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Tag: Monday Morning Art School

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Monday Morning Art School: basics of painting

Happy Dyngus Day! This marks the first real day of spring in my home city of Buffalo, where “everyone is Polish on Dyngus Day.”

Dawn Wind, Twin Lights, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 includes shipping and handling in the continental US.

There are some fundamental principles that every painter should know. Even if you’re an experienced painter, you might benefit from reviewing these basics of painting:

Materials:

  • Understand the basic differences between oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, oil and chalk pastels, and tempera. Know which can be used in multimedia applications such as printmaking or collage, and which will cause chemical reactions that lead to decay. Understand how your specific media works in terms of open time, opacity and blending. (And, yes, I realize I’ve never written about this, so I’ll get right on it.)
  • Know how to read a paint tube and understand the difference between popular names and the pigments actually in the tube. Know the difference between what you want and what you need.
  • Know what kind of brushes are appropriate for your media, and your method of painting. There is a vast range of bristle material out there, and they are suitable for specific mediums and specific methods of painting.
  • Know what surfaces (supports) are suitable for your media, and what kind of sealant you need if you use an incompatible support.
  • Understand the difference between medium and solvent, where each are appropriate, and how they affect viscosity, opacity and drying time.
Seafoam, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed.

Drawing fundamentals

Value

Peaceful tidal pool, 9X12, $869,

Color Theory

Fundamentals of composition

Nocturne on Clam Cove, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869.00 framed includes shipping in continental US.

Observation and reference

Maintenance

  • If painting in oils or acrylics, clean your brushes properly after each use. If painting in watercolor, rinse your brushes thoroughly after each use, especially if painting with salt water.
  • Store your materials someplace other than the back of your car (which is one of my worst habits).

If this is all review, congratulations! If not, you might consider taking one of my classes below this spring:

This spring’s painting classes

Zoom Class: Advance your painting skills

Mondays, 6 PM – 9 PM EST
April 28 to June 9

Advance your skills in oils, watercolor, gouache, acrylics and pastels with guided exercises in design, composition and execution.

This Zoom class not only has tailored instruction, it provides a supportive community where students share work and get positive feedback in an encouraging and collaborative space. 

Zoom class: Signature series

Tuesdays, 6 PM – 9 PM EST
April 29-June 10

This is a combination painting/critique class where students will take deep dives into finding their unique voices as artists, in an encouraging and collaborative space. The goal is to develop a nucleus of work as a springboard for further development.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: what is a focal point in art?

All Flesh is as Grass, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

A focal point in art is the area of a composition that draws the viewer’s eye and holds his or her attention. It’s the visual center of interest.

Artists create focal points primarily with contrast in value, hue and chroma, but other elements of design also support focal points. These include lines that guide the viewer’s eye, textural changes, and placement. Detail and complexity will naturally draw the viewer, as will isolation (which is usually also an exercise in contrast). And everything else being equal, a large object will dominate.

Why do focal points matter?

A good visual composer, just like a good musician, guides his or her viewer through the composition. Focal points engage the viewer, and lead them through the space in a calculated way.

Saskatchewan Grain Elevators, oil on archival canvasboard, 8X10, $522 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Should a work of art have just one focal point?

Generally, most paintings have more than one focal point, although occasionally an artist will let just one section of the canvas dominate. Good examples are Rembrandt van Rijn’s self-portraits, where humanity, as expressed through his face, is everything.

A single focal point creates a clear, strong emphasis, but the downside is that there’s no path forward into the painting. Multiple focal points create movement and tension, leading the viewer’s eye through the composition. The longer a person looks at an artwork, the more they engage with it.

Early Morning at Moon Lake, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

How to prioritize focal points

You, the artist, are the boss here. You should ponder the hierarchy of focal points before you ever pick up a brush. (That’s one reason for a good value sketch.) What is the strongest focal point? What is its spatial relationship to the others? One focal point should lead the band, the others should follow merrily along.

