Starting a painting
Everyone knows how to start a painting, right? You take up your brush and begin--what's the problem? Joking aside, if you want to create a sketch or study, that IS exactly how you start. That…
Author: Tom Hudson
Premixing tones
Artists spend a lot of time thinking about their palettes; how many colors, which colors, how big, and so forth. My palette is too large to hold in my hand so I keep it on…
Good photo day. Finally.
Cedar Point is known as the "Roller Coaster Capital of the World." It is one of the oldest and largest amusement parks in the United States. In addition to the roller coasters, the park has…
How to save your brushes
Many oil painters keep their brushes upside down in turpentine or thinner. This practice is horrible; it's the worst thing you can do to your brushes. In defense of painters who do this, I used…
Palettes everywhere
The hand clamps I use for carpentry are versatile. Here, I've used one to attach a palette to my easel. My big palette, the one that spills over my paint cabinet, is movable but when…
A bit of drawing
For the past week or so, I've worked exclusively on drawings. More precisely, designs for paintings, as the one illustrated below. These design-focused drawings will be covered by paint. The one illustrated here is the…
Good brush deal
I bought a brush set from Fuumuui: 8-piece kolinsky sable watercolor brushes. This is a tremendous bargain at $21.99 on Amazon. I used the brushes on one of my oil paintings and they performed passably…
RIP faithful laptop
My 10-year-old Dell XPS laptop finally died. With its core i7, it was pretty hot back in 2013. I replaced its Windows OS with Linux some years ago and it was still performing acceptably. There…