing it awhile, you can start to feel some pressure—internal or external—to “get serious” about your art. Most artists, when they resolve to take their artistic development seriously, or take themselves seriously as artists, mean “I want…
You did it! You devoted 30 journaling sessions to developing your creative potential. You’ve proved you have the most important skill for making great art: showing up and working. Understanding that not everything is going to be brilliant the first—or the tenth—time you work on it, and that’s just a normal part of the process….
You’ve probably heard me say it before: in watercolor, size (scale) matters. Any sort of wet-in-wet effect depends on the physical properties of the pigment, water and paper. You might be able to coax something to happen in a slightly smaller or larger area, by changing pigments, amount of water or type of paper, but…
Info on the long, narrow palette in some of my videos. Pros and cons and some other palette options.
Creating a sense of depth and believable shadows, especially on red, yellow and orange objects.
This is a great time of year to reflect on your painting journey and explore the power of negative space in your paintings and your life.
Some situations are inherently difficult to paint with transparent watercolor alone. Bringing in a other media may help you create a successful painting with less struggle.
Why is it so hard for us to just ignore them? Should we actually be following them?
No products in the cart.