Make sure none of your focal points are at the edge of your canvas or leading off the page. Think of your focal points as elements that are connected compositionally, connected by color harmonies, lines, and value.

Are focal point and subject the same?

While focal point and subject often overlap, they are not always the same thing.

The subject is what the artwork is about—the main idea or theme. The focal point is where the viewer’s eye is drawn first.

In many situations, they might be identical; for example, a black dog running in the snow would be both the focal point and the subject. But in Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Red Hat, the subject is the girl and her stupendous hat, but the focal points are the side of her face, her lace fichu, and the flash of red at the far right of her hat. The focal points are masterfully drawn down the canvas by a single line of light. Rembrandt’s The Night Watch is a portrait of the militia of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch but none of the supporting militiamen are focal points at all.

Athabasca River Confluence, 9X12, $696 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

How do you apply this?

In your next painting or drawing, make a conscious effort to set out and emphasize focal points, using value, hue, chroma and line. Can you articulate where they are and how you want the viewer to read them?

This spring’s painting classes

Zoom Class: Advance your painting skills (whoops, the link was wrong in last week’s posts)

Mondays, 6 PM – 9 PM EST
April 28 to June 9

Advance your skills in oils, watercolor, gouache, acrylics and pastels with guided exercises in design, composition and execution.

This Zoom class not only has tailored instruction, it provides a supportive community where students share work and get positive feedback in an encouraging and collaborative space. 

Zoom class: Signature series

Tuesdays, 6 PM – 9 PM EST
April 29-June 10

This is a combination painting/critique class where students will take deep dives into finding their unique voices as artists, in an encouraging and collaborative space. The goal is to develop a nucleus of work as a springboard for further development.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: Abstract Drawing

Abstract drawing, layered charcoal on newsprint, by Carol L. Douglas

As with abstract painting, abstract drawing is the opportunity to explore design without the pressure of realism. The ante is further reduced by dropping color. You need few materials:

  • A sketchbook, drawing paper, or newsprint.
  • Pencils, pens, markers or charcoal.
Abstract drawing, repeating shapes, by Carol L. Douglas

Start by loosening up

This can be difficult for those of us who’ve spent years learning figurative painting. Here are some simple exercises that might help:

  • Free doodling: Pretend you’re in a boring meeting and let your hand move randomly across the page.
  • Automatic drawing: This is a technique first developed by the Surrealists in an attempt to access the subconscious. Close your eyes and let your pencil move intuitively. Minimize or eliminate rational thought and conscious planning. 
  • Music for inspiration: Blast tunes and draw lines and shapes that match what you hear.
  • Continuous line drawing: Without lifting your pen/pencil, create an abstract composition by moving your hand freely. Let the lines overlap and intersect naturally.
  • Draw random geometric or organic shapes across the page. Experiment with filling some shapes with patterns and shading.
  • Make a messy scribble on the page. Then refine and build on the scribble.
  • Draw an emotion or word: Pick any emotion, and express it through lines, shapes, and value.
  • Smear, baby, smear: Make a big blotch of charcoal on newsprint, and then lift and smudge it with a kneaded eraser. Enhance as you see fit.
  • Repetition: Repeat a shape in different sizes and orientations, allowing patterns to emerge naturally.
Abstract drawing, layered angular shapes, by Carol L. Douglas

Once you’ve gotten used to ignoring reality…

… you can start experimenting with lines and shapes. Focus on curves and geometric forms. Play with thickness, repetition, and patterns. Explore different techniques, including layered marks, contrasting densities, and the bold use of negative space.

A common exercise when I was in school was to draw with your non-dominant hand. It reduces control, but I doubt it gets you in touch with your emotions. Closing your eyes might be more helpful. Keep playing; keep experimenting. You’re unlikely to find a breakthrough on the first try.

Why do I want to try abstract drawing?

Learning to draw non-figuratively frees you to start combining figurative and non-figurative elements in striking new ways. Even if you never want to abandon realism, it will make you a better designer.

