ART TIPS

How to Paint the Effects of Moonlight

May 11, 2012

How to Paint the Effects of Moonlight

The featured painting is “Moonlight, Tombstone” 11″x14″ oil The light from the moon is a weaker source than the sun causing the light to appear cool to our eyes. Unlike the sun, there is usually no reflected light. Although, in some instances snow will cause some reflected light on a clear night with a very [...]

Video, Which Art Shows to Enter

May 9, 2012

Video, Which Art Shows to Enter

Hi everyone, Recently someone emailed me a question asking which art shows she should enter and how to find the right ones. The answer would be different for each artist. For myself I looked at artist resumes to learn about different shows. I made this video to answer that question and tell about my own [...]

The Plein Air Convention, Finally all about it

April 30, 2012

The Plein Air Convention, Finally all about it

It’s been a week since I got home from the The First Annual Plein Air Convention and Expo and my painting trip at the Grand Canyon. I wanted to post something on this earlier, but I spent a few days catching up on work, shipping paintings, a commission, sifting through information, resting, and just trying to absorb some [...]

Painting Atmosphere Light and Weather.

April 12, 2012

Painting Atmosphere Light and Weather.

Atmosphere and light is important in my paintings. Light, distance and atmosphere affect, texture, edges, value and color, making things in the distance appear grayer, softer, and less distinct. As things move closer to you, the colors become richer, and the edges seem sharp and crisp. Direction of light and shapes of clouds can be [...]

Tips for Mixing Paint Colors with a Limited Palette

April 9, 2012

I use a limited palette, using the typical warm/cool palette. You might want to look at my list of Oil Painting Supplies for Beginning Painters. The colors on my palette are cadmium yellow light, cadmium yellow medium, cadmium red light, alizarine crimson, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue and titanium white. Each of those colors has another [...]

Working in a Theme Stretches Your Possibilities

April 9, 2012

Working in a Theme Stretches Your Possibilities

Artists begin working on series often without realizing it. Their obsessions are fueled by an emotional attachment to a concept or to a place. We want to learn all we can about it and to do our best. We start our artistic journey developing skills and techniques which are necessary to express ourselves. As time [...]

Create a Scrapbook of Inspiring Images

April 3, 2012

Create a Scrapbook of Inspiring Images

I started with stacks of art magazines. When they became overwhelming, I started cutting out the images that I really liked. I would stuff them into a shoe box and thumb through them when I needed some inspiration. Eventually that shoe box gave way to a notebook. I placed the photos into plastic sleeves. Over [...]

Improvisation and Invention in Painting the Landscape

March 25, 2012

clouds, light fog, stream, mountains, field trees art

There is a definite different between painting outdoors on location and painting in the studio. Outdoors you are painting directly from nature, responding to what is in front of you. There is the process of screening, editing and making choices about what to exclude and what to reposition. In the studio using your imagination, it [...]

Find A Statement in Your Painting

March 22, 2012

Find A Statement in Your Painting

First, what do you really want to paint? What is interesting about the scene? What may be the best way to portray the scene. The statement in your painting is your reason for painting a scene. The reason could be the interesting shapes created by the light and shadow. Or, it could simply be the [...]

Premixing your colors Good Idea or Not?

March 21, 2012

Premixing your colors Good Idea or Not?

There are a lot of opinions on premixing your colors. I have found that at times it is advantageous, but most of the time I don’t. I’m not talking about mixing tubes of paint, but mixing piles of paint on your palette. You can predetermine the colors that you will have in your painting and [...]

Squint and Step Back

March 18, 2012

Squint and Step Back

Two of the most important words I can tell a painter, well three. Squint and step back By squinting you will be simplifying leaving out details , see edges, hard and soft. You can then observe the large shapes and masses that you’ll want to translate to your canvas. You will create the essence of [...]

Painting tree trunks, branches and lines

March 15, 2012

Painting tree trunks, branches and lines

I often use a palette knife to paint lines, sunlight on a tree trunk, the sunlight on a cactus, branches, electrical lines, any kind of highlight. I seem to find it easier to get a fine, straight line with a palette knife rather than the brush. It seems whenever I pick up the brush for [...]

How to Decide What Color to Tone a Canvas

March 14, 2012

How to Decide What Color to Tone a Canvas

Toning a canvas is deadening the white of the canvas by adding thin color, usually in a light to mid-range value. What color to use? This is a difficult question and especially perplexing for beginning painters. There are many answers. Some artists always tone their canvases with the same color. Others vary it from painting [...]

