What mastery does for you
If you’ve learned to do one thing well, you can apply that technique to anything else you want to do. Abstraction, by Carol L. Douglas. My hair looks a lot like this. Those who know me will be surprised to learn that I occasionally brush my hair. I like it long, but it has more …
Painting outside in the cold spring weather
Your paints will work fine; you just need to dress properly. Deer in snow, by Carol L. Douglas. I included this because I hit one on Saturday. She bounded off, but she’s gonna have a headache. Normally, plein airstudents take it easy in the dead of winter, but not my current class. They’ve trooped faithfully …
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Monday Morning Art School: the warm and cool of it all
Mixing paints is simple if you understand how pigments work. Tilt-a-Whirl, by Carol L. Douglas. Painted plein air. Let’s start with some simple review of the color wheel. Red, blue and yellow are the primary colors. Across the wheel from a color is its complement—the color that completes the circle. The complement of a primary …
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Cause du Jour?
Be careful about reading your own times and beliefs into paintings. Massacre of the Innocents, 1565-67, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, courtesy British Royal Collection It has been, as my friend Poppy Balser from Nova Scotia noted yesterday, an unsatisfying season for winter painting along the North Atlantic. Squalls have resolved into freezing rain. That makes …
The most expensive lesson I never learned
Sometimes it’s cheaper to let the pros do it. Clary Hill, watercolor, by Carol L. Douglas If you ever work in watercolor or pastel, you know the framing cost for those media is much higher than for oils. That’s because they’re fussy and difficult to frame properly. I occasionally use both in the field but not …
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