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Tag: learn to paint

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Reverse aging by learning to draw

Stuffed animal in a bowl, with Saran Wrap. 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.

For decades, I’ve been telling my husband: “When they come to take me away, tell them I never could remember anything.” It’s true; I have a terrible memory for names and dates. I’ve watched a loved one take a digit-span test and shuddered; I couldn’t recite a string of numbers backwards at age 25, let alone now.

Recently I’ve noticed my short-term memory is improving. I’ve attributed that to the infernal modern need for passwords, which we need to unlock everything from our bank accounts to our house.

We take for granted that older people lose cognitive ability – especially memory – over time. But what if that is preventable, or even reversible? That would be tremendous not only for the people involved, but for our aging society.

Pull up your Big Girl Panties, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.

I’ve got good news for you

Recent research suggests that not only can cognitive loss be delayed, but in some cases even reversed. Researchers had elderly (55+) participants engage in intensive learning for three months in a program designed to mimic the schooling we put our kids through. Not only was there cognitive improvement, it lasted through the one-year follow-up test.

This wasn’t a casual learning program. Study participants took twelve weeks of classes in three subjects about which they had no prior knowledge, choosing from Spanish, photography, iPad operation, drawing, and music composition. They had homework (hah!). That and their attendance were tracked.

Both the six-month and one-year scores were significantly higher than the subjects’ pretest scores. The researchers were careful to note that they’d tried to replicate the environment in which young people learn, so the social bonds created in classes could have been as important as the learning itself.

This wasn’t a lone study, either; they were duplicating the results of earlier research.

Back It Up, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.

A half-hearted approach won’t work

What’s equally important is what doesn’t promote cognitive improvement. Just listening to classical music doesn’t cut it-you must pick up that cello and try to master it. There’s no duffing it to mental acuity. You must focus, intently, on a new skill for it to make a difference.

Most painting students are older adults. The ones who stick with it are the ones who are slightly obsessed. They don’t just paint during class; they work tirelessly during the week. Most of my students stick with me over long periods of time, and build an esprit de corps among themselves. Perhaps their peer-to-peer learning and encouragement are as essential to their success as artists as anything I tell them.

Hiking, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.

It seems that any skill that requires long-term effort and concentration will help the older mind, and drawing and painting certainly qualify. The beautiful-and maddening-thing about painting is that it’s not ever really mastered. I’ve been at it for decades and there’s still always something to learn.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Escape from Pleasantville

Mary Day on Camden Harbor, Cassie Sano, courtesy of the artist.

“I’ve escaped from Pleasantville,” Cassie Sano excitedly told our zoom class. “I’ve always been afraid to step out of Pleasantville, but now I’m exploring outside of it.

Later, I asked her about this transformation. “It’s not that my paintings were awful. I was just painting too tightly and too carefully with no detail left undefined,” she said. “They were pleasant, but somewhat boring. Afraid to step ‘out of bounds,’ my paintings reminded me of the movie Pleasantville, and I began to jokingly refer to them with that name.”

That’s a 1998 comedy about two siblings trapped in a 1950s sitcom, set in a small town populated by ‘perfect’ people.

Shadows and Tracks, Mount Vernon, Cassie Sano, courtesy of the artist.

“I left nothing to the imagination of the viewer. I wanted to get the heck out of Pleasantville, but I didn’t know how.”

Cassie is somewhat handicapped in that goal by being one of the most pleasant people I know. Behind her gentle demeanor, however, is a fiercely-fit single-mother and grandmother; she once bounded up Bald Mountain to keep me company while I was painting. And then bounded around the summit to keep herself amused.

She studied graphic design at Salem State University, Elementary Education at Boston College, and cartography and journalism in the military. “In 2018, I retired as a mail carrier for the US Postal Service, and then began focusing on my art. I spent a few years doing pottery, but then shifted to watercolor and oil painting, writing and illustrating picture books, and teaching watercolor painting to beginners.”

“When I first started painting with oils, I was focused on the technical aspects of painting– how to set up my palette, when to use Turpenoid or medium, how to apply the paint on the canvas, and effective use of values and composition. As I became more comfortable with these technical matters, I began to think beyond them.”

