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Letting Go of Perfect: Part Whatever We Are Up to at This Point…
Usually I work way ahead in my blog. But for some reason today’s post wasn’t written—only the image selected. It’s serendipity, because in a weirdo circumstance I slammed my hand into an unfriendly cast-iron base of one of Dick’s shop tools, while tossing him a house key. And typing anything new would be problematic, if […]
Don’t Be Afraid of Messy Studies—What Are You Learning?
Too many of my students in the past have obsessed about perfection in their studies. They worry about their studies being messy, partially complete, and in every other way weak and unconvincing. They are worrying about the wrong thing. The purpose of a study is to try out an idea or approach. To give a […]
Improving Your Eye: Working through Corrections
I write a lot about working directly in ink and embracing the wonkiness that results. I encourage my students to work in ink and embrace the wonkiness—but that doesn’t mean we stop training our eye, and stop refining our work. I’ve seen hundreds of students who believe the only way to improve is to start […]
Cerulean Blue Chromium—Does it Stay or Does It Go?
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that my friends like to talk to me about pigments. A couple years ago my friend Paul started talking to me about Cerulean Blue Chromium (CBC). In the Daniel Smith line it’s PB36. There is no standard usage of paint names in the industry so in a different line a different […]
Found Some More Grids
Sometimes life can seem very quick, agonizingly slow, and full of all the wrong things—all at the same time. If your life feels like that it’s important to pick up your journal and start writing notes about your life and activities; and to keep drawing (or start drawing if you haven’t already). These activities will […]
Journaling on a Circle Grid
For eleven days in September this year I worked on a “grid” made of circles, just for grins. I thought you might enjoy seeing the process and how the project grew. The first image in this post is the completed grid. I’m going to lose the quotation marks around the word grid—I see it […]
Selecting Pinks for Portraits
At the beginning of this year I had some palette choices to make. Whether to keep Opera Pink on my palette was one of those choices. If you look at my journals and out of journal paintings you’ll see that I kept testing Opera Pink. It wasn’t a color that I actively sought out. It […]
Vintage Hair—Mixed Media and Palette Organization
Today it’s a photo step-by-step and not a video as I paint a mixed media portrait with a vintage hair style. Since I’m not teaching currently I sometimes turn the drawing table camera on for my own benefit to look at how I progressed through stages. But sometimes I simply take photos at various stopping […]
A Watercolor Trick for Painting Vintage Hair (or any Hair)
You know that traditional landscape watercolorist’s trick of painting a glaze of yellow over the entire paper surface before building up the glazes of blue, and red, and other colors to set up a glow. The same approach works with hair. Like a landscape, hair has form and shape and texture. Certain bits stick out […]
In Context: Taking Time to Note Your Color Mixes
Even when you’re rushing to get a quick portrait study done, you’ve got time to test some color mixes and note them down for future reference. That’s what’s happening on this page spread (as well as some notes about life). I love Azure Cobalt Blue from Schmincke but it doesn’t give the dark values I […]