Awaken Your Creative Spirit With a Mandala
Lisa Argentieri made a New Year’s resolution to make a painting a day. She also wanted to begin practicing mindfulness. A creative exercise by Betsy Dillard Stroud gave her the means to do both. Now [...]
Level Up Your Painting in Three Steps, Part 2
Jennifer leads you through this exact painting in her Streamline teaching video, “Painting with Style." To get better, intermediate painters (which I count as anyone with more than, say, a dozen or so canvases under [...]
Exploring Mood in Painting
Painting is about feeling, evocation, and “stories” (in the widest sense). The paintings that stay with us often touch upon the mysteries of life, transporting us into realms of mind, imagination, and emotion. But how [...]
Latest Salon Winners
Master Artist William A. Schneider has revealed his selections for the November 2025 PleinAir Salon art competition. “My advice to artists entering the salon is: Don’t be shy about entering a good painting in several categories. When the jurying [...]
The Best Painter of Water You’ve Never Heard Of
He was water’s chosen prodigy, the artist every majestic pool and eddy gleaming in shadow or sun chose as faithful champion and mirror. Norwegian Impressionist Frits Thaulow painted people and places, but he also travelled [...]
Great Russian Snow Paintings, Part 2
They weren’t just painting the land – they wanted to reveal its inherent character – and the way it made them feel. The greatest Russian and Ukrainian landscape paintings of the mid 19th to early [...]
We Paint to Connect
Tony Pro was born in Northridge, California, in 1973. He grew up in Southern California under the guidance of his father, Julio Pro (1929-2013), a successful Southwest wildlife painter. Pro received his Bachelor of Arts [...]
What Makes a Painting ‘Expressive’?
It’s natural to assume that the subject of your painting (what it’s a painting of) is what affects your audience and gets feeling across. For example, you might expect a vase full of flowers to [...]
Thresholds of the Divine
It's a dark, Symbolist masterpiece depicting the legendary moment when a hunter sees a glowing crucifix between a stag's antlers, symbolizing a divine calling. Franz von Stuck’s “The Vision of Saint Hubert” (1890) presents the [...]
Of Light and Air: Homer’s Watercolors
“You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors.” – Winslow Homer Winslow Homer’s watercolors are rarely shown en masse because they’re vulnerable, as are all watercolors, to fading from exposure to [...]