Working in one medium is challenging enough, why on Earth should you consider adding a second?! The simple answer is that it will make you a better painter!  Certain things that are easy in pastel [...]

Sometimes as artists we are blessed with a perfect composition before us, but most of the time editing is required. Editing allows us to better translate a scene and present the story we want to [...]

New York art critic Jerry Saltz recently posted on social media a typically on-target take on some extraordinary paintings he found himself standing in front of. Saltz says and writes lots of things about the [...]

Streamline is taking sign-ups for a painting trip to many of the same places – but there only about a dozen spots left – head over here for details. Egar Payne wrote one of the [...]

When artists refer to “quality of line,” part of what’s meant is sensitivity to how the line is drawn as well as how the lines relate to and express the subject. The heaviness or lightness [...]

Once upon a time an ornery, young, and unknown artist in his early 20’s named Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni heard that his first big public commission was being attributed to a second-rate rival. So, [...]

What You Should Know The legend of the “lover’s leap” is found all over the Americas and the world. It was a particularly popular motif in one form or another during the Victorian period, peaking [...]

Carl Bretzke’s painting Diner After Dark (above), resonates with a timeless quiet.  We could be anywhere in America. Maybe at first we expect a nostalgic moment of vanished drive-ins and Hopper-esque iconography, but a closer [...]

Don’t worry about matching the colors the teacher is using.  If a pro is demoing a sunset, let’s say, her students often want to know exactly what red and what yellow to mix in which proportions [...]

By Guest Contributor Laura Vailati “I love to paint flowers simply because I love flowers,” says Karen Margulis. A sensitive artist devoted to painting with pastels, Karen has made simplification the key to the success of her [...]