Corea Harbor, Cassie Sano, courtesy of the artist.

Transformation from journeyman to master

That makes sense; we must figure out technique before we can dig into meaning and expression. But at some point, technique becomes automatic and we start thinking about deeper issues.

Cassie’s most recent class with me was on bravura brushwork, and that seemed to be what she needed to get past literalism-especially the class where I asked her to paint like Vincent van Gogh. “I could feel myself loosening up and finally seeing how to sneak past Border Patrol… I felt a lot of joy after that class and shouted (to myself), ‘I finally get it!'”

“My goal is to continue practicing these techniques with an emphasis on making my paintings more exciting and joyful for the viewers, and leaving a lot to their imagination,” she told me.

Vienna Mountain Road, Cassie Sano, courtesy of the artist.

Cassie is represented by Eye Feast Art. She is a member of the Kennebec Valley Art Association, River Arts Gallery, and Maine Arts Gallery, and the organizer for the Kennebec Valley Plein Air Painters. In June, she will have a solo show at McLaughlin Garden and Homestead, 97 Main Street, South Paris, ME. The opening will be June 3 from 2-4 PM.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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The value of value

Cypresses and Sunlight, 11X14, Carol L. Douglas, $1087 includes shipping in continental US.

Early this year, I set out to create a seven-step online training class to teaching the fundamentals of oil painting. This morning I’m releasing Step 2: the Value Drawing. Making these interactive classes is a tremendous learning experience for me, and I hope the net result is helpful for you, too.

Value (lightness to darkness) is just one component of color, but it’s the most important. Establishing a hierarchy of values before you ever pick up a brush will save you hours of flailing around in the field. I know this from personal experience. Before I became disciplined about value, I wasted tons of time (and much paint) dithering, repainting, and generally making a mess of more paintings than I saved.

The value sketch is the oil painter’s secret weapon. It’s an opportunity to plan your painting before you ever pick up a brush. And it’s critical; if the value structure is compelling, your painting will be compelling. If not, your painting is doomed from the start. Nothing in painting is more important than value.

Birches, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.

Value is the basis of good composition

“But why waste time on a sketch when I can just paint?” you ask. For the same reason that contractors need blueprints before they start building: great ideas require planning.

Investigating value in advance is the key to compositional fluency. In value sketches, we quickly experiment with different arrangements of lights and darks. This helps us make intelligent choices about focal points, line, and the weight of individual elements in the painting.

By breaking complex scenes down into restricted value planes, we create blueprints for our paintings. This not only helps us simplify ideas, it guides us through later decisions about color, texture, and detail.

Value sketching starts with just a few simple, inexpensive tools: a sketchbook and a mechanical pencil. Working in a sketchbook is a lot faster and easier than working out questions of light and dark in paint. In return for a small investment of time at the beginning of your painting, you’ll reap tremendous dividends as you go forward.

Dropping Tide, 11X14, oil on archival canvasboard, $1087 framed includes shipping in continental US.

Amplifying contrast

Value drawing helps us simplify and amplify (when necessary) the contrast between darks and lights in our composition. Contrast is the visual tool that creates interest and drama in a painting. Too many paintings fail because they’re stuck in the boring midtones.

Seafoam, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping in continental US.

Understanding Form

Value drawing helps us understand how light interacts with different forms and objects in a composition. It’s what gives objects volume. You may never paint the nuances of three-dimensional modeling, but you should understand them.

Value is particularly important in realism. It’s how we create convincing illusions of light and shadow, depth and dimensionality.

Who is this course designed for?

It’s comprehensive, so it’s tailored to both a beginner’s understanding and an experienced artist’s continued development. You can go back to it repeatedly and take it at your own speed, so you’ll benefit from it no matter what your starting point.

Step 1: the Perfect Palette

Step 2: the Value Drawing

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Announcing a new critique class online

Autumn Farm, evening blues, oil on canvasboard, $1449 framed, includes shipping in continental US.

On April 24, I begin a new online critique class. When I first introduced this class back in 2021, I was very curious about how it would evolve. The idea wasn’t just to make specific paintings better. It was to help students develop a sort of executive function that would oversee their painting processes outside of class. This, as you can imagine, was much harder than “hold your brush like this” painting classes.

