My brush graveyard is getting too big. I throw out most of my worn-out brushes. I’ve also been known to snap in two misbehaving brushes. Those I also throw out. But my favorites I inter into the graveyard after distinguished service. I started pruning the graveyard to make room. Having a lot of brushes extends…
Oil paint can be profitably judged for either its covering strength or transparency. This comports with some well known bits of studio wisdom: “fat over lean,” and “thick lights, thin darks.” Covering colors, often called ‘body’ colors, hide everything beneath them. Transparent colors modify what is beneath them while leaving them visible. In watercolors, transparent…
The first painting in my Amusement Park Series, Winner!, is moving along. I finished the underpainting and moved onto the overpainting, as you can see in this photo of the canvas. Yesterday, I strecthed a 40″ x 54″ canvas for another painting intended for the series. I also prepared the stretchers and cut canvas for…
The ideal palette consists entirely of single-pigment colors. Such an ideal palette provides artists with total control over values and tones. This is especially important for artists, like me, who use lead white. These days, even high-end brands use titanium white in their multi-pigment colors. Old Holland, for example, uses a blend of titanium white,…
I visited Lake Erie’s preeminent amusement park, Cedar Point, five times this summer. I am using the thousands of photos that I took from these visits as reference material for my new series–Amusement Parks. I have 10 finished designs and I’ve started the drawings on several canvases. Yesterday, I finished the drawing for the first…
Recently, a reader emailed me several questions that I want to share: i am looking for the perfect oil paint and it is not easy to choose and find the one that suits me. it would save me from buying several brands to test. it scares me. I have seen your excellent work on testing…
In the past, I trolled titanium white users–zinc white users too. These whites, inferior as they are, provide the only competition for the champion of oil-paint white, lead white. Actually, it isn’t even a contest; lead white wins easily on every metric that matters: blending, body, and all-around handling. Titanium white is so unnaturally bright…
Art students frequently struggle over how to start a painting. Once started poorly, a painting is hard to correct. I’ve shared the starting stages of several of my paintings for art students struggling with starting a painting. I expected my previous post about the progress of my new painting, Liberty Avenue, to be the final…