Once you’ve escaped the strictures of reality, you’re free to start mixing up figurative and non-figurative elements at whim. By Carol L. Douglas

Inspiration for abstract drawing

Abstract art was the primary artistic movement of the 20th century. Its practitioners are too numerous to mention. I’m partial to the works of Robert Delaunay, Charles Demuth and Clyfford Still, myself. Find a few you love and study their work.

Perhaps more importantly, observe textures and patterns in nature. The symmetry, spirals, branching, waves, cracks, tessellations and fractals of nature are deeply programmed in our brains. The line between figurative and non-figurative art is often tissue-thin.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: transferring your drawing to canvas

A painting that started as a watercolor, which I gridded on plexiglass.

Last week I taught a plein air workshop in Sedona, AZ. One of my students did a superlative sketch but somehow managed to flatten out the diagonals when transferring to her watercolor paper. Gridding is harder in watercolor than it is in oils and acrylics, but it is a skill that needs to be mastered when learning to paint. In watercolor, just use very light pencil lines and erase, or use tiny cross marks at each intersection. Or, if you’re transferring a drawing of the same size, use Saral transfer paper.

Why grid instead of freehand?

We use preliminary value sketches to work out questions of composition. They allow us to take risks that we can’t when going straight to canvas. Why reinvent the wheel, or worse, regularize our risky decisions in the final painting? Gridding is a fast and easy way to set our best drawings in paint.

On Friday, I wrote about free apps like Grid Maker, GridMyPic, etc. that allow us to paste grids directly over photographs in our phones. I’m looking forward to using them for gridding over my drawings, although for reasons of artistic control, I’d never grid across a photo. I have many notebooks full of gridded drawings that I wish I could make whole again.

First, consider aspect ratio

To start transferring your drawing to your canvas, work out whether the aspect ratio of your sketch is the same as the canvas. This is the proportional relationship between height and width. Sometimes this is very obvious. For example, a 9X12 sketch is the same aspect ratio as an 18X24 canvas. But sometimes, you’re starting with a peculiar little sketch drawn on the back of an envelope.

By the way, I never sketch into a box; I always sketch and then draw the box around my drawing. This allows me the freedom to explore what’s important in the scene without worrying about squeezing it into a preformed box. After, I can draw a box around it in the proper aspect ratio.

Everything starts with ratios

Remember learning that 1/2 was the same as 2/4? We want to force our sketch into a similar equivalent ratio with our canvas.

Let’s assume that you’ve cropped your sketch to be 8” across. You want to know how tall your crop should be to match your canvas.

Write out the ratios of height to width as above.

To make them equivalent, you cross-multiply the two fixed numbers, and divide by the other fixed number, as below:

Use your common sense here. If it doesn’t look like they should be equal, you probably made a mistake. And you can work from a known height as easily as from a known width; it doesn’t matter if the variable is on the top or the bottom, the principle is the same.

The next step is to grid both the canvas and sketch equally. In my painting above, my grid was an inch square on the sketch and 4″ square on the canvas, but as long as you end up with the same number of squares on both, the actual measurements don’t matter. You can just keep dividing the squares until you get a grid that’s small enough to be useful. For a small painting, that could be as simple as quartering the sketch and the canvas. I use a T-square and charcoal, and I’m not crazy about the lines being perfect; I adjust constantly as I go. The last step is to transfer the little drawing, rectangle by rectangle, to the larger canvas. I look for points of intersection on the grid, and from there it’s easy to transfer my drawing. It may seem time-consuming, but it saves a lot of work in the long run and will give you a painting that more closely matches the dynamic energy of your original sketch.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: why do we create art?

Art print by Jesse Petersen, available here. Courtesy of the artist.

I just finished presenting at the Sedona Entrepreneurial Artist Development Program (SEAD). One of my co-presenters, Jesse Petersen said: “Even if this wasn’t my job, even if I lost everything that I have now, I would always create for myself and share what I do because it is deeply meaningful and the way I process life.”

