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 [...]

“Light is therefore color.” - JMW Turner Surely one of the reasons we go to painting is for the light.  But not just any light! Numerous artists throughout history have used light as a visual [...]

The human portrait remains one of the most challenging and rewarding of artistic pursuits. Getting an accurate image down is hard enough, but then there's getting the LIFE into it. To those not privy to [...]

By Peter Trippi, Editor of Fine Art Connoisseur From the Fine Art Connoisseur September/October 2023 Editor’s Note: “The Ancients Stole All Our Great Ideas. And I want them back, thank you very much.” Mark Twain wrote [...]

Recognized as one of America’s most accomplished impressionistic plein air painters, New Mexico artist Kevin Macpherson judged PleinAir™ Magazine’s monthly Salon for July.  Kevin wrote about his thought process as he sifted through more than [...]

Painting is about feeling, evocation, and “stories,” insights into life on this planet, transporting viewers into realms of mind and emotion. Feeling or “mood” comes not from what you paint but how you paint it. [...]

By Jill Stefani Wagner When I first dipped my toes into the world of becoming a professional artist, I must admit I was a bit naive. Looking back I realize I had the silly notion [...]

Painting from life, whether it’s a portrait, the figure, or a plein air landscape, offers certain advantages over working from photos. However, using photo references makes it a lot easier to “make things look right.” [...]

If you spend much time in any museum’s European painting section, you’ll encounter exquisitely rendered images of gods and goddesses, mighty heroes and hapless mortals and fantastical creatures both beautiful and grotesque. One such mythological [...]

Inspiration comes in many forms, and creativity is its currency. But where does creativity come from – and what even is it? It’s thought that childhood play and adult creativity originate in similar processes in [...]