Toning the Board

Here is an example of how using a burnt sienna undertone can help to create an overall warm feeling to a painting. There are several benefits to using a tone to begin with on the canvas. First of all it eliminates having to deal with all that white right off the bat which is sometimes overwhelming when starting out. Secondly, depending on the painting, some of the underpainting can be left as is with a slight scumble of color over the top of it leaving two layers of color for the price of one. This is especially helpful if using oils especially if the undertone is dry before the painting is started.
This warm tone can even be helpful in areas such as the sky to maintain harmony within a painting. Starting out with a middle tone already on the canvas lets you concentrate on the darks and lights while placing the values in the piece and again eliminates that middle step.
I like to use burnt sienna but depending on the painting, other colors can be used just as effectively depending on the mood you'd like to create.

A question of worth

This painting featured on the Antiques Road Show was appraised for $75,000. The appraiser marveled at how the artist used creative talents by mixing sand in the paint to create a texture within the circle. So how does a painting get to be worth so much?
It has to have a following, most likely in this case, artificially created by very experienced and smart businessmen and gallery owner who already has a very strong following and reputation. If not that, I believe this painting would fit into a hobbyist category.

Competition from abroad

Perhaps the only way to beat the competition is to have a strong following like I mentioned in the post above. Without that, one painting will always be compared to and put along side any other painting where status is concerned.
There are probably a thousand paintings on display here. Most of them are inferior quality but some are quite nicely done. And I dare say that nobody that I know trying to make a living as an artist can compete with this price structure and still leave something for the seller.

Below is a 24 x36" painting for $39. The stretchers and canvas alone will cost a good portion of that. You may not like the subject but would you even attempt to do a painting for that little? Think of how little the artist actually gets for his efforts.


Here are two 8 x 10" paintings including the frame for $10 each. These are original paintings, not prints.

This is a handsome 24 x 36" print, framed, matted, and under glass for $45. Try and compete with that!

20 to 30 paintings a day!

Ever wonder why your paintings don't sell? Well, one reason is that "original" production paintings are produced in Dafen, China by the millions for practically nothing. Here are a few paragraphs from an interesting article about this subject.

Some five million oil paintings are produced in Dafen, every year. Between 8,000 and 10,000 painters toil in the workshops. The numbers are estimates: No one knows the exact figure, which increases by about 100 new painters every year. But it's not just professional copy painters who are drawn to Dafen - graduates of China's most renowned art academy also come here.

A few routine flicks of Wu's brush and a forest appears on the canvas. A small photograph he holds in his hand serves as his model. He's working on a copy of an idyllic French landscape painting, a lavender field in southern France. Wu can churn out between 20 and 30 copies in a day. When a large order arrives, he may have to paint the same motif 1,000 times. "We don't get a fixed wage," he says. "We're paid by the finished painting."

Wu receives the equivalent of 38 cents per copied painting. That means he earns between $128 and $385 a month - barely enough to cover his living expenses and send a little money home. But he doesn't complain: "It's much better in a workshop like this one, without a schedule." Once the painters worked in a factory owned by the company, where they had fixed working hours.

I have to admire them for their herculean efforts to produce like that. It's amazing.

You can read the entire article HERE.

This was a 24x36" plein air painting I did in oils in 1968. It has survived but throughout all these years the oils have cracked and the varnish has turned an splotchy ugly yellow. It does have an old charm and some of that is because the yellowing has created a color harmony in the piece, however if you were to see it close up the age has really taken a toll.


This painting was done in acrylics around the year 2000. I have many paintings in my possession that are well over 40 years old and done in acrylics that have not cracked and the colors still look fresh and vibrant.
So, are acrylics better than oils? I know there are oil paintings in museums that are hundreds of years old but they have been cared for. For someone like myself who has had to store paintings in all sorts of places and conditions, acrylics stand up so much better.

Murals

When painting murals for outdoor locations consider using paints that sign painters have used for years. The brand is called One Shot. When billboards were painted by hand this is what was used. I prefer their oil based enamels. They also come in a water based variety but I find they don't work as well.
The boards were made of 3/4" MDO (medium density overlay) boards. It's basically an exterior plywood that has a smooth almost tan colored masonite looking top layer to it making a great surface. And the best part is that over the years it doesn't crack or check.
Here are a few examples of murals the repainted murals that I originally did about a dozen years ago (There were 24 of them in all).