Aspen Painting stretching my style

February 29, 2012

Aspen Painting stretching my style

Lately, I have been embarking on a new direction. Well, sort of. It’s applying more paint to the canvas. I’ve tried before, but it didn’t stick. This time, I feel there is a new found boldness and more knowledge in my painting, making it much easier for me. Last weekend an artist friend of mine, [...]

Should You Tone Your Canvas or Not? Techniques for Toning

February 27, 2012

Should You Tone Your Canvas or Not?

Some artists do it and some don’t. Toning the canvas that is. Some of the reasons to tone a canvas are as follows: You may simply not like the stark white surface when starting or find it distracting. It can help unify a painting, especially in the early stages before all the areas are covered. [...]

How to Analyze Your Painting Before You Start Plein Air Painting

February 22, 2012

How to Analyze Your Painting Before You Start Plein Air Painting

1. Dress appropriately, make sure that you are wearing neutral clothing and no whites. 2. Then have a clear vision of what you want with your painting before you start. 3. Make sure that your palette and canvas are out of the sun. Keep in mind how the sunlight will move. 4. Make note of [...]

Preliminary Drawing Technique for an Oil Painting

February 20, 2012

Preliminary Drawing Technique for an Oil Painting

My drawing techniques for my paintings are very loose lines just indicating the position of objects. I also try to get the movement of lines through the painting and indicate placement of trees, mountains and buildings. If your drawing is very detailed indicating each object and every branch, your tendency will be to paint the [...]

Art Tip for Getting the Brightest Color Where You Want It

February 10, 2012

Art Tip for Getting the Brightest Color Where You Want It

Of course you want to reserve your brightest, purest, most saturated color for your focal point, but sometimes it seems that you just can’t get it bright enough. Well, put down your brightest color for your first stroke. Then every other color after that will be less saturated. For instance if you have a little [...]

Make a Check off List for Your Art Techniques

February 1, 2012

Make a Check off List for Your Art

Years ago, before I started taking workshops from nationally known artists, I thought I was a pretty good artist. Yes, I had some talents, but there was a lot of techniques missing. I had a wakeup call at a big art show when I wasn’t selling well. I took a serious look at my oil [...]

A Page from My Sketchbook, Value Studies

January 28, 2012

A Page from My Sketchbook, Value Studies

I’ve talked to my students about value studies lately. So…. a page directly out of my sketchbook. There are more, lots more. I used 4 bottles of a craft acrylic paint, black, white, and two grays. Sometimes, I used the same sketch painting it with different lighting and values, creating different moods. Take some of [...]

New to Painting? How and what you should start with.

January 24, 2012

New to Painting? How and what you should start with.

Recently I got an email from a 16 year old wanting to start painting in oils. She asked for advise on how to start and what kinds of products. I replied with some advise. My father painted with pastels. I remember him telling me when he took a painting class, he was told so little [...]

Create and Compose Art with the IPad by Janet Vanderhoof

January 19, 2012

I met Janet on twitter and saw her posting about creating art with her IPad and about the Nomad Brushes. Intrigued, I checked the post. I had never heard of using the IPad for creating art. Last year I took a workshop using Photoshop for the artist in composing. To me it was way too [...]

Learning to See Color When Painting

January 16, 2012

Learning to See Color When Painting

The colors that we see everyday are “local” colors. The grass is green, a lemon is yellow. Pretty easy. Local color is the color of an object when viewed at a distance under normal lighting conditions. It is what we are taught as preschoolers. But this can be deceptive. Is the lemon all yellow? Are [...]

BLUE SKIES, BLUE SKIES ¸¸.•¨•♫♪¸¸.•¨•♫♪

January 9, 2012

BLUE SKIES, BLUE SKIES ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪

In reality, blue skies have many more colors in them than a couple of tubes of blue paint. Of course there are all the other colors on a cloudy day, dawn or sunset. But what they all have in common is the combination of all three primaries. Of course, the blue sky has more blue [...]

Practice Doesn’t Always Make Perfect, Getting Good at Bad

January 5, 2012

Practice Doesn’t Always Make Perfect, Getting Good at Bad

How many times have you heard the old saying “Practice makes perfect”. We’ve all been taught this from the time that we first learned to play piano, played softball or learned our times tables. But, what happens when we don’t learn all the baby steps, the proper form, or the rules, we only practice skills [...]

