“A GREAT PAINTER will know a great deal about how he did it but still will say, How did I do it? The real artist’s work is a surprise to himself.” – Robert Henri Robert [...]

1. Turn Up the Contrast  Darken your darks and lighten your lights. When you finish a painting, the last thing you should be to adjust the values. Darken the darks, especially, and maybe turn up [...]

Christine Lashley is known for colorful and dramatic oils that marry strong design with a process infused with artistic risk-taking. As she told us in an interview, keeping the “big idea” in mind and trusting intuition [...]

Artist Lori Putnam, the 10th Annual PleinAir Salon Grand Prize Winner, has revealed her selections for the March 2025 PleinAir Salon art competition. Scroll down to see the top three winning paintings and read Lori’s comments on the [...]

What's the difference between one painting that mesmerizes and captivates, and another that barely catches a glance? Some say it's skill or technique, but if that were all that mattered, why would so many technically [...]

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut liked to tell a story about something someone said to him as a fifteen-year-old kid that eventually enabled him to become the imaginative writer he became. He was on an archeological dig [...]

Patrick Faile grew up in rural South Carolina where he developed a deep connection to nature and wildlife. He discovered art at a young age and thrived in his only formal art education through the [...]

Clyde Aspevig teaches his oil painting approach and technique in his video, ASPEVIG. “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” ― Gustav Mahler Life’s complex. Nothing is as simple as we’d like, and that [...]