Our culture says that to do art, you have to be good at it. That’s nonsense. Art doesn’t just allow us to express emotions, ideas, and experiences, it helps us work through them.

“When I have a daily art practice and dedicate time to making art—and it doesn’t have to be good art,” continued Jesse, “I show up better for my family, friends, community, church. I used to think taking that time was selfish, but now I know that just makes me better.”

Art journal by Jesse Petersen, courtesy of the artist.

Why do we create art, according to received wisdom?

The traditional reasons for making art are:

  • Expressing thoughts, feelings, and beliefs
  • Reinforcing socially-acceptable thoughts, feelings and beliefs
  • Communicating ideas and ideals
  • Expressing beauty
  • Telling stories
  • Recording history
  • Activism
  • Creating community

But these are the reasons for which publicly-consumed art is created. What about the more hands-on, accessible, personal art? It may never have the international significance of, say, Goya’s The Third of May, 1808, but it changes countless lives.

“I used to think making art was a luxury to be done after my to-do list was done, now I realize it’s the first thing I should do,” said Jesse.

Two of Jesse’s art-journaling students attended the SEAD program, and both were motivated to stick around after the program ended. Long after everyone else had left, the three of them sat in the empty theater, making art together. Leslie Barrett and Sharon Gilham are what we call emerging artists, which means they’re trying to ruin a perfectly good hobby by selling their work.

Artwork by Jesse Petersen, courtesy of the artist.

“I started to do more art when my kids moved out of the house,” Leslie told me. “I had more time. I started to think about how much I liked art in the past. I was very curious about watercolor, mixed media, and books. I work in technology, so it’s nice to come home, relax, and do something for myself.”

“I’ve been creative my whole life but never really trusted I was any good at it,” Sharon said. She works in the hospitality industry, which is a tough fit because she’s essentially introverted. “Art calms me down after a long day at work.

“There are so many weird things in my head that I don’t know how to communicate with words, so this is an outlet for me. I have always been someone a little more guarded about sharing my emotions, and I try to put them into my art. I start with a feeling, a thought, or a color palette, and start the creation from that. It’s almost purely the emotion going into the piece.”

Art journal by Jesse Petersen, courtesy of the artist.

Both Sharon and Leslie took the SEAD workshop because they have seen a growing interest in their work from prospective buyers. They’re thinking about potential post-retirement careers. However, it’s clear from their conversation that they love the act of creation. As Leslie said, “I don’t try to make anything I don’t have a personal connection to.”

I can’t see why everyone doesn’t want a piece of that. Art doesn’t have to mean painting or sculpture. It could be printing, or art journaling, or photography or quilting. You really should try it.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: how can I sell my art?

Spring Greens, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $652 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

One of the questions I’m asked most frequently is, how can I sell my art? The answer is different for each person, but it always requires a shift in outlook. We artists create work that’s specifically from our mindset. However, selling art is no different from any other sales. It’s not about us, but about the customer.

Sales is about showing how our product effectively addresses our customer’s needs. It means building a relationship with the customer and addressing his or her concerns. That two-way communication may be transient or evolve over a long period of time. 

Your customer may want to beautify a space, prove something to himself or others, engage with the artwork on an intellectual level, or even just match his wallpaper. All are perfectly valid reasons to buy a painting.

Early Morning at Moon Lake, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Do you have a strong, consistent body of work?

Your work should be constantly evolving; if not, you’re probably just parodying yourself. Still, you should have a strong, consistent line of development. Somewhere online you should have a portfolio showcasing your best work. This presence needn’t be elaborate or expensive; a free blog host might be sufficient if you’re just starting out. It shouldn’t be scattershot—nobody wants to see your poetry, hand-embroidery, pottery and recipes if you’re trying to sell paintings.

Your website should have a reasonably complete bio and you should have a brief artist’s statement available. You will be asked for it.

Pensive 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $522 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Selling in bricks and mortar galleries and stores

Are galleries dead? Certainly not, although they’ve drifted sideways in the past few years. I particularly like well-run cooperative galleries.

