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THE PLEIN AIR movement has been good for painters and landscape painting. It sparked a renaissance in the art of observation and a return to artistic fundamenta...

THIS video completes my experiment oiling up the canvas with a cold wax and oil medium. Specifically I used Gamblin’s Cold wax and their appealingly thick...

AFTER dabbling in encaustics I’ve been intrigued with wax lately and decided to try adding it to a couch on an oil painting. I applied the wax medium to a faile...

RECENTLY I purchased a set of encaustic paints. I was always somewhat intimidated by the medium, which I viewed as arcane and unnecessarily difficult, but felt ...

ADJUSTING COLOR can be tricky but if you understand three aspects of color; hue, value, and saturation, it can make things a bit easier.

MY BIRTHDAY FALLS NEAR THANKSGIVING and my favorite gift is an art book. This year I received Leconte Stewart Masterworks. Leconte was a huge influenc...

I WAS RECENTLY READING a book about the landscapes of Gustav Klimt. I was intrigued to discover that he often used a pair of opera glasses or even a t...

LATELY I’VE BEEN painting en plein air with the palette knife. I don’t use the palette knife for the entire painting. At the right you can see a pai...

I‘VE USED THE EXPRESSION paint with paint many times in this blog. What I mean is the paint brush should be a means to apply paint not a means t...

I was thrilled that Google recently made universal translation available for blogs. I immediately added the button to my site. You can find it at the ...

IN THIS VIDEO I explain in more detail how the Riley Method works. Although I’m using it here in reference to the figure it is just as useful when drawing...

I WOULD PREFER TO PAINT all my paintings from life or from sketches painted from life. However, this often just isn’t possible. I often need to paint from photo...

THERE IS A DANGER of representing the overly familiar as symbols rather than reality. As a time saving mechanism the brain projects a shorthand onto familiar su...

I have been so obsessed with the act of applying thick paint that I’ve forgotten to mention that nearly all of the techniques outlined in this blog a...

It was a lot of fun oiling up the acrylic painting in the field. I thought it might be useful if I cited a few benefits and drawbacks of this techniqu...

I USED ACRYLIC retarding gel as an “oiling up” medium in the studio with great success. So I wanted to try it in the field.The results were similar ...