Category: Minilessons

Minilessons

99 – 4 Ways to Simplify a Scene

The visual world offers up infinite variety and challenges to the representational artist. Our imaginations pale next to natures’ variety! We have to choose, edit and compare. Before you can even put pen to paper, brush to canvas you have

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Minilessons

98 – Choosing Materials for Lessons

I really believe anyone can learn to paint if you can hold a brush or a pastel and you can learn to see sensitively. It’s not about talent and it’s definitely not about having all the right stuff! Fact: your

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Minilessons

97 – Understanding Thumbnails

I’ll bet there isn’t an art instructor that hasn’t spent some time preaching the benefits of doing thumbnail sketches and most students resist them. Why do we preach and why do students resist? Well let’s talk about the resistance first.

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Minilessons

96 – Painting Sunrise and Sunset

Sunrise is filled with promise. Sunset is often a time of reflection. Each carries its own poetry, emotion and opportunity for expression. But is there a difference other than the significance we let our minds attach to them? Technically, no!

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Minilessons

94 – The Perfect Palette

So much of oil painting is mixing. Accurately mixing color depends on seeing color accurately. We need the right surface to mix color on. We also need to have a surface that allows us to mix paint to the proper

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Minilessons

93 – Seeing Color to Mix Color

As a painter, one of the big challenges is to mix and paint color accurately. This can be a big challenge for the beginner for a number of reasons, not least of which is that our direct observation can sometimes

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Minilessons

Lesson 39 – Fiji Sunset Live Lesson

I just got back from my fabulous trip to Fiji and it was amazing. I have note painted palm trees so it was quite an interesting challenge to capture the foliage there. The landscape was so different than the north

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Minilessons

91-SHOW ME YOUR RED

Well, obviously! A world without red? Red sneakers, red house, red flowers, red stool. Anything I can get! This year, I painted my house red. It makes me feel good. For half a minute I thought about painting it grey

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