The day of cold-calling with a portfolio under your arm is (thank goodness) over. Start by thoroughly researching the gallery’s current exhibitions and artists, including visiting if possible. The gallery’s website may have explicit application instructions, which simplify matters. If not, prepare a cover letter, an artist statement, and a portfolio (with links to the work online and to your social media), and send them by email.  If you don’t hear back, follow up by phone after a reasonable time has elapsed.

But coffee shops, restaurants, and offices may actually sell more work, and often charge no commission at all. Besides my own gallery, I have work in a dental office and a realtor’s office; the realtor has used my work to stage property. The more my work is seen, the higher my profile.

Selling online

If I were starting today, I’d use FASO; Eric Jacobsen, Poppy Balser, and many of my other friends are on it. It’s commerce-enabled and will scale up as you grow. I have known artists who’ve auctioned their work on eBay, but I think that needs a high profile to start with.

Spring Allee, oil on archival canvasboard, 14X18, $1594.00 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Social Media

Regardless of how you plan to sell, you’ll need to make a truce with social media. I like LinkedIn and Instagram best right now, followed by Facebook, but I do post on all available social media several times a week.

This is a constantly-shifting landscape, so keep your options open. My student and friend Cheryl Shanahan is fantastic at witty reels, and I want to be more like her. Since we’re apparently keeping TikTok, it’s time to loosen up that part of my brain.

Art fairs

I’ve done art fairs from St. Louis, MO to New York City. They’re a lot of work setting up and tearing down, so I’ve aged out of them. Their great advantage is that once you’ve paid the booth fee (which can be steep) the profits are all yours.

If you do them, diversify your merchandise. For painters, that means offering prints of your work along with originals. Many people attending these events don’t really want to spend $2000 on original art, but they will spring for a nice print.

(I’m thinking about these things because I leave on Friday to present at the Sedona Entrepreneurial Artist Development Program. After that, I’m teaching a workshop, below. There are still some openings, if you’d like to join me.)

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: how to photograph paintings when you’re comically inept like me

The only photo I took last week that filled me with unalloyed joy was this tiny 4X6 of a baby spruce tree. Color, check. Exposure, check.

I am fairly incompetent when it comes to photographing my own work. It’s not from lack of equipment—I have a Nikon D750 digital SLR camera, photofloods, and a Slik tripod that’s so heavy I ought to be able to break my toe before I set my camera vibrating.

It’s the combination of cameras and the ego involvement of my own work that does me in. I exited the film age by tripping over a tripod while prepping a batch of slides for a show submission. Well, that camera was almost obsolete anyway.

Meanwhile, I watch my peers casually lean paintings against trees and shoot perfect images, while I struggle to remember to do it at all.

At any rate, here’s what I know about how to photograph paintings; I’ll try to practice what I preach.

A good cell phone can take a better photo than a bad DSLR, but more importantly, sometimes a cell phone is all you have at hand.

Exposure is OK, color is off, and it looks blurry to me. I painted this while discussing Proust with Björn Runquist.

Don’t shoot your photos when you’re exhausted.

I don’t do anything well when I’m hot, tired, up against a deadline and thirsty. My resolution for 2025 is to photograph things calmly and when there’s still gas in my tank.

Oil painters have an additional complication in that impasto doesn’t always look great when it’s wet; it can be overly reflective. If there’s time to let it dry, that’s an advantage. But when something has been painted for an event, that’s a luxury you might not have.

Shoot your work parallel to the camera lens.

If you can hang your work on a wall, that’s perfect. If you can leave it on an easel pointing straight up and down, that’s about the same, and more practical. Failing that, you want the picture plane to be parallel to the camera lens, so that all four corners of the painting are the same distance from the lens. That results in minimal distortion.

Yes, you can ease some of that distortion in photo editing software, but you can’t do it perfectly, and there are times (like on the ocean’s horizon, or in perspective) when it matters. 

By attempting to fix the bad exposure, I messed up the color relationships, and there went what I liked about this painting. Oops.