Working from a photo

This is the photographic image I used to create the painting on the post below. Nothing very inspirational but it does have strong shapes that aren't broken up into tiny pieces. In other words, it gives me solid masses in which to build a composition. Most of the detail is gone in the dark areas but in this case it was satisfactory and probably kept me from putting in a lot of detail that wasn't necessary.
Photographs are very limiting. The eye can see so very much more than the photo. I always study colors and values no matter where I go. It helps me when I have to deal with a photo like this where the colors and values have basically been reduced greatly from real life.

A few principals to follow

Here is an example of a simple painting that expresses distance. The center of interest is of course obvious but the eye is directed even more to that area because the darkest darks and the lightest lights are next to each other. Had that patch of sunlight in the distance been way over to the right, the eye would tend to bounce back and forth between those two points. As a general principal, the contrast should be greater in the area of the focal point.
This also expresses another principal. A painting should have a dominant area of color (the bluish sky), a sub dominant (the warm reddish earth and tree) and an accent (the yellow distant marsh)
These are principals, not rules.

Painting on Masonite

Here is a video I made about the panel boards I use to paint on. It's very economical and the boards are very nice to work with. One advantage in using masonite boards is they don't take up very much space which is great when traveling or plein air painting.
Be sure to cut most of your boards in standard sizes as frames are much less expensive to purchase that way. Many frame shops cut their scraps into standard sizes and sell them cheap. You can end up with great frames for a fraction of the cost.

Just to clarify

I am often asked about showing how I do the finishing touches to the paintings we air on PBS television. Some of the programs show me finishing the painting and some don't but the real lessons and basics are in the program. The finish is nothing more than poking around a bit with the small brush which isn't that interesting to watch. Really! It's getting the basic shapes, values and colors down in the first stages that will make or break a painting. The details are nice but are of much less importance.
So, in the programs I try to get the big picture of what's important. The details are just that, details. Like a few colorful sprinkles on an already tasty ice cream cone. Many paintings are ruined by worrying about detail. If the shapes, colors and values are strong you'll find that little detail is needed.

Tones tell a story

Here's an example of using an overall tone in a painting (in this case warm) to suggest the feeling of fall. Even the angle of the light which is low on the horizon can suggest that it is a season coming to an end. The subtle touch of red colors under the tree suggests fallen leaves. This suggestion does the trick much better than actually trying to paint leaves with small strokes.
It's actually a very simply done painting with attention to detail being paid to only the areas of primary interest.

Green paintings

I've been told that paintings with lots of green in them are hard to sell. That very well may be true. To avoid making a green painting, I often leave green off my palette entirely but mix my own greens instead. This avoids having that green tube color dominate which everyone can recognize as a tube color. Mixing reds or sienna colors with greens helps. Also starting with a burnt sienna undertone in the painting will cut down that green look and warm the overall colors of the greens.

Insuring a center of interest

One way to insure that the center of interest stay as the focal point is to place the darkest darks next to the lightest lights.

Framing paintings for the web

When you see a framed painting on my website or newsletter, most likely it was not framed at all. It's difficult to photograph a framed painting because often the straight edge of a frame can be warped or curved because of the camera lens. Using a 50mm lens usually fixes that but in my case I have photographed a number of frames without paintings in them.

So I photograph frames that I like. I've even photographed frames in frame shops with the owners permission and it really doesn't matter at that point if they have paintings in them or not. I then adjustment those images of the frames in Photoshop to make them nice and rectangular and so on and from then on out, I have a ready stock of frames that I can then easily drop new paintings into.

The small and the big

It's very important to learn how to see the subtle nuances in the subject you're painting especially with colors and values and at the same time keep a major focus on the big shapes.
In this plein air painting I tried to keep my major large and to a minimum while also trying to capture the subtle changes within those larger shapes. One of those subtleties was getting perspective lines in the sand that ran down towards the water.

Working with color

I am frequently asked how I choose colors for a painting. It's possible to do a painting with any three very arbitrary colors. A full set of colors or even the primary colors aren't totally necessary.
Yesterday a friend was visiting the studio and the subject came up, so Sarah chose the three colors to the right and I was challenged to paint with these plus white.
Here is the result. (note: the board did have a burnt sienna ground to begin with)

Warning:
The blue oxide is a color that was on sale for practically nothing at an art store. I did use it on one of our PBS shows we did in the Caribbean as it was a good color for the water down there. I'd use caution with using such colors though. They are full of white and can generally be mixed with colors you already have. Mainly there is a danger with using these odd ball colors because you can quickly loose any harmony in your painting. They simply won't harmonize well with other colors.

