Watch Me Paint: World-Class Art, World-Class Instruction
âDrawing is prayer,â Delacroix famously said. He could have added that itâs play as well. And thinking. The Giaour on Horseback, by Eugène Delacroix, c. 1824â26, by Eugène Delacroix, pen and iron gall ink with wash over graphite, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art Shelving books this week, I came across a small volume of drawings …
This was sent to me by childrenâs book author and artist Bruce McMillan, who noted that my December 7 Open House and Studio Party celebrates painter Stuart Davisâ 125th birthday (December 7, 1894). If going to the Open House make sure to gas up for the trip. The ghost of Stuart Davis may be going with you. Gas …
By the time youâre done with these exercises, youâll have lots more experience in mixing color. Our basic classroom still-life for these exercises. Above is the still life I created for these exercises. Make your own, or work from a photograph. You can use the same subject for all four exercises. Keep it simple; it …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: four color exercises”
There are times when you have to dance backwards in 2-inch heels. Or at least do the equivalent in pencil. Here’s how. My soap dish and towel. These are very small drawings, by the wayâabout three inches across. If youâve been reading this blog for a while, you know I stress working from big shapes to …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art Schoolâdrawing from the inside out”
Whatâs the difference between a duffer and a star in any business? Hard work, intelligence and luck, not some ineffable quality of âtalentâ. Painting of an Airstream trailer by Kathleen Gray Farthing for Plein Air Brandywine Valley. When Kathleen Gray Farthing was a lass, her parents didnât want her to major in art in college. …
Continue reading “Talent, and other lies we tell our children”
You do a lovely underpainting and you lose it in the top layers. Why does that happen? Home Farm, by Carol L. Douglas. Painted at Winterthur in Delaware. The human mind loves complex, irrational space divisions. The same mind perversely regularizes what it paints and draws. A split-rail fence, where the gaps between posts diminish …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: losing your drawing”
It’s not the location; it’s what you bring to it. Fallow field, by Carol L. Douglas Iâm at Plein Air Brandywine Valley (PABV) this week. Torrential rain was forecasted starting at midday, so I took the unusual step of leaving to paint before dawn. I intended to blog in the afternoon. Of course, I didnât …
Continue reading “Should you keep your painting locations secret?”
We are affected by what has happened before us, and we have the power to influence those who follow. Blueberry Barrens, Clary Hill, will be at Camden Falls Gallery’s Autumn Hues show, opening this Thursday. I know a painter whose flawless technique is hitched to 19thcentury luminism. Another excellent painter watched him one day and …
Continue reading “Art history can make you a better painter”
A good artist, like a good writer, controls how his painting is read. Early November: North Greenland, 1932, oil on canvas, Rockwell Kent, courtesy the Hermitage People are sometimes under the mistaken notion that Iâm intellectual. In fact, my taste in books is decidedly low-brow. Luckily, there are as many different books out there as …
Sometimes itâs what you donât say that matters most. Girl with the Red Hat, c. 1665-66, Johannes Vermeer, courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. I once had a painting teacher who told me that heavy edges were âmy style.â Like many younger artists, I just hadnât learned how to marry edges in my painting. Beginning …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: the lost-and-found edge”