Nature is one of the best places from which to gather reference. I’ve been working on a piece that is set during twilight. Using my memory, I made several attempts at a twilight color and value scheme in color studies but the look and feel just wasn’t coming across....
Jul52017
Plein Air at Twilight
Mar112017
Reshaping Brushes
A few of my bristle brushes have splayed out so I experimented on how to reshape them. On most bristle brushes, the hairs have a slight natural curve to them. But with use they get out of shape. In “Painter’s Handbook: Revised and Expanded” by Mark David Gottsegen, he...
Jan272017
New Art on Dura-Lar
For my most recent project I’ve been drawing on Dura-Lar. It was suggested by another artist who has had excellent results with the stuff. I’m using the .005 matte film. Like with the vellum I used for previous projects, I drew my lines on one side and am building...
Jul62016
Is Your Media in Your Way?
In the context of getting ideas out and working out a picture, one of the things I learned at The Atelier was that maybe the media is in the way. There are many things happening when I’m generating ideas and working out a picture (I’m guessing others have a...
Jun222016
Lightfast
There are plenty of resources defining lightfast but I wanted to know what it looked like when something wasn’t lightfast. I wanted to use brown ink as a sketch tool by filling a Niji Waterbrush with it. I was told by one of the sales people at the art...
Jun152016
Using Crayons to Create
Frustrated with getting marks on paper or keeping a journal? Here’s one idea to help ease the frustration: crayons! Yup, wax crayons. Here’s what I noticed this does for me: It changes my mindset to one more of play time, a child-like mind of exploring and just being and...
Apr62016
Tiling and Transferring a Drawing
You need to enlarge and transfer a drawing to your canvas but your usual printing service is currently unavailable. Not a problem. My solution: tiling. I scan my drawing and resize it to the desired painting size in Photoshop, keeping the resolution somewhere between 150 – 250 ppi. This...
Mar92016
Oil Painting Experiment
I’ve been told not to paint with regular cooking oil. It’s isn’t a drying oil. Instead of just accepting this I got curious. Yesterday I made a little test. I used Raw Umber oil paint (it’s one of the faster drying oil colors on it’s own). The brand I...
Feb242016
Solvent Free Oil Painting
I needed a solution for painting without solvents so I turned to M. Graham’s Walnut Alkyd Medium, an Artists’ Oil Medium. There are several options out there but this is one of the products I have on hand. I’ll be doing an oil painting demo at a sci-fi fantasy...
Nov182015
Kneaded Eraser to the Rescue
Sometimes I need more information to complete a picture but don’t have the budget or time to do an elaborate maquette or huge amounts of research. Kneaded eraser to the rescue! This thing has been stalactites, stalagmites, tombstones, a sci-fi piece of diagnostic tech, and various creatures. By sculpting...