Overall tone

Keeping an overall tonal color to a painting is determined before the painting is started warm orange tone helped greatly to unify the entire painting.
Doing small paintings like this 5x7" piece also offers good practice in getting images, compositions and colors down quickly without investing lots of time. Do them, learn a few things and move on to another.

Duplicating Shapes

In general it is not a good idea to duplicate shapes throughout a painting but in this case it seems to work well. The triangle shapes of not only the mountain but all the fields help build a strong composition and gives the painting an almost abstract quality.

The painting was done in Flat Rock, N.C not far from our summer studio.

Last Light

It was just about sunset and the light was fading fast. Sound familiar? Well, it always seems to be the case about painting outside. The light is always changing. In this case I had to deal with a warm light coming through the glass of this greenhouse from one side and a lot of reflected light directly from the sky overhead. Working fast forced me to analyze the colors and values quickly.
I never would have gotten these rich colors had I worked from a photograph. There really is nothing like painting on location to see colors. The painting may not turn out as good as the studio paintings but for learning about color, it can't be beat.

Creating texture

In this painting I tried to create a lot of texture that represented the old fort here in St. Augustine. One way I did this was described in a DVD I did which partially dealt with the subject of creating texture easily and effectively.
To read a bit more about this you can go to this link and look at the bottom of the page for a program called "South Haven Lighthouse"

Beware of Post Office

This 8x16" painting was done on Masonite and purchased and sent to Canada. Masonite is pretty tough and I packaged it with several other pieces of heavy cardboard sandwiched between the painting. When it arrived in Canada, the painting had been broken in half. Fortunately the person who bought it let me replace the painting with another one. Insurance in my opinion for such a small painting is almost worthless since there are hoops to jump through to collect. My advice is pack things about double what you think they need. Sometimes the post office can be awfully rough.

Big eyes

This small portrait of a German Shepard was done on a 5x7" piece of Masonite. I had a thin wash of burnt sienna on the background as a base and this let all those warm colors of the dog come through the sketchy painting nicely. I pushed the cool colors of blue into the fury areas of the back coat so they wouldn't fight with the warmer colors in the foreground.
The cool colors under the dog made for a good balance putting all the focus on the animals face. I always make the eyes a bit larger in animals than they actually are. It gives them a much friendlier look.

A palette for outdoors

I've been using a glass palette when I paint outside and my acrylics often dry very quickly in the sun. Here's a tip thanks to Jay Babina who sent me an email. She writes:

I was painting acrylic outside and was going through the usual spraying the pallet routine etc yet once the sun popped out, my mixtures were literally drying in minutes.

I investigated the stay wet pallets and tupperware pans etc too.

What I tried that worked out great is corrugated cardboard. I use a regular piece of glass as you do and just placed a wet piece of regular light brown corrugated cardboard on top of it. I wet both sides pretty good letting water run into the corrugations. It works great. It holds the moisture, doesn't designate or fall apart and best of all, it's free. A piece will last for hours or more with an occasional spray if needed - but nothing like glass where thin mixtures can dry in less than a minute on a sunny day. It actually traps water on the underside if on glass. When you're done, just throw it away. I know your pallet is fairly vertical in which case you may have to experiment with some tape etc.

Give it a try and see what you think.

East Point

Here is an example of an 11x14" painting that was done using only three colors. Alazarin Crimson, Indian Yellow, and Ultramarine Blue and of course white. This painting was done as a demonstration before a class and finished in about an hour not counting the time I took to sketch it out on the board.
The idea here was to create a mood expressing the rather warm but somber mood as this town of East Point, (near Appalachicola, Florida) is both charming and economically depressed.
By using only three colors the harmony within the painting remains stronger than had I introduced other tube colors such as green.

Poetry

Find something poetic in something that is ordinary. That is the job of the artist. Zero in on what you are interested in and what draws you to the subject to begin with. What are your feelings about what you are looking at? For me it's often something as simple as dappled sunlight falling across a wall. I try and keep my focus on that one thing which drew me to the subject and keep everything else subservient to that one thing.

