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When I'm hiking or walking on the beach, my attention span is really short. I flit from activity to activity, sight to sight, just trying to take it all in. That's why pastel painting is a perfect fit for me when I want to create art outdoors. I can work quickly and see results equally fast,...
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Looks Like Heaven by John Budicin, 2002, oil painting, 32 x 40. Almost any artist will tell you that there's a certain appeal to working outdoors that can't be found anywhere else. With spring in full swing, many of us have left our studios for our porches, backyards, and beyond. To celebrate...
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Sounds mysterious and threatening, right? No worries! It's just that when Liz Haywood-Sullivan began to create pastel drawings, she was dismayed with the range of dark colors available. "Rich, dark pastels were hard to find," she says. "Most of the time the darks just weren't dark...
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Interest in acrylic painting is skyrocketing. There is less and less of a bias against this medium as a newcomer, and more and more of an interest in the healthful qualities and vibrant colors acrylics have to offer. In our free eBook, Acrylic Painting Techniques: Methods on How to Paint With Acrylics...
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I may have grabbed your attention at the risk of making you think I'm a big fat fibber, but I do think that when it comes to landscape painting, you sometimes have to lie--or at least exaggerate--to get what you want. This is based on personal experience--maybe I'm unlucky, but I do not step...
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With so much interest in plein air painting these days, it's easy to overlook how important drawing skills can be to the landscape painting artist. Fundamentally, drawing is both a way of seeing and a way of knowing a subject. If you can draw it, then you own it. It is in your visual library and...
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Why go to the trouble of painting from life when our cameras can take such great pictures? Digital cameras have gotten so good at taking properly exposed, beautiful photos that they can fool us into thinking that they are also accurate. To be sure, the technology packed into even an inexpensive camera...
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I was in Florida a few weeks ago and felt so lucky to be in such a warm, sunny place that I don't think I spent a minute indoors. I was kayaking, mountain biking, walking on the beach, and swimming in the ocean. And again and again I would look around and think, "That's a landscape painting...
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Ever wondered where Da Vinci found the time to create all his masterpieces? Alongside his fine art painting he managed to dabble as a scientist, geologist, architect, mathematician, engineer, and anatomist with a bit of aeronautical design thrown in for good measure! So how can we adopt a little bit...
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Around this time of year we are inundated with wintry scenes and beautiful snowy landscapes--on greeting cards, products, advertisements, calendars and more. But these winter landscapes aren't necessarily all created equal, and the same goes for the fine art paintings of the same subject. One of...
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You’re in a beautiful plein air painting location, you whip out your camera and take photograph after photograph – it's essential to have lots of references for landscape painting, you know. Then you dig out your sketchbook, pencils, and paints and set about covering page after page of...
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Hopefully Blake will forgive me for that little rewrite, but when I see a painting that has complicated light effects or diffuse light that seems almost prismatic I can't help but think of that adulterated line of poetry. New York City, Winter 2006, The Storm by Nina Maguire, 2006-2011, acrylic on...
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Those of us in the fine art industry know that artists and art galleries have had a long-standing love/hate relationship. Artists love the fact that galleries market and sell works of art, but they hate the fact that the better galleries keep 40% or 50% of every sale. Then along came the Internet, and...
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Of course there are more than three painting techniques that will allow you to create a compelling artwork, but learning how to paint a picture well can certainly start with these elements. Rhythm. Painting objects that actually look alive, in the case of the figure, or lively, as in a landscape, is...
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In plein air we attempt a form of direct translation. In the studio, we may recall our observations of nature, but are freer to be inventive with color. Night Passage by Mitchell Albala, 2006, oil painting on panel, 20 x 20. It's September and the plein air painting season is drawing to a close ...