It was a success, and the proof is in the pudding. That coterie of initial students, for the most part, no longer need me to tell them how to analyze their work. That means that for the first time in a long time I have openings in a Zoom class. I call that success!

Clary Hill Blueberry Barrens, watercolor on Yupo, 24X36, $3985 framed includes shipping in continental US.

A good pairing with plein air

This class lines up with the beginning of plein air season in the north, which is convenient. It’s both a spur to students to go out and paint, as well as an opportunity for students to analyze and strengthen work they’ve done on their own.

Critique is a long-standing tool in every intellectual discipline, artistic and technical. However, it’s more straightforward to tell your co-worker, “I can’t duplicate your results,” than it is to put into words why a painting isn’t working.

What critique is not is an emotional response. It must be disciplined and systematic, but art is at the same time intuitive and subjective. We bridge that gap by analyzing works based on a series of objective design elements:

  • Focal point
  • Line
  • Value
  • Color
  • Balance
  • Shape and form
  • Rhythm and movement
  • Texture (brushwork)

These transcend style or period. Every painting includes them to some degree. The critic must consider how they work together. Do they coalesce into something arresting or not? If not, what forces are blocking the full expression of the artist’s idea?

Blueberry barrens, Clary Hill, oil on canvas, 24X36, $3985 framed, includes shipping in continental US.

The secret is in being nice

I’ve now taught several of these critique classes and the surprising thing is how warm and supportive they’ve been. We’re all intelligent adults; we understand that when our ideas aren’t working, it’s because we’ve run into a problem that another set of eyes can help us unravel.

The very first question we ask is, what was the goal of this painting? That’s not always simple, so it deserves time. Every subsequent point of discussion should be weighted in regards to that answer. For example, if what interested the painter was the loneliness of a home on a rocky crag, the composition, color, and brushwork must all support that aloofness.

Criticism is never mere fault-finding. There is a seed of brilliance in almost every painting, and it needs to be enlarged upon. That means discussing the merits of a painting as much as discussing its faults.

For critique to work well, the critic and artist must both approach the process with humility and mutual respect. I once took a painting I couldn’t finish to a noted teacher for criticism. She told me that it looked like a ‘bad Chagall.’ In trying to execute her ideas on the canvas, I destroyed my own vision. My self-doubt met her self-confidence in a terrible concatenation.

Fog over Whiteface Mountain, 11×14, $1087, includes shipping in continental US.

This class meets from 6-9 on:

  • April 24
  • May 1
  • May 8,
  • May 15,
  • May 22
  • June 5

For more information, see here.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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It helps to pay attention to the rules

Wreck of the SS Ethie, oil on canvas, 18X24, $2318 framed includes shipping in continental US.

This is a cautionary tale for autodidacts (people who teach themselves). As a group we are highly self-disciplined, curious, stubborn and creative, but we can also waste a lot of time and effort on rabbit trails.

The advent of social media was a great time for people like us to start marketing online, because nobody really ‘knew’ how to do it. But there were traditional ideas of marketing that would have been helpful. One of these was the so-called funnel. This is the path that a customer takes from first hearing your name to making a purchase. It includes the following steps:

  • Awareness
  • Interest
  • Consideration
  • Intent
  • Purchase
The Wave, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 includes shipping in continental US.

Now you know more about the funnel than I ever did. I knew that marketers made big efforts to get people to sign up for their blogs and websites. Why bother, I asked myself. This blog has a high readership through its exposure on social media. (There’s that autodidact thing manifesting itself; we’re good at coming up with new ways of doing old things.)

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are not disinterested forums that can be used by little parasites like me. Emailing my blog directly, instead of relying on social media, would have been a Very Good Idea after all. *

Breaking Storm, oil on linen
Breaking Storm, 48X30, oil on linen, framed, $5579 includes shipping in continental US.

What does this have to do with painting?

I learned to paint from my father. He was born in 1924, and learned to paint before World War 2. His teaching model was less lecture and more letting me tag along with him while he drew and painted.

Later, I took classes at the Art Students League. I was shocked at what Cornelia Foss told me after she saw my first effort in her class.