FINDING YOUR STYLE

November 20, 2011

FINDING YOUR STYLE

As artists we talk about “style” all the time, but what does it mean. Wikipedia defines it as a “…distinctive manner which permits the grouping of works into related categories.” or It refers to the visual appearance of a work of art that relates it to other works by the same artist or one from the same [...]

Brushwork Techniques in Oil Painting

November 6, 2011

As I was getting together material for a workshop that I was teaching, I realized that some of my students needed help in brushwork. I feel that brushwork is an exciting component of oil painting and helps define each artists work. Something I have done in the past is to take a clean white canvas [...]

11 Tips For Oil Painters

November 4, 2011

11 Tips For Oil Painters

Following are some tips for the beginning oil painter, or maybe some new tips for the experienced painter. Oil painting Tip 1: Always lay out your oil paints in the same order, so that you can instinctively pick up the correct colors for mixing. Lay out a line of color, using from the end to help [...]

Color Mixing Oil Paints

September 29, 2011

I use a basic warm/cool palette with some extras thrown in for convenience and some colors that are more vibrant without mixing. Titanium White, Cad Yellow Lemon, Cad yellow med, Cad red light, alizarine, Cerulean and Ultramarine. I place all these together on one palette. To see how I set up my separate palettes click [...]

VALUES IN PAINTINGS, KEEP IT SIMPLE

August 31, 2011

VALUES, KEEP IT SIMPLE

In my last post, I spoke to you about large shapes. Today, I want to expand on that theme by speaking to you about values. Let’s keep it simple. Say that you have a painting with three shapes of varying sizes. Now, use three values, light, medium and dark. Each of those three shapes have [...]

PAINT THE TREE, NOT THE LEAF

August 19, 2011

PAINT THE TREE, NOT THE LEAF

First published on Aug 19, 2011 on Empty Easel MAKE IT SIMPLE LARGE SHAPES I was reading a forum discussion recently about painting trees. . . it stood out to me because the artist was trying to paint each leaf, which reminded me of a time when my son was in grade school. His school [...]

DEFINITION OF PLEIN AIR AND ALLA PRIMA

August 10, 2011

DEFINITION OF PLEIN AIR AND ALLA PRIMA

First published on ezine.com on May 19,2011 “En plein air”, the French term, means to paint outside in the open air. To paint all in one sitting either in the studio or outside is called “alla prima”. Most plein air painting is done in one sitting, alla prima, but some artists continue to work on [...]

PHOTOGRAPHING MY ARTWORK

July 1, 2011

PHOTOGRAPHING MY ARTWORK

I have created a giant portable lightbox in my backyard to photograph my artwork. First I clip a sheet on each end to something higher than me, as in the photo. Then I set up my artwork on an easel under the sheet as in the second photo. I then mount my camera to a second tripod [...]

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO PAINT THAT?

May 31, 2011

HOW DO YOU MEASURE PRODUCTIVITY AND MANAGE TIME IN YOUR ART BUSINESS?

First published on ezine.com on May 17, 2011 Today I spent most of the day running errands and taking care of business. I didn’t get any painting done. Tomorrow I will be in the studio painting and hopefully getting a lot done. “They” say that being an artist is 50% taking care of business and [...]

ARE YOUR FOCAL POINTS CLEARLY DEFINED?

May 31, 2011

ARE YOUR FOCAL POINTS CLEARLY DEFINED?

First published on ezine.com on May 23, 2011 Composition tips for painting A first, quick glance at your painting is important. Some questions to ask yourself may be: What is your eye immediately drawn to? Was this your intension? Does it make sense? How can you more effectively define your intended focal point? You might [...]

COMPOSITIONAL ELEMENTS OF A PAINTING/OPPOSITES

May 31, 2011

COMPOSITIONAL ELEMENTS OF A PAINTING/OPPOSITES

Compositional Elements of a Painting As I paint I try to keep in mind that a strong, interesting painting is strengthened by the use of opposites. I have at times used a list of elements to refer to that I taped to my easel. Following is a list of some of the things that I [...]

In addition to studio and plein air classes, I am now offering online workshops. Along with the lessons are video demos, tutorials, and articles focusing on the making and education of art. I hope that you will be able to find some useful information and keep coming back as more information is uploaded onto the site. See my website for a complete portfolio. Thanks for stopping by, Becky
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