Tag: Monday Morning Art School

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Monday Morning Art School: desert lessons

Cliffs, 12X12, oil on birch, private collection.

Arizona (especially Sedona’s red-rock country) looks simple from a distance. Big shapes. Big color. Big sky. That apparent simplicity is exactly what makes it hard to paint well.

Every landscape has its own rules, and the desert is particularly unforgiving to painters who arrive armed with assumptions instead of observation. I know this because a long time ago I did exactly that. What did the Arizona desert teach me about painting light and color? More things than I can list, but below are the main points.

View across the Verde Valley, 11X14, oil on birch panel. Available through Sedona Arts Center.

Capturing desert light 

Capturing desert light starts with understanding that Arizona’s atmosphere is clean, dry, and thin. There’s very little haze to soften transitions. As a result, value contrasts are stronger than you may be used to, and color temperature shifts are abrupt. Sunlit planes are warmer than expected, except at midday. The shadows snap cool, sometimes dramatically so. That’s from a distance. Up close, there’s a tremendous amount of color bouncing around the shadows. They are often higher in chroma than the sun-bleached parts of the picture.

If your painting feels flat, it’s often because you aren’t respecting color temperature enough.

Carol L. Douglas painting at Acadia National Park
Sunlight and shadows, oil on birch, 14X18, private collection.

Painting rock formations 

Painting rocks is less about detail and more about structure. From individual rocks to gigantic massifs, rock formations are built from planes. Start by identifying the major directional faces of the rock and assign them clear value families. Vertical planes can read darker than sloped ones, and ledges catch light differently still. At the vast scale of the desert, texture and detail are almost an afterthought. If you paint every crack and striation, you’ll destroy your painting—and your mind.

Lone pines, 14X18, oil on birch, available through Sedona Arts Center.

Working fast in changing light 

Working fast is not optional in the desert. The light moves quickly, and shadows can crawl across a canyon wall in minutes. This is where the preparatory sketch earns its keep. Adapt it for desert conditions by simplifying even more than usual. Four different value steps are sufficient. If you can’t organize the scene in ten minutes, you won’t fix it in two hours. And you’ll be mighty glad to have that sketch when the light shifts.

Color mixing for arid landscapes 

Color mixing for arid landscapes is where many painters go off the rails. Yes, rocks are orange and bluffs are ochre. But Sedona and the wider Southwest are full of violets, cool reds, muted greens and dusty neutrals. Shadows are often infused with unexpected color. Adjust temperature rather than dialing up saturation. If everything is intense, nothing is.

The desert doesn’t reward fussing. It rewards decisiveness, clear value structure, and honest color. Arizona’s landscape will teach you quickly where your habits help you—and where they don’t. That’s why painters keep coming back. The desert is a tough teacher, but it never wastes your time.

Want to learn more?

This March, I’m leading a 5-day plein air workshop in Arizona, and I’d love for you to join me.

Canyon Color for the Painter: A Plein Air Workshop will be held through the Sedona Arts Center, March 9–13, 2026. This immersive week-long workshop is designed for painters in oil, acrylic, pastel, watercolor, gouache, and all experience levels.

You can register directly on Sedona Arts Center’s website, here. Or, contact me if you have questions. I’m happy to answer anything about the workshop, skill requirements, materials or what to expect painting in the desert.

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:

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Monday Morning Art School: you asked ChatGPT what?

My students love to send me things they know will interest me, but sometimes they send me things to make my hair stand on end. As a courtesy, I’ve obliterated the OP’s name and photograph, but you really asked ChatGPT to tell you what paints to buy? And you put 32 paints on your palette? And now you want to know about color theory?

Assuming OP bought regular-size tubes of paints, they set her back $15-20 each. For 32 paints, that’s between $480 and $640. All those paints won’t make her a better painter. They’ll make her a worse painter, because she’ll never learn about color theory and color mixing.