Getting proportions easier

This is a small 8x10"portrait of Sarah I did from a photograph. I was using my computer monitor to view the photo, zooming in to get the detail but I was really having trouble getting it right. Then I printed out a picture of her face the exact size as I was painting it. I placed it next to the painting and it was much easier to get the proportions correct.
In other words, having the photo the same size as my painting kept me from having to interpret and recalculate in my head the proportions and sizes on my painting. I could visually reproduce it much easier.

Limited Palette

I use whatever colors I feel like at the time. I don't limit myself just for the sake of having a limited palette. However, most of the time I only use the primary colors to create a painting...

Cerulean blue and ultramarine blue and , - Indian yellow and cadmium yellow light, - Alizarin crimson and Napthol red (or cad red). This gives me both a warm and cool color for each primary color.

It's surprising how many variations including greens I can get from these few colors. I occasionally use black to gray my colors a bit. This also gives me one set of primary colors that are transparent and the other opaque. I start by using the transparent colors and then work into the opaque colors.

Mixing greens

During the summer months everything is so green. It often makes painting landscapes difficult because of the lack of variations with the color. When needing more variations with greens, it's often tempting to buy more green tube colors and use them get different hues. Most of the time adding more greens to the palette doesn't work very well. I find it best to keep my palette simple and mix most of my greens with blues and yellows often adding a touch of red to the mix. Adding more colors to the palette will more often than not simply make the painting less harmonious.
I usually start with a wash of of burnt sienna on the board, let it dry and then work my greens over that. It lets some warmth come through and dampens the harshness of the greens. Remember that all the greens in a scene like this will reflect and influence just about everything else like the rocks. A touch of green in all these other elements will give the painting unity.

Three things I do consistently when creating a painting.
1. I work from dark to light.
2. I work from transparent colors to opaque colors.
3. I work from thin to thick.

Simple steps but it almost always gives me a better chance at achieving a good painting.

A target audience

One very important way to maintain a presence on the internet is to target an audience. I have found that lighthouse paintings have provided me with a niche that can easily be googled as opposed to paintings I do in the mountains which have no real keyword. Hence, no one can really find my mountain paintings as the keyword is simply too broad. Most people that find my lighthouse paintings and prints do so because they are Googling a particular lighthouse such as Sullivan Island lighthouse so it's important to use the word "Sullivan Island" as much as possible in your description to help Google rank it.

Outsourcing

The outsourcing of American doesn't belong solely to the manufacturers of this country. It effects artists as well. Just go into most homes you'll find lithographs printed in China or Taiwan, or an "original" painting done from production line painters from these country's and that're pretty darn good at what they do. Certainly good enough for the average home buyer to consider especially when the cost is a few dollars compared to what good full time artists here in America need to charge in order to survive.
What artists are to do to compete is a big question.

Art Olympics

What makes art centers think art is a competitive sport...that we should be interested in winning and taking home ribbons. Art is about being creative not about being competitive. Competition has its focus on "I'm better than you" and that sort of thinking destroys the art spirit and puts a business suit on the act of creativity.

Creating and performing a painting

When speaking about the arts, we tend to combine musician, dancer, and painter into that same general catagory of "the arts" but in many ways the painters path is different. A musician has a road map of written notes to play. How those notes are performed can make the musician great but it is not the same as being a painter. The painter in addition to "playing the notes" on canvas but must also be the composer on every work he or she creates. In the same way, the painter in addition to being the dancer must also be the coreographer for each new canvas.

This painting was done a long time ago from a photo I took in the Bowery- New York City.
I have often wondered where that man may be now.

Why do you like that painting?

When people are asked, "Why do you like that painting?" I often hear the response, "Well, every time I look at it I see something different." (I'm talking about landscapes in general) The fact is most people don't really look at paintings. The mere statement tells me they didn't see the painting in the first place. It's a catch phrase they have heard before and simply repeat it. Most lack the ability and interest to see. There are many reasons people like paintings but it's not because they see new things each time. Some of those reasons are that it brings them to a place they associate with and love but the primary answer to the question is that beauty is enduring. Beauty lasts. It doesn't go away after one viewing.

Inspiritation

People ask me where I get my inspiration. What inspiriation? I just go to work everyday. That's what it takes.

