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It feels right to talk about color and art during this time of the year, when flowers are blooming, trees are budding, and skies are (mostly) blue. After months of dull-colored scenery, everything seems to be flourishing wherever I look, which makes me want to do whatever I can to capture that beauty...
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When I walk through a museum or gallery, there are certain paintings that I breeze past and others that always draw me in. Self-portraits definitely fall into the latter category. I’m always intrigued by how artists choose to represent themselves and perpetuate their own personal mythologies. My...
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What makes an object look three-dimensional? We use a variety of cues to give us this information: light and shadow, contrast, pattern, color, texture, scale, temperature and value, usually in combinations. Our ability to measure these different parameters and make a decision about the dimensionality...
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If I had a time machine and could travel back to learn how to oil paint from any artist in history, I would not spare a second thought setting the clock to circa 1895, smack dab in the middle of the era when Odilon Redon was refining his fine art oil-painting and pastel-painting skills. The Cyclops by...
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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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When it comes to being able to draw with a paintbrush, no one can touch Rembrandt. He was able to turn abstract brushstrokes into forms with texture, weight, and liveliness. He could turn two swipes of a painting brush loaded with white paint into the coarse cloth of a girl's sleeve. He captured...
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It’s quite sad that 18 th -century painter Luis Melendez died poor and relatively unknown and yet he is now recognized as one, if not the, greatest still life art painter of his day. His style and approach as a still life artist breathed new life into a genre that was already well established,...
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It is such a treat when you see an artist's work and you like it. Then you talk with the artist and you like him or her. And then you see them in action as an instructor and you fall for their teaching in a big way because everything they say makes sense. That's what happened to me when I first...
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I roll my eyes every time I hear about representational art and realism being "imperiled," because there are so many important representational artists painting right now. It's almost offensive how people think legitimacy comes with the passage of time. History can be a great equalizer...
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I was in the studio of my oil painting artist friend the other day and she had a really sizeable bucket filled with oil paint tubes sitting beside her palette. Some of the tubes were so squeezed out and folded up that I wondered if there was anything still left in them. Others were plump and brand new...
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The winners of our Self-Portrait Cover Competition are featured in the September issue of American Artist, and they share advice about how to paint the figure and how to maintain a successful painting practice. When we asked David Tanner, the winner of the competition, to give his advice, he offered...
Posted to
The Oil Painting Blog
by
Austin R. Williams
on
12 Jul 2012
Filed under:
Filed under: color, oil painting, plein air, still life, landscape painting, portrait painting, how to paint, Figure Drawing, Drawing Basics, Photo Reference, Art, Artist Daily
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The art of still life painting is a time-honored one that has been around since at least the time of the ancient Egyptians. Still life paintings were often used to adorn the interiors of Egyptian tombs with the belief that these depictions of food and other objects would actually become real and available...
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I'm sure many of you are aware of the Spanish living legend Antonio López García, but I'm ashamed to say I was not familiar with his artwork until recently. And as with any new discovery, once you become aware of a new person, place, or thing, doesn't it suddenly seem to show...
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It's funny how I have gotten so immersed in art that I tend to project very human emotions or ideas to inanimate objects in paintings and drawings. Still life painting objects that don't spatial connect in some way most often won't connect thematically for a viewer either. Take still life...
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A willingness to experiment with perspective and style is often the determining factor between a competent artist and a master. A new exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art , "Van Gogh Up Close," takes a compelling look at the choices Vincent van Gogh made with depth, line, and perspective...