“If this was 1950, I’d say ‘brava’, but it’s not.” She then proceeded to tear apart my technique and replace it with something more up-to-date.

It wasn’t just obsolete; it was in many ways bad. From Kristin Zimmermann, I learned about pigments. Somewhere along the line, I dropped the soup of turpentine that I’d been stewing my paintings in, turning them all a milky grey. And I learned how to draw the human figure with academic accuracy.

That’s not to say that everything I ever taught myself was bad; in fact, because I’m a voracious reader much of it was good. But I wasted many years on bad technique because I was too proud to ask for help.

Moonlight, c. 1885-95, Ralph Albert Blakelock, courtesy Phillips Collection. Yes, it’s mysterious and enigmatic, but it’s also falling apart.

Ralph Albert Blakelock was a celebrated painter of his day, achieving the highest price for a living American painter in 1916 with a version of Moonlight, above. His is a tragic story of celebrity, mental illness, abuse and swindle. Blakelock was largely self-taught. Being that kind of creative thinker, he would tinker with the processes of painting. He often mixed bitumen and varnish for rich depth of color in his thick, uneven paint. That has proved to be a conservation disaster, so when we look at his paintings today, we aren’t seeing what he laid down. In fact, in most of them tonalism has been replaced by something grubby and dark.

Autodidacts, it doesn’t hurt to ask for help occasionally.

*You can sign up for my newsletter, by the way, in the little box on the right. And it might be wise to ‘whitelist’ me; I lost Bruce McMillan’s wonderful newsletter for a while because gmail sent it to my spam folder.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: get the most from a painting workshop

Rim Light, 16X20, 16X20, oil on archival canvasboard, $1623 includes shipping in continental United States.

The hardest thing for a teacher is the student who says, “yes, but…” to everything one tells them. I should know; I tend to be one of those myself. I know what it means to stubbornly protect what I already know, to rely on my own skills instead of opening my mind to new concepts. (Note to Cornelia Foss: I really was listening; I wish I’d listened better.)

I’m teaching in Sedona this week and Austin next week, so preparation is on my mind.

The Rocks Remain, 16X20, oil on archival canvasboard, $1623 includes shipping in continental United States.

Come prepared

Study the supply list, but don’t just run right out and buy everything on it. Every teacher has a reason for asking for specific materials. In my case, it’s that I teach a system of paired primaries. You can’t understand color theory without the right paints. Another teacher might have beautiful mark-making. If you don’t buy the brushes he suggests, how are you going to understand his technique?

A tube of cadmium green that I once bought for a workshop and never opened still rankles. I never want to do that to my students. When you study with me, I want you to read my supply lists. If something confuses you, or you think you already have a similar item, email and ask.

(If you find yourself buying something for one of my classes or workshops and not using it, would you let me know? It means I’m missing something.)

Bring the right clothes. It’s hovering in the 50s in Sedona this week, but Austin will be in the 70s. I send my students a packing list for clothes and personal belongings. But modify it for the weather you’re expecting. Don’t ignore the insect repellant and sunscreen.

The Surf is Cranking Up, 8×16, $903 includes shipping in continental United States.

Know what you’re getting into.

“How can you stand this? It’s all so green!” an urban painter once said to me after a week in the Adirondacks.

There are no Starbucks in Acadia National Park or on the clear, still waters of Penobscot Bay. If you’re dependent on your latte macchiato, you may be uncomfortable at first. But the beauty of America’s wild places more than makes up for it. (And somehow, there’s always coffee, even where there’s no cell phone reception.)

Take notes

There’s a sketchbook on my supply list; plan on writing as much as you draw. If you write down key points, you’ll remember them far better than if you just read my handouts.

Listen for new ideas and ask questions. If I can’t stop and answer them mid-stream, save them for after the demo. Participate in discussions and know that your voice is valued; I’ve learned more from my students than from anyone else.

Seafoam, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed, shipping included in continental United States.

Be prepared to get down and dirty.

I’m not talking about the outdoors here, I’m talking about change and growth. I am highly competitive myself, so it’s difficult for me to feel like I’m struggling. However, it’s in challenge that we make progress. Use your teacher’s method while you’re at the workshop, even if you feel like you’ve stepped back ten years in your development. That’s a temporary problem.