Saving money on paint

If your concerned about the cost of paints here's a way to save some money. I wanted to use smaller tubes out in the field but all I had was a large tube and an almost empty small tube so I tried this and it works great. (You must have the soft plastic tubes and not the soft metal type tubes.) These plastic tubes will easily re-expand. Just hold the large and small paint tube tightly together and start squeezing the paint from one to the other. You might think paint will squirt out the sides but if done carefully it's not a problem. Try it!

Less is More

The idea of less being more fits well into the theory of painting. The power, beauty, and strength of statement can be greater when the picture is stated simply and not overdone. Holding back is important in painting. Here's an anology. A legal document drawn up by laywers says everything there is to say about a subject in precise detail but most often will not convey much in the way of meaning to most people. The same is true of painting. Put in every detail and you'll loose the importance of the big statment...the very thing that attracted you to the subject in the first place only to get caught up in the smaller but less important details.

Photography and Painting

Photography is like stabbing with a knife but painting is like meditation. I don't remember where I heard that but it struck a chord. I have been involved with cameras and photography all my life and I realize what it takes to make a good photograph but it doesn't compare with having to carefully work every inch of a painting with consideration on every brush stroke.

Picture taking vs painting pictures

Photography is liking stabbing with a knife whereas painting is like meditation. I'm not sure who said that but it sure struck a chord with me.

Two elements of painting

There are two elements involved in making a painting. Observation and interpretation. Artists must be able to see clearly and remove all preconceived ideas as to what objects look like. For instance, the idea that tree trunks are brown must be put aside and the study of their real colors which are many and varied must be more closely. Then the process of interpretation comes into play. It is what makes the painter different from the casual photographer. The painter gets to choose what he or she wants to focus on in a way a photographer can not. The painter can achieve the essence of the subject by not only concentrating on that part of the painting but also by leaving other details out or leaving them to the imagination. Interpretation can breathe life into a painting and make it personal.

Art or not?

If you ever wonder why certain paintings or sculptures are considered art, be aware the context the piece is viewed in puts a lot of weight on whether it is consider art. Just because a museum has a show of aluminum lawn chairs from WalMart in an impressive white room with wood floor and track lighting doesn't make them art. Much of what museums display is nothing more than art polution.

Spray Gesso

If you paint on Masonite and love a smooth painting surface, Krylon makes a spray Gesso. I bought a can to try it out and it works great. It's expensive but convenient and puts down a great surface on which to paint especially for smaller paintings.

Elements to a sucessful painting

A good painting has two elements that make it interesting and powerful.

1. The subject must be deeply felt by the artist. That doesn't mean that you have to love barns in order to make a great painting of a barn. It means the artist must be moved by some element that is the focus. It could be the way the light falls across the old boards for example. If the artist doesn't feel it, the viewer certainly won't either.

2. The subject has to be stated simply. Again, that doesn't mean there can't be lots of detail in a painting. It means the subject itself must be clearly stated. There should be no competition in the painting that detracts from the intended purpose. No unnecessary frills. Frills will not help a painting where there is no primary focus to begin with.

Feeling the subject

More often than not, a subject that reaches me most deeply is very simple. Seeing the commonplace and having profound and deep heartfelt feelings about it is what keeps artists alive. When the artist feels it, then the viewer can also. If the artist lacks feelings about a subject, then certainly the viewing public won't feel anything of value either.

If you don't feel the subject, don't paint it or you'll be wasting your efforts.

(click image to view larger)

Painting is Language

Painting is a language no less than any written language. To think that one can through inspiration and talent can create something of worth is to think that one can write a novel without knowing the language or how to spell. I think the reason is that so many mediocre paintings exist they have become the norm. People hardly know good art from bad.
In order to create a painting with meaning you must the fundementals that make up the basic language and those things are drawing, perspective, color, composition, etc. and that takes a long and dedicated effort.
No one thinks a person could possibly play wonderful music on the violin without first knowing the scales. Painting is one of those hard earned skills that many think can just be done with talent alone. It cannot.

Painting Quickly

I find it very hard to understand why art customers are so interested in asking how long it took to finish a painting. I paint quite quickly but it seems to be a negative if they know how "seemingly" easily they were completed. If a fine guitarist plays with great speed, people applaud their agility. Why is it so different with an artist if the results of the painting are of quality?