A few years ago, I mailed a small sample of paints to a student in South Carolina. She was frustrated with her paints and I was equally frustrated watching her try and fail to hit color notes. What I sent her was a simple, primary-color limited palette: QoR brand Ultramarine Blue, Nickel Azo Yellow, and Quinacridone Magenta. This is what she did with them:

A color chart done with just three pigments: ultramarine blue, nickel-azo yellow, and quinacridone magenta.

Learn to love limited palette

A limited palette sounds like a restriction, but it’s a shortcut to clarity and cohesiveness. Instead of dabbing in all those paint pots, you learn to mix and marry color.

Learning to mix color teaches you more about color theory than any color wheel. You discover how complements neutralize each other, how color temperature works to create form, and how value does the heavy lifting in painting.

Color harmony and consistency

When all your colors are mixed from the same small family, they are innately related—that’s a shortcut to color harmony. There are no out-of-tune notes screaming for attention. For beginners, who often struggle with garish or muddy color, limited palette creates a more consistent color voice.

Painters need to learn the working characteristics of their paints, including hue, value, chroma, transparency, granulation (in watercolor) and dry time (in oils). That’s hard enough to master for just a few paints.

Clary Hill Blueberry Barrens, watercolor on Yupo, ~24X36, $3985 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Decisiveness

With fewer choices, you spend less time dithering and more time painting. That’s invaluable in alla prima and plein air, but it matters any time you pick up a brush. You’re not hunting for the perfect color on your oversized palette; you’re learning to make what you need. This builds confidence and speed.

We can play fast and loose with hue if value is right, which is why pink or yellow skies can make perfect sense in paintings. When pigment options are reduced, we’re forced to shift our attention to value, which is more important than hue.

By stripping color back to basics, we also see form, edges and composition more clearly.

Autumn Farm, Evening Blues, oil on canvasboard, $1449 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

A limited palette is a tool, not a moral position

Once you understand what each pigment on your palette does, you can expand with intention. But I’ll note that I’m using the same number of paints I was thirty years ago, with very few modifications. They’re simply not necessary.

In the end, a limited palette isn’t about limitation at all. It’s about focus. By reducing choices, you sharpen your eye, strengthen your technique, and let painting be about seeing rather than collecting colors. That’s a lesson worth revisiting at every stage of an artist’s journey.

And, by the way, I’d have freely shared my palette recommendations with this artist. She’d have had hundred of bucks to spend more intelligently… and most of her paint wells would have remained empty.

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:

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Monday Morning Art School: clueless about brushes

Heavy Weather (Ketch Angelique), 24X36, oil on canvas, framed, $3985 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

“I’m clueless about what different brushes do,” a student emailed. She’s not alone. Walk into any art supply store and you’re confronted by a bewildering wall of fine-art painting brushes. They differ in hair, length, spring and, most visibly, in shape. And still, with all that variety, I can manage to not find the brushes I’m looking for. Each brush speaks differently, and painters develop strong preferences that can, however, change over time as our styles evolve. Knowing what brush to grab is part of learning how to paint.

I’ve written in detail about what brushes do, here and here. But let’s talk more generally about brushes.

Clary Hill Blueberry Barrens, watercolor on Yupo, ~24X36, $3985 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Brush history

Brush evolution began in antiquity; as paint varied in viscosity, it required different brushes. Western painting started off with fairly simple round brushes. Meanwhile, Chinese calligraphy had very different requirements: a pointed round end with a full belly that could make either precise or broad strokes. We look for similar brushes in watercolor painting today.

By the Middle Ages, manuscript illumination called for fine squirrel and sable hair brushes. But brushes were still less important than today. There is a famous legend about Giovanni Bellini‘s admiration for Albrecht Dürer‘s incredible technique in painting hair. Bellini asked Dürer for the brushes he used. Dürer showed him his ordinary collection of brushes and demonstrated his technique by painting a long, flowing strand of hair with remarkable precision.

Brushes weren’t standardized until the 19th century, when their manufacture was industrialized. This coincided with Impressionism, when visible brushwork became not a flaw but a feature. Stiffer bristles and brighter shapes supported looser, faster painting.

Main Street, Owl’s Head, oil on archival canvasboard, $1623 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

What do different brush shapes do?

