First, congratulate yourself for even getting as far as contemplating doing this: painting nature as it appears to your mind and senses is an extraordinary way of relating to yourself and the world! It begins [...]

“Dry and thirsty, a paintbrush pokes its nose into water, then ground inkstone, and swells with the abundance of expressive potential.” So begins a lively essay on contemporary Chinese painter the late Wu Guanzhong written [...]

Last week we looked at a number of paintings in which artist painted themselves painting themselves. Several of you wrote in to call my attention to a classic I’d forgotten about – Norman Rockwell’s Triple [...]

Here’s a plein air strategy to help make the overwhelm manageable: Start with feeling – and then immediately think DESIGN. If you’ve never attended PACE before, if you’ve never painted outside before – the thing [...]

By Kathie Odom Today’s article is by Walland, Tennessee, artist Kathie Odom Kathie Odom. Kathie is a well-loved and seasoned professional plein air painter. This week, she is in the Great Smoky Mountains for this [...]

Why paint?  Why not?! Who says you need a mission or a brand or a purpose or a plan? Making art is just one of those things that happy humans do. Painting “just because” is [...]

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. What kind of principles, techniques, [...]

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 [...]

What do people mean by the “expressive landscape”?  Usually, it’s landscape painting that prioritizes the qualities of the paint over paint’s ability to represent what the eye sees. It can also refer to landscape painting [...]

Sanford Robinson Gifford’s panoramic Maine landscape above partakes of the Hudson River tendency to render the American landscape in majesty and grandeur. But Gifford liked to play around with scale, and it appears, upon close [...]