Light your work evenly

Guidebooks will tell you to use indirect natural light, but where I live that’s usually too blue. Also, it’s cold outside, and no number of windows cast even light indoors. I use two photofloods at 45-degree angles to my work, and they cast very even, natural light across my paintings.

If you don’t have photofloods, you can rig up paper or fabric screens in front of LED bulbs.

I’ve learned two things the hard way: make sure any shades behind your subject are closed and make sure that any brightly-colored objects in the room are not casting reflected color onto your painting.

Don’t zoom in too close

If you do, you’re in danger of getting fish-eye, especially with a cell phone. Phones and cameras are such high resolution now that you don’t need to worry about every pixel.

I’ve decided to make reshooting this painting my life’s work. It’s such a good painting and for some reason so difficult to get a good shot of.

Don’t use autoexposure

If you let your cell phone or camera choose an exposure for you, you are unlikely to love the results. On my cell phone, I take a couple different exposures and hope for the best. (Ask the internet if you don’t know how to do this for your phone.) On my camera, I auto-bracket.

You don’t need any great depth of field to photograph a painting. If you have a DSLR, set it for a larger f-stop (like f3.5, 2.8, or 1.4). That will give you a faster shutter. That’s the mistake I made on Friday that gave me blurry photos and why I’ll be reshooting all these pictures today. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Once you’ve got an accurate exposure, don’t go into your editing software and autocorrect the levels. Paintings do not generally have 100% blacks and 0% whites, but autocorrection puts those in, as well as averaging out all the values to look like everything else. Who needs that?

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: the golden rectangle and other design ideas

Dawn along Upper Red Rock Loop Road, Sedona, 20X24 oil on canvas, $2318 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

“Why do odd numbers of objects in a composition look more ‘interesting’ than even numbers,” my correspondent asked.

“The explanation I’ve heard is that the brain wants to create symmetry, and when unable to do so because there are an odd number of objects, the gaze just continues to move around the composition.  I briefly worked on a sheep farm, and ewes who had three lambs always seemed confused, like they were counting ‘one… two… wait a minute! Let me count again!’”

Carrie, even with twins I was confused most of the time. Sheep, like humans, have only two teats, but no opposable thumbs, and they’re kind of dumb. But back to your question:

“Is a desire for symmetry really hardwired into our brains? Or is this a cultural preference? Or a myth? If our brains want symmetry, then why not give it to them and make symmetrical art? Do people actually look at paintings of odd numbers of objects longer? Do they like them better?”

The short answer is that the brain seems hardwired to like complicated visual relationships.

Home Farm, 20X24, oil on canvas, $2898 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

The Golden Rectangle, the granddaddy of all design ideas

That need for visual mystery is the basis for the Golden Rectangle. It resolves to 1.618:1, which is a ratio none of us can parse. Yet it looks pleasing. That’s because it derives from the Golden Spiral and the Fibonacci Sequence, with their perfect squares.

By HB – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114843794

The Golden Rectangle is the first ‘absolute’ design model I ever learned. It has been used since at least the ancient Greeks. However, it doesn’t match up with the aspect ratio of modern canvases, frames and cameras, so we don’t hear about it as much anymore.

The rule of thirds

The rule of thirds never meant that you should have three objects. It divides an image into nine equal parts using two horizontal and two vertical lines. The most important elements of the image are placed along the lines or their intersections. That creates points of interest that are evenly spaced and aesthetically pleasing

It works, of course, but it is by no means the most interesting compositional grid. 1/3, although a repeating decimal, isn’t all that difficult for the brain to parse.

Camden Harbor from Curtis Island, oil on canvas, $2782 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental United States.

Is symmetry always bad?

Whenever someone tells me you should never put something smack dab in the middle of their canvas, I direct them to the Mask of Tutankhamun. It’s powerful, stately and grand. That’s why Renaissance artists like Leonardo da Vinci used symmetry to such good effect. It’s less popular today, perhaps because we don’t believe in absolutes truth much anymore.

