Could Color Be Your Best Creative Prompt?
There are many ways to start a painting, and some of them double as creative prompts, not just to get the brush moving but to get the imagination revved and running. For Northern Irish pastel [...]
We Grow Accustomed to the Dark
Today we continue our recent Inside Art spotlight on this important American artist, and we begin with a poem by Emily Dickinson. We grow accustomed to the Dark— When Light is put away— As when [...]
Winning Paintings – What and Why
Yes, it’s subjective: What one judge likes in a painting another judge snubs! But there are criteria for strong paintings that appeal to a wide audience based on commonly embraced technique and design characteristics. Artist [...]
Getting Edgy with Charlie Hunter
Related > Charlie Hunter is also on the faculty of next week’s PleinAir Live! Virtual art conference, March 6-8, 2024 – join us! As a painter, where are you on the scale of realistic representation [...]
What is Tonalism?
Art historians use the term Tonalism to describe an American artistic movement spanning from about 1880 to approximately 1920. More generally, the term (tonalism or tonalist with a lower case “t”) describes a style of [...]
Giant Pastels Magnify Science
At five and a half feet wide by seven and a half feet long, Zaria Forman’s pastel paintings are hard to ignore. Within them, art, science, and beauty mingle in equal measure. For two decades, [...]
What’s So Great about Pastels?
Pastel drawings and paintings glow with an intensely luminous color and rich velvety texture. This is because pastel powder is pure pigment. Many pastel lovers favor the mediums for its sensitive quality that aligns with [...]
Who’s Hiding?
Winner of the “Best Animals & Birds” category of the December 2023 PleinAir Salon, Biruta Hansen’s Who’s Hiding? depicts a partly camouflaged rabbit (our family calls the abundant critters “bunnies”) peeking out from a profusion [...]
Into the Light
Artist Terri Ford’s Canyon Dusk, a 24” x 28” pastel (above), won first place overall in the December 2023 PleinAir Salon, judged by California oil painter Camille Przewodek. Ford is an accomplished pastel painter (IAPS [...]
Keep Interest Everywhere
It is a puzzlement: the larger your painting is, the more concentrated you feel you have to work. That’s because a patch of blue sky in a 40” x 36” landscape feels a lot emptier [...]