Looking but not seeing

I'm not a Bible scholar, (my wife and I are Baha'i's) but there is a verse that says something like, "you hear but do not understand, you look but do not see." It got me thinking about how that relates to painting. We all know how difficult it is at times to understand driving directions, how to accomplish some task in a new computer program and so on. We accept that fact quite readily. However, we have been brought up to think that "seeing is believing" but it is not the case at all. Seeing a landscape is a very tricky situation and for an artist to paint a good landscape, he or she must be able to see in ways that others do not. The artist must have a keen ability to detect subtle changes in color, form, values, and edges and put them all together selectively to convey the essence of the subject. No easy task and one that takes years of constant attention.

Eyes versus photographs

I rely on photographs for reference while in my studio painting but I often have to remind myself what the camera sees and what the eye sees in the outdoors are very different. The camera averages the exposure of a landscape and in so doing, the sky may be washed out in order to keep the trees from looking too dark. Another problem with photos is that it looks at the entire picture at once. The eye look and focus on small areas and will adjust itself to see into that area. For instance, I might look at the shadow under a tree and my eye will dialate to see the detail there. A photograph won't do that because it sees and exposes for the entire scene. Our eyes move around and quickly expose themselves to small areas giving us a clearer picture and more information that a photograph can produce.
One photographic solution is to shoot multiple exposures of the same scene or use photoshop to create several different exposures of the same photo in order to see more clearly into those areas which are too dark or too light. That of course will also leave some parts of the photo overexposed and others underexposed leaving the artist to put it all back together with it's appropriate real life values.

Mood versus detail

The mood of a painting is more important and expresses the essence of the subject far more than the factual details.

Harmony was easily achieved because by having just these few colors, every color that was mixed simply couldn't go far off track.

This landscape was also painted by just using three colors. Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue, and Indian Yellow.

(click on painting to enlarge)

Using only three colors

This painting was created using just three colors. Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue, and Indian Yellow (and of course white) These are transparent colors. Colors such as cerulean blue, cadium yellow, or cadium red are opaque colors and will not give me the deep dark colors like the transparent colors will. It's amazing how much variation can be accomplished with the use of such a limited palette. Try it sometime. The other advantage is by using just those three colors, your painting will always be harmonious.

(click on painting to enlarge)

A Refuge

A friend and I were talking about the value of painting and sometimes I question that value but he said, for him painting can be a refuge. I never thought of it that way before, a refuge from what troubles you and from the unsolvable problems of the world and community. I liked this idea as it shifts the purpose of painting from that of producing a result to one of inner peace.

Art Teachers

When you are looking for a good teacher, remember that good artists don't always make good teachers and I have seen the opposite as well where very good art teachers are very poor painters.

New type of brush

A friend loaned me a set of these new brushes called Aqualon Wisps to try. They are suppose to be good for painting grass, beards, etc. Well, an old worn brush or the standard fan brush will do just as well, maybe better.

Interior Decorators

Last evening I was attending an event at a very exclusive condominium. The furniture and carpet was shades of pinks and purples. On the wall was some of the worst artwork I have ever laid my eyes on. But guess what! It perfectly matched the colors in the furniture and carpet. Personally in all the decades I have been painting, I have never once dealt with an interior decorator interested in actual artwork. I'm not offended by this when they visit my studio with a client but I'm aware of their focus which was so evident last night.
What does offend me is after seeing nothing more in a painting than a match to their color swatches, they reduce 40 years of intensive study to create a painting with substance by further expecting the artist to hand them a 50% discount. Artists and their art are nothing more than a commodity to decorators. I hope someday one of them will prove me wrong.

Quick exposure

Most digital cameras today auto focus and auto expose when the shutter button is pushed down slightly just before the picture is snapped. This often leaves you with a photograph that is either too light or too dark. I make a habit of pushing the button down slightly and giving the picture a quick look while still aimed at the subject. If the picture seems too light, I release the button, point the camera into an even brighter area where there is more sun and again push the shutter partway down. Then I swing camera back to where it was originally and the resulting photo will be darker.
Conversely, if the photo seems too dark, swing the camera into an area that is even darker, press the shutter slightly to expose for that darker area and while still holding down the shutter slightly in order to preserve that exposure, swing the camera back into position and your picture you want will be lighter.