Dynamic Symmetry

Jay Hambidge hoped to capitalize on the brain’s love of inscrutable proportion when he devised his theory of dynamic symmetry back in the 1920s. It’s since been discredited, but pops back up with dismaying regularity.

I learned it from the painter Steven Assael and fiddled with it for several years. In the end, what it taught me was not to put focal points at the edge of my canvas, which I’m telling you here, for free.

Home Port, 18X24,, $2318 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

The circle

The circle is balanced in every direction. If symmetry were boring, a circle would be the last word in dullness. Instead, it’s fascinated us from da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man to now.

Besides being a model of human proportion, Vitruvian Man is a nod to an ancient math problem called squaring the circle. That was the challenge of constructing a square with the area of a given circle using geometry. 

Ultimately it proved impossible. That’s because of our old high school buddy, π. π is what’s called a transcendental number, which just means it’s non-algebraic and goes on and on without ever repeating. Circles interest us precisely because they can’t be pushed into a square hole (and vice-versa).

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: learning by copying

Cheese Slices, 1986, Wayne Thiebaud, private collection, photo courtesy Mark Gale

“I won’t ask you to do anything I won’t do,” I promised my students recently. That’s cutting into my painting time, but I have several students enrolled in both of my online classes. I’m concerned I’m running them ragged.

Last week I asked my composition and brushwork class to copy a Wayne Thiebaud painting. I’ve been meaning to do it myself because I was curious about how he executes those hints of penumbral color.

Later, I was flipping through Facebook and realized that painter Tim Kelly had just copied Winslow Homer’s The Herring Net. What is so valuable about copying masterpieces that even professional artists do it?

My copy of Cheese Slices, roughly 9X12.

Freed from original thought

Getting rid of the pressure of originality frees your mind to focus on technique. You hone skills without the added burden of inventing something new. You can study, dispassionately, the elements of color and design used by the artist.

Brushwork

I assigned Thiebaud because I wanted my students to get a feeling for his brushwork. That differs depending on the medium. He’s also a great source to understand optical mixing.

The Herring Net, 1885, Winslow Homer, courtesy Art Institute of Chicago

Color mixing without pressure

By the time I was done with my fair copy, I knew what paints Thiebaud had on his palette. (It doesn’t differ much from mine, it turns out.) Here, Tim was operating at a disadvantage. “This was done from a picture in an old book so it’s likely a chromatic departure from the original,” he said.

There are several passages in Cheese Slices where colors were mixed with a dragging brush. That’s easy enough to do spontaneously; it’s much harder to copy. But the attempt helped me understand the theory behind his color choices.

Tim Kelly’s copy of The Herring Net. “Our living room wall had a reproduction of this painting back in the early 70’s,” he said. “Little Timmy would stare at it often with concern that the guy on the left might fall out of the boat.”

Learning by copying is really reverse engineering

Most of the painting I copied was pretty straightforward. In other areas, there were challenges of blending and detail that surprised me. For example, Thiebaud’s application of impasto was more conventional than I expected, considering how radical the results look.  

These problem-solving skills, of course, are transferable to your original work. Once you’ve figured out how a master blends, or applies paint, you can do it in your own work any time you want.

My cranberry-glass goblets, oil on linen, 9X12. My big surprise painting these was that none of them are exactly the same!

Learning by copying builds confidence

I still don’t think I’ll make a good forger, but it is always heartening to realize that I can fake it enough for the painting to be recognizable.

A few tips for success

You have to be a little in love with a painting to bother copying it. It helps to understand the historical context and technique of the artist before you start. There’s no reason to sweat this part; the internet is a terrific resource.

Find the best image of the painting that you can. I have a picture of Cheese Slices in a book but ended up painting from a photo taken by my friend. It was much more detailed and nuanced.

Above all, be patient. It took time to create the original, and it will take time to make a copy. Mine took the better part of a day.