Round brushes taper to a point, which means they can draw a line, place a dot, or broaden into a stroke with pressure. In watercolor painting, a good round brush can carry a surprising amount of pigment and still snap to a sharp point for detail. In oil painting and acrylic painting, rounds are excellent for drawing into wet paint, placing accents, and working smaller passages.

Flat brushes have a squared-off edge and long hairs that hold paint evenly. They excel at laying down broad, confident strokes. Flats are perfect for blocking in large shapes, cutting clean edges, and establishing planes. Turn one on its side and you get a thin line; press it flat and you cover ground quickly.

Brights are just short flats. The reduced hair length makes them stiffer and more controllable. That stiffness is ideal for pushing thicker paint in oil painting or for scrubbing color into the surface in acrylic painting. If you like visible brushwork and a sense of physical paint, brights give you that muscular quality.

Filberts combine the coverage of a flat with the gentleness of a round. They naturally create organic edges, perfect for modeling form. They’re especially useful when you want transitions without fussing.

Angle brushes have a slanted edge that makes them excellent for controlled strokes and awkward angles.

Quebec Brook, oil on archival canvasboard, $1449 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Fan brushes are not for painting happy little trees. Fan brushes can soften edges, blend transitions, or suggest texture like grasses, hair, or water reflections. The key is restraint.

Mop brushes are for watercolor painting. Their full, rounded shape holds a great deal of water, making them ideal for washes, soft skies, and seamless transitions.

Ultimately, brush shapes don’t make a painting good or bad. They shape how you think and how your hand moves. Experimenting with different fine-art painting brushes teaches you to see stroke, edge, and texture as choices rather than accidents. And that—more than owning the ‘right’ brush—is where real progress begins.

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:

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Monday Morning Art School: the danger of safe color

Towpath on the Erie Canal
“Pulteney vineyard,” private collection. For another treatment of the same vineyard, see here.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a delicate painting, but safe color can make an otherwise accomplished painting boring. That’s true even when the drawing is solid, the values are controlled and the technique is assured. There are certainly days when the light is dull and the color is duller. But you need to translate that into something that will compel the viewer to walk across the room.

The modern world loves color saturation. My phone edits my photos to be hyperintense; social media is full of high-chroma color. In this world, paintings that whisper can disappear entirely.

High chroma, however, must be balanced with lower-chroma passages. Otherwise, it overwhelms. The goal isn’t maximum saturation everywhere; it’s contrast of saturation.

Towpath on the Erie Canal
“Towpath on the Erie Canal,” 30X40, oil on canvas, private collection.

How to mix mud… or not

Clean color mixing starts with understanding warmth and coolness within individual pigments. Overtones matter. You can’t randomly mix any blue and any red and expect a high-octane purple. If either pigment carries yellow overtones, you’ll get mud. It’s easy to subdue a wild color; it’s impossible to enliven a dead one. Paint can never be mixed more intensely than it comes out of the tube.

The three historical palettes (and that’s a vast oversimplification) are classical, impressionist, and 20th-century. The 20th century palette has the highest chroma, widest temperature spread and hits the most points on the color wheel. Starting there saves you aggravation, because buying more paint than you need is a waste of money and a fast track to confusion.

Paired primaries can get you to anywhere you need to go in paint-mixing. For more information, see here.

Some specific color concerns

I recommend against heavy-metal pigments for environmental and safety reasons. They also tend to make muddy colors. For example, cadmium pigments mix true only to the warm side.

Viridian is a very cool green and almost always needs warming for foliage. If you mix lemon yellows with any blues, you’ll get cool spring greens. Most natural greens are warmer. Yellow ochre and Indian yellow temper greens because you’re actually adding a lot of red.

For the same reason, darkening with red kills chroma. Instead, use quinacridone magenta or violet.

It’s easy to drop the chroma of high-chroma 20th century pigments.

How to hit the perfect color every time

Start with the pigment closest to your goal. Ask: in which direction on the color wheel do I need to go? Does chroma need lowering? Does it need to go darker? Lighter? Once you’ve answered those questions, you can stop fiddling.

