Wouldn’t it be nice to be told your ceremonial boat was waiting for you on the canal landing just outside your palace? That pleasure belonged to the doge, the ruler of the Venetian republic, on [...]

What Makes This Painting Great? An occasional series all about analyzing what makes paintings beautiful, iconic, memorable, or effective. Painters, beginners and masters alike, make leaps and bounds by studying creative triumphs of the art. [...]

Well-handled color has emotional impact.  In Karen Margulis’s pastel painting “Frozen in Time), above, the artist takes a composition composed of predominantly cool-hues (a wintry sky and snowy foreground) and shoots it through with a [...]

Award-winning artist T. Allen Lawson has revealed his selections for the winners in the March 2024 PleinAir Salon. First place will receive a cash prize, plus all winners will be entered into the judging for the annual cash [...]

1. LISTEN TO THE PAINT Maintain a dialogue with your painting. Many artists begin with a precise underpainting and proceed carefully and accurately apace, and many do not. Some painters have a definite endpoint in [...]

Last week we took a close look at a few landscapes by John Singer Sargent, but we didn’t get THIS close!  In fact, most ordinary mortals will never get this close to a painting by [...]

Today we’re turning aside from painting to visit a popular form of sculpture called assemblage. An assemblage is a sort of 3-D collage, wherein an artist puts together (assembles) various elements to create a new [...]

Especially strong in design, Paul Kratter's paintings skillfully compose light, atmosphere, and expression of emotion. Paul comes from an illustration background that instilled strong drawing and design skills and a robust belief in graphic shapes [...]

Art opens portals to timeless and exotic inner worlds. Whether looking or creating, the hours pass unnoticed – silent (but no less real) adventures befall us. Even if the effort exhausts us, we walk away [...]

Eugène Carrière’s painting “The Sleep” (above) represents a woman and her infant sleeping side by side. Yet despite the close-up view, the blurry and sweeping mode of representation eludes the onlooker. The outlines of both [...]