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What Is a Study?
Artists often make “studies” of a subject before they jump into working on a painting or detailed drawing. Why is it useful? Why is it important? I think a study is a notion of the bright sparkly possibilities ahead. When we look at a subject we recognize something and try to get that […]
Upgrading Your Paper Choices for Sketchbooks, Visual Journals, and Art
To get the best results when sketching and painting it makes sense to use the best quality materials that you can afford. Then upgrade those materials as your budget allows. Recently a blog reader wrote in saying that she had upgraded her art supplies to artist level watercolors (mostly Daniel Smith), purchased some quality […]
In Context: Looking at the Arteza Watercolor Book Part 6
This isn’t strictly an “In Context” post. I don’t have things written on these pages and I’m going to show more than one spread. But I’m keeping it in context because these are all from the Arteza Watercolor Book and all these posts together constitute my review of that commercially bound sketchbook. […]
In Context: Looking at the Arteza Watercolor Book Part 4
Since there is no writing on this page in my Arteza Watercolor Book—direct brush painting with watercolor. I used a 5/8 inch flat wash brush and also a size 10 watercolor round for some of this. I should have worked a little harder to make enough wash for the background to not […]
In Context: Looking at the Arteza Watercolor Book
A short while ago I started testing the Arteza Watercolor Journal. Amazon recommended it to me because of something else I had purchased. I’m giving you a link to Amazon above because it’s the only place I know to get it. I’m not connected to Amazon in anyway except as a customer, so buy it […]
Project Friday: Go Ahead, Paint on Lightweight Drawing Paper
If there is one thing I would like to communicate to blog readers it’s that you need to go ahead and paint on whatever paper you have at hand. Simply because in the process of making the paint stick to paper that isn’t meant to have wet media on it you learn something about the […]
Registration for Textures Class Closes Friday
I enjoy pre-painting journal pages with a variety of media. I work ahead in my journals this way. Then when I turn to a pre-painted page I use that page to challenge myself to come up with a visual solution. It’s a lot of fun, and a great way to build layered, rich pages, with […]
Piecemeal Portrait of a Dog
If you’ve been reading the blog for even a short while you’ll know that I enjoy making what I call “piecemeal style.” Please use the category list or the blog’s search engine to find many more examples of this. Here’s one post to get you started. If you’ve been an online student of mine in […]
Using Watercolor Flats and a Bit on Back-Runs
In this experiment on Canson Heritage Hot Press 140 lb. watercolor paper from the end of 2018 I used only a 1 inch large flat watercolor brush. I’ve written other posts about how you can use the edge of the brush to do more linear bits, like the creases in the forehead, but in the […]
In Context: Handling the Page
Sometimes our brain just clicks on an automatic timer. That happened the other day when thoughts of my last Alaskan Malamute Dottie bubbled into my mind exactly on the day 16 years after she had died. How you handle an image or text, or both, on a page or page spread is going to be […]