Transparent earth colors
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…
Category: Shop Talk
The problem with blended commercial oil paint
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,…
Amusement park series
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…
Reader questions
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…
Titanium white
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;…
‘Liberty Avenue’ again
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…