You can disregard what you learn when you go home, or incorporate only small pieces into your technique, but you signed up for the workshop to grow and change. You can’t do that if you cling to your own technique.

Connect with your classmates

There’s power in those relationships. Exchange email addresses. Keep in contact. Follow them on Instagram or Twitter. You’ll learn as much from each other as you will from me.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Welcome to the Perfect Palette

Stone Wall, Salt Marshes, 14×18, $1594 framed.

The Perfect Palette online course is $35.00 and you can access it here.

Today marks the launch of my first online painting class: The Perfect Palette. It’s the first in a series of seven, and I think it marks a new way of learning about painting.

I teach painting through a set of discrete steps that anyone can master. That gets the ‘how’ out of the way and makes room for the ‘why.’ In theory, once a student has my painting protocol sheet in his or her hand, I’m not necessary.

I wish it were that simple. Each step is the distillation of a great deal of theory and practice. It takes time to absorb new concepts. My idea with these online training classes is to expand that protocol sheet, to create a system in which people can return to complex ideas over and over until they really have them down. I’m going to make seven of them over the coming year, taking you through each step of oil painting.

Seafoam, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed.

More better learning

A few years ago, I made some simple calculations. If I taught at my current rate (which is a heavy load for a working artist), I would have a maximum of three hundred open student-seats a year. That sounds great, until you consider that it takes a few years to make a painter. That means most of those slots are taken by repeat students-so much so that I’m not advertising my weekly classes right now. I’m only able to influence a few dozen painters each year, and there’s material I never get to.

Consider drawing. It’s fundamental, but I can’t add a drawing class to my schedule. I can just recommend a good book and hope people open it.

I have a much wider influence through this blog, which has thousands of regular readers. Mine it carefully (there’s a search box to the right), and you’ll learn everything you need to know. However, because of the way blogs are organized, that’s difficult. The content may be evergreen, but the indexing stinks.

I set out to write a ‘how to paint’ book in 2021. It didn’t go well. I’m too restless to sit still that long. Besides, a little voice kept asking, is that how people learn today?

Persistent clouds along the Upper Wash, 11X14, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 unframed.

Why did I start with the palette?

If you’re new to oil painting, the prospect of buying all the necessary paints can be overwhelming. If you’ve been painting for a while, you might find yourself with a expensive drawer full of paints that you never use-or worse, that make dull mixtures. That’s where this class comes in – you’ll learn how to set up the perfect palette with just the paints you need to create the widest range of beautiful colors.

In this class, we explore basic color theory and introduce you to the world of mixing oil paints. You’ll learn how to choose the right pigments for your palette and how to mix them effectively. We’ll also delve into the history of pigment and show you how to make informed decisions when buying paints, decisions that will save you time and money.

Early Spring on Beech Hill, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas, 12X16, $1449 framed

I couldn’t do it myself

Some of you know my daughter Laura Boucher. She’s ‘wicked smahht,’ as they say here in Maine. As sometimes happens in the software start-up world, she was footloose and fancy-free at the same time as I was realizing my limits.

I have never taken an online workplace training class, but they’re common enough in business. She took that model and applied it to painting. This class is the result, and today we launch the first of our new series.

I hope you enjoy it. Meanwhile, we’re well into the weeds with the second video. I’m learning some new skills, like how to run a video camera and how to light a shot.

These videos will follow a logical progression from getting started to finishing up a painting. Once you own the course, you can go back to sections one at a time to refresh your knowledge.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: sinking paint

Test for sinking by running a rag with OMS over the dried passage–if the color comes back, the paint is sunk.

What is sinking paint?

When the top layer of oil paint has been lost to the layer underneath, the surface of the painting can turn grey and lifeless.

The siccative oils in oil paint don’t dry from evaporation; rather they harden in the presence of oxygen. This is the fundamental reason for the fat-over-lean rule. Ignoring it will create other long-term preservation problems besides the ghostly greys settling over your paintings.