And remember, you can lie about hue if you tell the truth about value.

If you mix the color right but you still make mud, the culprits may be:

  • Too much solvent or medium;
  • Too many layers;
  • Overworking and fussing;
  • Digging in with a vertical brush.

As the old Ronco ads used to say, “set it and forget it.”

By the way, one reason we tend to use too much solvent or medium is that we’ve let our paint half harden on the palette and are trying to open it back up. Suck it up and put out fresh paint.

Want to try painting? I’d love to have you join me for Trust the Process (making technique tell the story you want to tell), my live Zoom class designed to help you build a dependable, joyful, repeatable painting practice. We’ll dig into technique, creative decision-making and the mindset that frees you to paint with confidence. We meet Monday nights, 6-9 PM EST, starting on January 5, 2026. It’s suitable for all levels and all media. You can learn more here.

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:

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Monday Morning Art School: design elements

Santa Claus, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Design elements are in themselves neither good nor bad. They are ideals that can be used in many ways. That’s why two paintings with identical subject matter can land so differently.

You can understand the principles of design intuitively, without being able to name design elements, but it helps to have a common language.

The basic design elements

  • Line—that’s either a long mark or boundary between two shapes; 
  • Shape—an area defined by boundaries;
  • Form—that has different meaning in 2D and 3D design. In painting it means how we represent three-dimensional space;
  • Color, which is made up of:
    • Hue—the position on the color wheel,
    • Chroma—how intense the color is, and,
    • Value—the lightness or darkness of a color, creating contrast and dimension; 
  • Texture—the surface quality of the work, which in practice means brushwork;
  • Rhythm and movement—the organized repetition of objects, and the path through the painting;
  • Balance—how far the painting moves off from symmetry;
  • Focal points—the areas that draw the viewer’s eye first.
Toy Reindeer with double rainbow, oil on archival canvasboard, 6X8, $435 framed, includes shipping in continental US.

No artist can focus on all these at one time. Composition depends on which design elements we choose to stress and how they relate to each other. For example, almost all paintings have line in some form. But is that line restrained? Kinetic? Is it meant to support focal points or recede into the background?

A masterpiece may have quiet, smooth brushwork or bravura brushwork. Neither is ‘better,’ no matter how many times you’ve been told to loosen up. Bravura brushwork may be associated with the brilliant palettes of modern painters, but there were many Old Masters, including Diego Velázquez, Frans Hals and Rembrandt, who painted loosely. Conversely, there are contemporary painters using polished surfaces. What matters is how design elements fit together.

Subject matter has little to do with design.

I have taken tens of thousands of photos I’ll never paint. A strong photo is not necessarily a strong painting. The camera records everything with glacial indifference; we, the artists, must emphasize what’s important.

I find nature a very compelling subject, but nature itself doesn’t guarantee a strong painting. Paintings fail when the value structure is vague, focal points are accidental or don’t exist at all, and nothing is dominant.

Example of nōtan from Composition: Understanding Line, Notan and Color (1899) by Arthur Wesley Dow.

This has been a guiding principle of painting in all times and places. Compare Francisco Goya’s The Third of May, 1808, Jusepe de Ribera’s The Martyrdom of St. Andrew, Winslow Homer’s Weatherbeaten,  Wayne Thiebaud’s Around the Cake and Hasegawa Tōhaku’s The Pine Trees. They’re from different times and places and about radically different subjects. However, they all pare representation down to its essentials. Design is not a modern invention.

Arthur Wesley Dow was one of the great American painting teachers. He pioneered the ideas of space-cutting and nōtan. Both ideas emphasized the arrangement of beautiful shapes, and they’re skills worth practicing.

Example of space cutting from Composition: Understanding Line, Notan and Color (1899) by Arthur Wesley Dow.

Want to learn more about this? I’d love to have you join me for Trust the Process (making technique tell the story you want to tell), my live Zoom class designed to help you build a dependable, joyful, repeatable painting practice. We’ll dig into technique, creative decision-making and the mindset that frees you to paint with confidence. We meet Monday nights, 6-9 PM EST, starting on January 5, 2026. It’s suitable for all levels and all media. You can learn more here.