Focus on what you care about. I was uninterested in copying Thiebaud’s paint-handling; I understand how he did that. Among other things, he was right-handed and I’m a leftie. But if juicy brushwork is your issue, copy the brushwork. If color’s your issue, copy the color. If they’re both your issue, focus on them both.

My major question going into this copy was when those brilliant penumbral colors were added—in the base layer, the middle layer, or the top. All of the above, it turns out.

The night after I copied this painting, I dreamed about it. My subconscious mind showed me how those penumbral colors are organized and I looked at the original with new eyes. Then I went on to paint my own cranberry-glass goblets using the same general idea. Is it brilliant? No. Is it interesting? To me, at least.

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Monday Morning Art School: the twenty-brushstroke painting

Mike Prairie’s twenty-brushstroke painting, in watercolor. He did the whole thing with a single 1.4″ dagger brush.

When I told my Composition and Brushwork students they were going to complete a finished work in twenty brushstrokes, they were skeptical. “You’re going to demo,” they insisted. Once they realized it was easier than it sounds, they—not to put too fine a point on it—nailed it.

Baby spruce in snow, a twenty brushstroke painting by me, in oils.

What will you learn?

The twenty-brushstroke painting is an exercise to loosen up our painting. It emphasizes simplicity, efficiency and intention. It means prioritizing the essential elements of composition. That teaches us to focus on what matters most.

Painting is always about strategy. Limiting the number of brushstrokes forces you to plan carefully before you start. You must think ahead about where each stroke will go, what color it will be, and how it contributes to the overall painting. This sharpens your ability to observe and distill a subject into its most important elements.

That is the basis of making bold, deliberate marks rather than overworking, hesitating or flailing around. Simplifying helps you see larger shapes and forms instead of getting mired in details. Since you can’t rely on detailed rendering, you are forced t focus on strong contrasts, values and color harmony to convey thoughts and feelings.

Lynda Mussen’s twenty-brushstroke painting in oils.

The twenty-brushstroke painting frees us from perfectionism and encourages economy of movement and painterly efficiency.

I do the twenty-brushstroke painting when I’m tapped out. It encourages me to experiment and take risks. It’s almost impossible to do a twenty-brushstroke painting that isn’t energetic.

How do you start?

First I draw… always. In this case, I wanted to understand a baby spruce’s needle and branch structure before I started to abstract shapes.

The twenty-brushstroke painting isn’t necessarily easier and faster to do than a conventional painting. It’s more thoughtful, less frenetic.

Start with a simple subject with clear shapes. A subject with defined forms is easiest, but with practice you can pare down most complex subjects into striking, recognizable shapes. Strong contrast helps.

For my class demos, I snapped a photo of a baby spruce. I drew a careful rendering of the wee tree in order to study how the limbs and needles branched out into space. After that, I drew a composition drawing, because if a picture doesn’t work in greyscale, it’s never going to work in color.

My twenty-brushstroke painting in watercolor.

Since I was painting a baby spruce in snow, a complementary scheme of blue and palest peach was an obvious starting point. I mixed sufficient paint so that I didn’t run out in mid-brushstroke. This is almost counterintuitive in watercolor, where people tend to mix smaller amounts with a brush, but it’s a great skill to develop. You can modulate and mingle the basic colors as you go.

I always test my watercolor strokes on a sheet of scrap paper to make sure the value, hue and chroma are exactly what I want. In oils, I can generally see the chromatic relationships on my palette. Knowing that value is the most important element of color, I get that straight first.

Each stroke is deliberate, with no dithering, correcting or overpainting. Brushstrokes should vary in length, texture, pressure and direction, but every one should have a purpose.

Work from the general to the specific. If you save details for the end, you may find you don’t want or need detail at all. In the watercolor painting above, I used one brush, a squirrel mop. In my oil painting, I used a #10 flat, a #6 bright, and a wee thing that was probably unnecessary. Mike Prairie used this dagger brush for his whole watercolor painting; I was so impressed I now want one myself.

Stop after each stroke to assess the overall balance and composition. Above all, resist the urge to overcomplicate matters.

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