Watch Me Paint: World-Class Art, World-Class Instruction
Hands are worth mastering because they speak about our experiences and character. Study of a Woman’s Hands, 1490, charcoal and silverpoint, Leonardo da Vinci, courtesy Royal Collection, London I wish I’d had the opportunity to study with one of the comic book greats like Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko. They had a gift for compressing …
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Now you, too, can sound like an artist! Here’s my glossary of art terms—highly subjective and relevant mainly to painters. Fallow field, Carol L. Douglas, 12X16, $1449 framed. Abstraction: non-representational art in which meaning is expressed through a formal pattern of shapes, lines and colors. Sometimes called “non-objective.” There are degrees of abstraction. Alkyd: an oil-based …
Fog has color, movement, and attitude, and is a great tool to understand atmospheric perspective. Fog Bank, 14X18, oil on canvasboard, by Carol L. Douglas, $1275 unframed. I appreciate the care with which the National Weather Service makes hour-by-hour graphical forecasts. They’re the plein air painter’s best friend, since they predict not only the chance of …
The rookie error for summer is to paint all foliage using the same basic color. You lose more points if it’s sap green. Bracken Fern, by Carol L. Douglas, 9X12, oil on canvasboard, $869. This weekend, the mercury climbed to 70° F., which forced the “wall of green” into budding. New England is now in …
Paintings with depth engage our minds more and keep us looking longer. Sunlight on the Coast, 1890, Winslow Homer, courtesy Toledo Museum of Art Pictorial depth in a painting, is—of course—not real. It’s an illusion, suggested by cues that help the observer translate a 2D image to a 3D space. These cues include shadows, size, …
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Clouds have volume and are subject to the rules of perspective. Clouds over Whiteface Mountain, oil on canvasboard, available. Clouds are not flat. The same perspective rules that apply to objects on the ground also apply to objects in the air. We are sometimes misled about that because clouds that appear to be almost overhead …
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It would be easy to write off this off as just another greeting-card version of the familiar Bible story. But look again. Nativity, c. 1420, Robert Campin, courtesy MusĂ©e des Beaux-Arts de Dijon For more than a century, a body of work was identified as being by the so-called Master of Flemalle. These paintings are …
To paint trees, you need to understand them. That doesn’t mean you need to memorize species, but you do need to be able to spot the differences. Palm, by Carol L. Douglas, available. When I first posted this back in 2018, I wrote, “There is a major division in the forest world between conifers (the …
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Art theory is great, but workshops and classes should give you a clear process by which you can design and produce a better painting. Blueberry Barrens, Carol L. Douglas, available through Maine Farmland Trust Gallery. Natalia Andreeva is organizing my Find Your Authentic Voice in Plein Air workshop in Tallahassee in November. She asked me …
It’s time to assemble the proper pigments to paint beautiful greens this spring. Fog over Whiteface Mountain, by Carol L. Douglas. If March didn’t exactly come in like a lamb this year, it at least came in like a sheep. Don’t be fooled. Some of our most brutal winter storms have been known to happen …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: the color of Spring (part 1)”