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:

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Monday Morning Art School—trust the process

Rachel’s Garden, ~24×35, watercolor on Yupo, museum-grade plexiglass, $3985 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

I’m busy writing my upcoming Zoom class, Trust the Process (making technique tell the story you want to tell). That could easily be one of those glib phrases that’s so repeatable that it starts to lose its meaning. However, I think creative success depends on it.

Many painters define their artistic identity based on their successes or failures. But when our sense of worth gets tied to outcome, our confidence flickers: one day we’re geniuses, the next we’re frauds. That’s no way to sustain a joyful or productive painting practice.

Midsummer, 24X36, oil on canvas, $3,188 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

That’s the trap of outcome-based thinking. It’s familiar to almost everyone who’s ever picked up a brush. When we chase external validation—awards, sales, praise and, especially, social-media likes—we create a cycle of euphoria followed by despair. The highs are fleeting; the lows are dismal and feel interminable.

That whole rollercoaster puts our sense of artistic self-worth in the hands of someone or something else. No wonder so many artists live in states of constant insecurity. When others control the verdict, we never feel settled in our own skin.

How process helps

But process-based painting restores our sanity. Art isn’t the sum of our accolades; it’s our creative thinking made visible. What happens on the canvas is a reflection of curiosity, observation, and problem-solving, not a performance. When we remember that the painting process matters as much as the final outcome, the ground under our feet steadies. The joy of painting comes from the physical act of making marks, mixing color, exploring edges and taking risks, not from waiting breathlessly to see whether someone else approves.

Bunker Hill overlook, watercolor on Yupo, approx. 24X36, $3985 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Creativity requires relaxation. Exploration and play happen only when ego steps aside and you drop into the moment. If you’re tense, self-critical or worrying whether your painting will be good enough, you’ve already shut down the important part of your mind. The more you separate your ego from the results, the more freely you’ll work, and the better your painting will be. The joy, and the results, are all in the making.

A few decades ago, I had a student who started every class by announcing: “This painting is for my mother’s birthday,” or “This is going to be a housewarming gift.” I couldn’t talk her out of that, but it was consistently paralyzing. She worried about what the recipient would think and whether it would be good enough for the recipient. Sadly, her work never measured up to the expectations she set before she even picked up a brush. In trying so hard to make great paintings, she froze. She squeezed the growth out of them. Along with that went all her enjoyment, experimentation and play. There was no vitality and no joy. Not surprisingly, she eventually quit painting.

Blueberry barrens, Clary Hill, oil on canvas, 24X36, $3985 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

What does Trust the Process really mean?

Trust the Process means having a reliable, repeatable way of working that will carry you through the rough patches. When technique becomes second nature, you can stop thinking about it and start thinking creatively. That requires painting enough for mastery, but it also helps to understand how painting technique has developed over the last six hundred years. There really are right and wrong ways to do it.

When the mechanics fade into the background, you paint in the moment. And from that place, both skill and satisfaction grow naturally. The process is where art actually lives.

If this idea resonates, then I’d love to have you join me for Trust the Process (making technique tell the story you want to tell), my live Zoom class designed to help you build a dependable, joyful, repeatable painting practice. We’ll dig into technique, creative decision-making and the mindset that frees you to paint with confidence. We meet Monday nights, 6-9 PM EST, starting on January 5, 2026. It’s suitable for all levels and all media. You can learn more here.

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:

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Monday Morning Art School: the 10-Minute sketch

Glaciar Cagliero from Rio Electrico, 12X16, $1159 unframed, available.

I’m writing this post between my tasks making coffee at my church. As with many other things in my life, the workload for this once-mellow task has ramped up, as our church has blown up to three overflowing services a week. That’s pure blessing, but it also means I’m snatching small moments to write. I don’t like working on Sundays, but I’m trying to get my January classes written before I leave to help my daughter paint her new house. As I wrote on Friday, there are seasons in life when we can’t concentrate on making art, and this is one for me.

