More people have heard of Winslow Homer than of Homer Dodge Martin. And though he’s not a “household name” (show me a 19th century American painter is?!), Homer Dodge Martin interests art historian as one [...]

The pyramid or triangle design in painting offers a way to avoid composition problems like lack of movement, imbalance, “one for each eye,” or too much linearity or “stripiness” (obviously stacked horizontals).   “One for each [...]

There’s something about this image that impresses itself on the imagination and memory. Somehow Sir William Nicholson’s simple still life paintings, this one being no exception, transform random, everyday items into indelible images with a [...]

How do you critique a landscape painting? It helps to start with composition, value, and color, in that order. This painting has a lot going for it:  The composition is pretty solid; the high horizon [...]

In more than one sense, the 15th century Cestello Annunciation proclaimed the beginning of a new chapter in human history. The Cestello Annunciation by Sandro Botticelli is a painting in tempera on wood that adorns [...]

By  Laura Vailati “When I was a teenager, I would look at the works of very successful artists and illustrators and think, this is exactly what I want to do when I grow up,” said [...]

Accelerate your art by studying from the finest artists in the world. Pastel Today is a free publication for the pastel movement, sent on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Read all the articles for free and [...]

Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum was taken off guard last week by a horde of people competing for collectibles only tangentially related to the artist himself. The crowd descended upon the opening of an exhibition of [...]

Prior to the latter half of the nineteenth century, the “official” academic channels of professional painting considered still life to be at the bottom of the totem pole. It didn’t have the heroic content of [...]

In Jan Vermeer’s great painting, The Geographer, of 1662, we have a paradox: a wanderer’s spirit suspended in the confines of an interior. Vermeer is forever painting light coming through windows, but in this painting, [...]