More about Seeing

"A landscape has got to mean a great deal to anyone before it can be painted in any worth-while way. It is harder to see a landscape than to paint it. This is true because there are lots of clever people who can paint anything, but lacking the seeing power, paint nothing worthwhile."
Robert Henri - Ashcan school

Brush strokes tell a story

Brush strokes tell much about the artist who created them. Bold, soft, reckless, and so on but many strokes describe artists that are unsure of themselves. Even to an untrained eye, these strokes will kill a painting. The fear of painting shows in every stroke and defeats the entire reason for painting but I have seen it happen many times. It is a fear that has to be overcome.

Exposures

When working on paintings from my digital photographs, I often take the photo, make a copy and overexpose it. The original picture I adjust to give me the best visual look of the photograph in general with nice rich darks tones. The copy is then overexposed allowing me to see important details in the dark areas that aren't visible in the first photo. The second picture makes a poor photograph but often gives me clues to details I otherwise would totally miss in the first photo.
note: you can click any of these photos to see them larger.

Making Thick Textures

If you want to create thick textures on your canvas, use Modeling Paste. It's basically marble dust in a medium that is about the consistency of heavy cake frosting. If you know where you want your texture to be, brush it on your canvas then let it dry before you begin painting or you can mix it directly with your paints. It doesn't seem to diminish the intensity of your colors like white paint would unless you use a lot of it. I seldom use it but there are times when it comes in handy. I have paintings I used it on 20 years ago and it still looks as good as the day I applied it. It's not a substitute for using white paint though. If you want a textured white background, either mix white with it or paint white over it. The brand I've been using is Liquitex Modeling Paste.
Watch a video on stretching canvas and using modeling paste.

Thirds

Breaking down the composition of my paintings into thirds is a guideline I follow almost instinctively. Here's an example. Had the lighthouse been in the center and the horizon in the middle, this painting would not be nearly as interesting. Since I feature the rocks instead of the sky, the horizon was painted high on the painting. If I was going to feature some clouds I would have moved my horizon line to the lower third of the canvas. It doesn't always hold true but it's a good guideline to be aware of when composing your painting or photograph.

View more of my lighthouse paintings

Give til it hurts.

Like every other artist, I recieve cordial invitations weekly to donate artwork to good causes so they can auction it off at a fraction of what I would otherwise charge. Today I got the best letter I've received in months. It stated, "Would you want your artwork featured, along with a Peter Max original, during the art, wine, and food fest?"
That's like asking me if I want my piece of art I took possibly a week to create totally upstaged by mega-media-whore Peter Max. What are these people thinking! I've seen Peter Max in action and his "people" (Public Relation handlers) don't like any other artists near him in fear of getting to close to his spotlight when the media is present (not that we'd want to or could) and they ask the media not to video him from behind because he doesn't like his public to notice his bald spot. Geez! When are these local beggers of art going promote in earnest the artists in their own community instead of using us as a side show for their featured act?

Fame

If you're a young artist with dreams of becoming famous, (like I once was) know that fame comes by being connected and not necessarily by being a good artist. As you get older, the dreams of fame become less important but the passion for painting can remain a strong and powerful force in your life. One that will be much more fulfilling than fame.

Coating your paintings

I have used a number of sprays to coat my acrylic paintings. For several years I've used Krylon Crystal Clear and have a friend who's been using it for a decade. I buy it at Kmart for $2.95 a can. The Golden varnish was purchased at an art store. It cost $17.99. I wouldn't use Krylon just to save money at the expense of good results but in my opinion it does as good or better job than the expensive stuff.

Pure White

I seldom use pure white in my paintings. Using a bit of yellow or yellow ochre in my white will give it a life that pure white lacks. If the painting calls for a cool white, I add a little cerulean blue to it.

Composing in the camera

When I take photographs, I try to compose my subjects the best I can in the lens then back in the studio, half the difficulty in painting has been resolved. I find it much better than struggling to rearrange a composition that wasn't quite right in the photo. With a good photograph I'll more likely end up with a good painting.

I sometimes capture a still image from my video cameras as well. I've been able to capture images that are quite suffecient to use as reference.

Using your monitor

Try using your monitor placed near your easel or drawing board to view your reference photos. It's much better than a print out and with many viewing programs (I use ACDsee) you can zoom in your subject to see the details.