I promise I’ll attend one service without my laptop. As always, I’ll bring my sketchbook. I hear better when my hands are busy, and I get a half hour of uninterrupted drawing.

Cliffs and glaciers, 12X16, oil on Baltic birch, $1159 includes shipping and handling in continental United States.

There is no perfect moment

I’ve known many women who can’t paint until their chores are finished. That’s a laugh; our chores are never finished. At 67, I’m aware that we have only finite time, and that the perfect moment will never arrive. But here’s the good news: you don’t need a perfect moment. You just need ten minutes.

A 10-minute sketch is the smallest and kindest gift you can give your creative self. No masterpiece required, no pressure and certainly no grand plan. Just pick up a pencil, a brush or a pen and let your hand move. The goal isn’t a frame-worthy piece. The goals are to start and then to strengthen the habit of daily sketching. Ten minutes is short enough to be doable and long enough to crack open the door to deeper artistic thought.

The Whole Enchilada, 12X16, oil on archival canvas, $1159 unframed.

Just show up

You become an artist by showing up, not by waiting for conditions to improve. Every time I lead a workshop or Zoom class, I see this in action. There are always students who are nervous about the process, but before they know it they’re lost in the quiet pleasure of looking and responding. That tiny window of attention changes everything.

A 10-minute sketch bypasses your inner critic. There’s no time for self-doubt, perfectionism, or overthinking. It’s all action and seeing. When you return to that small practice day after day, you’re not just improving your drawing skills, you’re building a creative habit that reinforces your identity as an artist.

Cerro Electrico from the path to the National Park, 11X14, oil on Baltic birch, $869 includes shipping and handling in continental United States.

Your 10-minute sketches are the spark

So, start today. Do a fast contour drawing of your coffee mug or a quick value study from the window, even if it’s on the back of a receipt with a ballpoint pen. Keep it light, simple and curious.

But if ten minutes can settle your mind and sharpen your eye, imagine what six weeks of an evening Zoom class or five uninterrupted days of painting will do. This removes you from your routine and drops you into a world where your creative practice matters. You spend time surrounded by other painters, working from life, refining technique, laughing, learning and remembering what it feels like to be fully immersed.

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:

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Monday Morning Art School: the #1 mistake painters make

Skylarking, 24X36, oil on canvas, $3985 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Even when we work with a very competent instructor or institution, painters are largely self-taught. That’s true of most creative disciplines, since every hour of instruction is followed by hours of practice and self-discovery.

Eventually, we all run into a frustrating truth: effort doesn’t always equal results. We work for hours, even days, and still end up with a painting that feels fussy, flat, or somehow not quite right. Mostly that comes down to one simple mistake: prioritizing detail over the big picture.

Breaking Storm, oil on linen, 30X48, $5579 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

“It looks just like a photograph” is not usually a compliment

“It looks just like a photograph” is something casual passers-by will sometimes say to painters, and it always makes me wince. It generally means the details are all there, but the big sweep of movement and energy is lacking. As artists, most of us are drawn to detail; it’s almost instinctive to notice the sparkle on the water or the delicate branching pattern of new leaves in the spring. (In real life, we’re attracted to those sparkles and branches because they’re gently moving, which doesn’t translate to canvas.)

Frankly, detail is fun to burrow into, and I’m not saying don’t do it—that is a question of your own personal style and vision. But diving into detail before establishing the big shapes and values is the fastest way to derail an otherwise promising piece.

Brigantine Swift in Camden Harbor, 24X30, oil on canvas, framed, $3478 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Structure vs. detail

Painting isn’t built from details outward; it’s built from structure inward. When your underlying shapes, values, and composition are strong, the painting sings before you ever add a highlight. But when the structure is weak, no amount of careful rendering can save it. If you doubt that, go back and look at the work of Baroque painters like Caravaggio or Peter Paul Rubens. As crazily detailed as their canvases are (by our modern standards) they rest first and foremost on solid value structure.

