When John Hulsey and Ann Trusty told me the name of their website—The Artist’s Road—I smiled to myself because they got it so right! Art—painting, drawing, sculpting, all of it—is a path, a journey. Sometimes the path is smooth and things go right, and sometimes it is rocky and you have to backtrack or go off the road completely to get where you want to go.

My answer to that is nada! Zippo! Zilch! As the weather heats up from coast to coast, now is the time when artists turn their attention to the excitement of landscape painting. But I'll be honest with you. I'm still intimidated by the whole landscape painting process. There seems to be so much to contend with-the weather, changing lighting conditions, the weather, packing correctly...did I mention the weather?

Breaking out of a painting rut sometimes requires a little more oomph than just adding another color to your palette or going from a still life to a figure painting. Sometimes your whole process needs an overhaul. A few years ago, artist Francis Di Fronzo took a fairly drastic measure to take his work to a new level. He set aside the traditional painting brush for a tool of his own invention-a "comb" with individual hairs seated along a length of wood.

I've been waiting all my life to have a red-carpet moment, but who knows when the Academy will get around to remembering my searing director's debut at the age of 14, when I put on a musical version of Hamlet to the theme song of The Beatles' "Obladi Oblada." (Maybe you had to be there.) So I've decided to take matters into my own hands—not to hog the limelight for myself, but to bestow accolades and acclaim to a few of the brightest and best resources in our Artist Daily store!

When I’m landscape painting I’m always drawn to the curious, in-between places where the outdoors and indoors meet. This could be an ivy-smothered barn that almost looks like it is disappearing into the landscape, or an ocean view from an open window. The places where architecture and the natural world collide make a composition eye-catching and compelling because they integrate elements that we usually think of as distinct and separate. Bringing them together creates a tension that some of the landscape paintings I like best have in common.

Painting outdoors in winter can be an extreme sport. The snow, the wind, the cold—it takes a certain kind of artist to paint a winter landscape while in a winter landscape. The first time I attempted this was a couple of years ago when I was living in Connecticut. Two feet of snow had fallen the day before, but when I looked out my window the scene was so inviting. I didn’t go far and didn’t stay out long, but I had fun trying to capture the light effects and reflective surface of the snow during daylight.