Sinking appears slowly over time. A painting that was once boisterously colorful turns dull. The different drying times of pigments means that color will sink unevenly across the canvas, giving it an irregular, blotchy look. Details that were once subtly beautiful will disappear.

That dull film is the pigment granules standing alone, without their enveloping oil. Yes, pigment gives oil paint its color, but without a rich bath of oil to surround it, pigment just looks dull and grey.

Sunset Sail, 14X18, oil on linen, $1594.

In most cases, the entire painting won’t be affected. There will be passages that look dull to the eye sitting next to glossy, normal paint. Sinking is most visible in the dark passages, particularly when they’ve been applied thinly, as most traditional teachers recommend.

Since sinking only appears in dry paint, you will often see it in paintings you’ve set aside for a few weeks or months. You can quickly tell if you have a sinking-in problem by wiping the offending passages with a light layer of odorless mineral spirits (OMS). If color comes back, it was sunk. Don’t try this on a recently-painted work; the solvent can dislodge not-quite-cured paint.

By the way, underpainting should sink if you leave it unfinished-it’s part of the fat-over-lean rule that you don’t use oils in this layer.

There’s no need for oiling out any layers where you’re going to paint right over them.

How to prevent sinking-in

Sinking has three common causes:

Too much solvent-the painter has not mastered the art of using unadulterated paint or painting mediums in the top layer. He relies too much on solvent instead of mediums to get good flow. The OMS takes the place of the linseed oil binder and then evaporates. That leaves the pigment particles isolated, with no oil surround. Air doesn’t have the same refractive index as linseed oil, so pigments that look dark and beautiful in solution looks dull and grey when the binder disappears.

Not enough oil in the top layer of paint-there’s enough oil in modern paints to make a solid top layer, but only if applied in proper thickness. If you want to paint thin, you must cut your paint with an oil-based medium, not with OMS.

Over-absorbent grounds-acrylic gesso is more absorbent than oil gesso, but a well-prepared acrylic ground is fine. However, a very inexpensive board may not have enough ground to stop oil from seeping through. An aftermarket coating of gesso is a good cure. Non-traditional grounds like paper and raw fabric need very careful preparation.

The Wave, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869

What to do about sinking

Sinking is a case of an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure, but it is fixable.

Sometimes, you can see that a passage is sinking while you’re still working on the painting. If this has happened in a bottom layer, ignore it-that’s how it’s supposed to work. If the passage is finished, oiling-out is your best option. Simply brush a very thin layer of medium across the surface in the areas that have turned grey. Then remove the excess with a lint-free painting cloth. You can paint straight onto this slightly tacky surface, or wait for it to dry.

If you find sinking in a thoroughly-dry painting, varnish is your best option. Unlike oiling-out, varnish creates an entirely-separate layer that won’t give future conservators fits.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: don’t be boring

Linda Smiley used the big shapes of shadows to draw us across a very familiar lake scene.

Don’t be boring, I wrote last week. This is the first and greatest rule of composition. “What do you mean by that?” a reader asked in response. This, like obscenity, is one of those things that’s hard to define, but we know it when we see it.

The subject is never the issue. We’ve all seen a thousand boring paintings of barns, but when Edward Hopper painted them, they were brilliant studies of light and shape. Very familiar subjects can be seen in new and arresting ways. I took the liberty of illustrating this post with paintings by my students; they all took common scenes in the northeast and finished them beautifully.

Most people would paint the fence from the side, but Rebecca Bense drove us right into the picture plane with that shadow.

The easy out

We tend to draw what’s right in front of us without thinking too much of how changing the viewpoint might make for a better painting. Commit to an idea, and squeeze out every ounce of design you can by drawing it repeatedly in different arrangements. That’s as important in landscape as it is in still life. The time you spend trying out new compositions is the most important part of the painting process.

That is not just a question of large shapes, but of values. Even a typical arrangement of trees, point, and water can be made arresting through dark shapes running through them. Contrast draws the eye.

Beth Carr used the chop of snow shadows to create great texture.

What everyone says is not necessarily true

You’ve heard of the rule of thirds, or that you should never center the subject directly on your canvas. What makes you believe these things? Someone told them to you.

Ideas of division of space are culturally-derived and quite complex. Tutankhamun’s golden mask is beautiful and perfectly symmetrical.

You will have an easier time creating a composition if you abide by these shibboleths, but that doesn’t mean you’ll make a better painting. A deep dive into space division is never wasted time. I think about the abstract paintings of Clyfford Still when I start to feel my compositions falling into dullness.

Cassie Sano crossed the tire tracks and the tree shadows to create a weave of interest.

There are some verities

Defining your composition with long unbroken horizontal and vertical lines will make it start out rigid. Look to Frances Cadell for ways to break out of that. Likewise, you don’t want to lead the eye out the corners of your canvas, or put a focal point to close to an edge. ‘Respect the picture plane’ is a good general rule.

The human brain loves the insolvable. That’s why the Golden Ratio and Dynamic Symmetry work better than the rule of thirds in design. That doesn’t mean you need to spend a lifetime studying design arcana; just understand it and better placement will come naturally to you.

Stephen Florimbi didn’t beat the details to death in this lovely creek painting, instead, concentrating on the patterns of light and dark.

Things to avoid

No painting without a series of focal points can succeed. This is where the marsh painting usually fails. The eye needs to be able to walk through, into, and beyond the work. I’m not talking about anything as hackneyed as the winding path or river, but a series of points that draw your eye around the picture in a planned way. These details reward careful study and keep the viewer engaged for long periods of time.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Relax and have fun

Sometimes It Rains, oil on canvasboard, private collection.

I’m my own cameraman, sound producer, lighting supervisor, and writer, and I’m inexperienced with all of them. I also see to my hair and makeup, things that haven’t concerned me since I was fourteen. Fifty subsequent years of living and working outside have given me wrinkles like the Badlands and a coiffure of frizzy, weathered snakes. They look awful on camera. I was texting while struggling with all this the other morning, when my buddy signed off with the message, “Have fun!”

I’m almost certain I have a personality, but you’d never know it when I’m confronted by that silent, owlish camera lens. Yet, the more I do it, slowly, imperceptibly, a rhythm emerges. I haven’t cracked a joke yet, but I am starting to believe that sometime soon, I might start to enjoy this.

This, I mused, must be what learning to paint feels like. I throw a bewildering array of terms at my students. I tell them that it isn’t just mindless dabbing on a canvas, but a process that’s been refined over hundreds of years, with a specific order and protocol. They encounter difficulties they never imagined, and I keep sending them back to first principles. Fun? Not.

That’s a face that’s seen a few miles. And a bit “peely-wally,” as my Scottish friend says.

Fun, or challenge?

‘Fun’ means lighthearted amusement. Playing cornhole at a picnic is fun, but it’s hardly memorable. Painting is deeply satisfying, but like all significant achievements, it rests on a lot of hard work.

I imagine this is how my kids felt in dance class- “Arms up… higher, HIGHER, more rounded please… bellies in, lift your head, please, left foot farther forward, no, LEFT!… okay, that looks good, now RELAX!”

We humans are drawn to challenge as much or more than we’re drawn to fun. Challenge is where we experience mastery. The greater the challenge, the headier that feeling. Taken objectively, there was little lighthearted amusement in the last day of our hike across Britain last spring-it was blisters, exhaustion, and annoying cows. And yet reaching Bowness-on-Solway was a moment I’ll remember forever.

Painting with Mitch Baird and Eric Jacobsen is definitely fun.

We still need fun

Challenge feeds our sense of self-esteem and our belief in our own ability to overcome adversity. Often the skills we learn along the way are surprisingly fitting for other disciplines. All of that is important, but we still wouldn’t do it if we didn’t have fun along the way.

On that last long day of hiking, there was a perfect Pimms Cup with our lunch. A hiker chatted us up whose shorts had, ahem, slipped. A party of cyclists in a pub wore crowns and robes over their gear. Without laughter, challenge can be unendurable.

Without fun, our painting will grow rigid and anxious. Fun is the lubricant that allows great ideas to bubble up.

Classes, workshops, and painting groups provide fun through camaraderie and friendship. But sometimes we are on our own, and we need to remind ourselves to have fun. That’s my goal for today; what’s yours?

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