Avoiding this trap is simple

I’ve mentioned that I paint without my glasses; it prevents me from focusing on detail. But even clear-sighted individuals can remember to start with the largest shapes and the biggest value relationships. Ask yourself: Where is the light? Where is the shadow? What are the major masses of the scene? Block those in with confidence and clarity. Only after the bones of the painting are solid should you refine, adjust, and bring in the detail.

American Eagle in Drydock, 12X16, $1159 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Helping you learn

Watching someone move from frustration to epiphany is absolutely the most rewarding part of teaching. It’s also why plein air workshops are transformative. “I’m just asking you to trust me for one week,” I tell my students. I’m there to stop you when you fall back into the habit of fussing or adding tchotchkes to try to fix a not-fully-thought-out composition. We all do it at times, from exhaustion, nerves or sheer obstinacy. But one of my jobs is to intercept that and put you on the road to good design.

Over the course of my workshops and classes, we revisit this idea again and again: simplify first, refine later. You’ll learn to organize values swiftly, make decisive compositional choices and build paintings that hold their structure from the first brushstroke. Once you truly internalize this approach, painting becomes easier, faster and far more joyful. You stop fighting the canvas and start working with it.

I have two types of offerings to help you with this process. The first is a class starting in January called Trust the Process: making technique tell the story you want to tell. It’s on Monday evenings, 6-9, and is open to painters of all levels. The second is my workshop schedule for 2026, below.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, unsure, or just ready for a real leap forward, this is your invitation.

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:

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Monday Morning Art School: use a bigger brush

Mather Point at dawn, oil on canvasboard, 9X12. $696 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Artists should choose a bigger brush far more often than they think, especially when they want stronger compositions, clearer value statements, and more confident paint handling. I have few small brushes at all—a single #2 round for oils and a dagger brush with a fine point for watercolors.

Bigger brushes force us to think in big shapes

A painting succeeds or fails on its large value masses, not on its detail. When we work with a larger brush, we naturally block in shapes rather than fuss. This keeps our attention where it belongs: on composition, value relationships, and the overall movement of the piece.

Grand Canyon at sunset, oil on canvasboard, 9X12. $696 includes shipping and handling in continental United States.

Bigger brushes prevent overworking

Small brushes are perfect for poking, fussing, and destroying the freshness of a painting. Larger brushes won’t let us over-refine areas. They help avoid the muddy, overworked look that happens when we keep adjusting the same small spot again and again.

Bigger brushes teach us to paint with a light hand

I can paint a better fine line with a #4 flat on its side than I can with a rigger. A bigger brush is more stable and holds more paint, meaning less jiggling and fewer stops to reload. There’s a world of tonality that comes from learning to control the pressure in a brush. Bigger brushes can go from bold to delicate, something small brushes just can’t do.

Grand Canyon, late morning, 8X16, oil on archival linenboard. $722 includes shipping and handling in continental United States.

Bigger tools make bolder decisions

When we’re holding a brush the size of a small spatula, we’re forced to paint with intention. We choose our strokes more carefully. We commit. When students tell me they want to learn ‘looser brushwork,’ I start by picking out bigger brushes for them. They encourage broad, authoritative marks, which bring energy and confidence to our work.

Bigger brushes improve surface quality

More paint means juicier, cleaner and more expressive strokes. Instead of scrubbing thinly with a tiny brush, we can place full-bodied, deliberate marks that convey texture, light, and form with immediacy.

Bigger brushes speed up our process

Of course a bigger brush covers more area, faster. But beyond the square-inch question, covering the canvas quickly means we see the painting as a whole early on. This is essential for alla prima work. We get to the heart of the piece before the light changes. I’ve included four paintings here that were done in rapidly-changing light. None of them would have been feasible had I messed around with a tiny brush.

Cowpath, 9X12, oil on Baltic birch, $696 includes shipping and handling in continental United States.

Bigger brushes help us learn faster

Students often think their problems come from a lack of detail control, when in reality they’re struggling with proportion, value, or composition. A big brush forces us to address these essentials head-on. When the big shapes are right, the details practically paint themselves.

Are you a noodler?

I’ve watched countless students hesitate at the exact moment when their painting needs a courageous reframing. Painting with confidence sometimes means accepting that our first idea may not be our best. We need to be willing to accept that and make corrections with authority.

“Big shapes to small shapes” isn’t just a catchy phrase; it’s foundational to painting. When the big shapes are right, you can suggest detail with a few breezy, economical marks.

This approach is actually harder than futzing around with detail. It’s the discipline of stepping back, really looking, and making corrective moves while the painting is still fresh and malleable.

If you’re ready to break the habit of overworking your paintings, I go into more detail about this in my workshops.  

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:

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Monday Morning Art School: simplifying shape and proportion

Heavy Weather (Ketch Angelique), 24X36, oil on canvas, framed, $3985 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

When you begin a painting, the natural instinct is to replicate every little wrinkle, cast shadow, and subtle nuance. But strong painting starts with drawing and structure. You must distill a composition down to its essential shapes and accurate proportions. That includes clear focal points and a compelling value structure. Once you have that you can worry about expressive brushwork.

A sketch of Trundy Point. It doesn’t need to be complicated; it’s a map, not a masterpiece.

Start with the underlying basic shapes

I’ve mentioned that I have the advantage of being slightly nearsighted, and I don’t paint with my glasses on. The rest of you can squint. What are the big masses? Forget identifying whether that’s a tree or a house; it’s a mass topped with another mass.

Every complex form or scene can be broken down into simplified geometric shapes. In addition to making better compositions, shape simplification helps you map proportion. Of course, you’ll occasionally need to check how tall vs. how wide the objects are and where they intersect.

Do this work in a sketchbook, where an ounce of prevention (drawing) is worth a pound of cure (overworking the painting).

How to block in a compelling composition

Once you understand the basic shapes, place them on your drawing. I never work inside a box; instead, I draw and then crop my drawing to match my canvas size. In fact, sometimes I do this several times, searching for the strongest composition.

My sketch for Heavy Weather. 5X8, graphite on Bristol-finish paper. This is a drawing that I spent a long time on, moving elements around until I was satisfied with the composition.

This allows me to explore all aspects of the idea before I commit to a composition. Sometimes I do a carefully-realized drawing. More typically, my drawing is not even identifiable as the subject; it’s merely a series of shapes.

How much of the canvas will the largest shape occupy? Is it part of a repeating motif or a one-off? Is it dark or light? Is it centered or offset? What quiet passages or negative space balance it? How does it support focal points?

This exploration is the most important part of painting (and to me, the most fun, since it’s fast and free). If line and value in a sketch are working, we know before we start whether the painting will end up feeling energetic, balanced, or completely static.

Refine edges before details

Working in big shapes does not mean those shapes remain unrefined; in fact, the best loose painters are the ones working from beautifully-drawn outlines. Drawing is the scaffolding of painting. Get the edges and proportions right while the shapes are still bold and simple.

Simplify and emphasize for impact

The beauty of this approach is that it can be pursued to whatever level of finish you like—either left wide open or with a high level of detail. With structure locked in, you can choose to paint the smaller elements as you wish, as long as you don’t overwrite your initial bold composition.

Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne, 1806, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, courtesy Musée de l’Armée

However, even the most meticulous realists edit some things out. For example, look at the above painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. At first glance, it’s highly detailed, but that’s selective. The robes are simplified, the carpet is simplified, and the background is simplified. (It’s huge, by the way.) Ingres knew what he wanted us to look at, and everything else is subservient to that. With a strong composition, his viewers instantly felt the power of Napoleon’s imperial pretensions, even before they noticed the details that Ingres did include.

Once the bones are in place, you can worry about style

Once shapes, proportion, value and placement are set, you can worry about brushwork. That includes lost-and-found edges, which can lead the eye through lesser forms and amplify major passages. You’ll find you’re a lot closer to looser brushwork if you lay a strong foundation first.

There are openings in my January-February Zoom classes

Trust the Process: making technique tell the story you want to tell
Monday evenings, 6-9, Jan. 5-Feb. 9, 2026

Where Do I Fit In?
Tuesday evenings, 6-9, Jan. 6-Feb. 10, 2026

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot: