All "Fine Art and Painting" Features
“Bishop’s Peak” Oil Painting
The lone intrusion of what would seem modern day was the road on which we would travel. A slice of lined asphalt that allowed passage through the perfectly sculpted hills and countryside north of Santa Barbara. After two days of sun drenched skies and atmosphere crisped by a lukewarm sea breeze, the weather was less [...]
Feel Like a Kid Again with iPad and Sketchbook Pro
While searching for new ways to get the most artistic bang for my buck from the iPad, I ran across an app for $7.99 that turns my magical device into an electronic sketchpad. The application is called Sketchbook Pro and it is brought to you by the fine folks over at Autodesk, also known as [...]
John Taft Painting Spotted in the Wild
Call me an art stalker. I was happily reading Matthew Innis’ Underpaintings Blog when I saw his recent story about visiting the American Masters Show and Sale at the Salmagundi Club in New York City. I knew my friend and artist John Taft was hanging there again this year so I combed through the pictures to see [...]
Picture Perfect Paintings #1: Shooting in RAW
I don’t have the perfect formula yet but I would like to have it. Trying to capture the true essence of a painting with our cameras is a somewhat tricky proposition. Even if we do an amazing job capturing the painting, we really don’t know if the person viewing it will have a calibrated monitor [...]
May 2010 Challenge Study – Oil on Panel
I am leaving for San Francisco in the morning so I wanted to try and get a study of the May painting challenge in before I left. This really did not take too long and I am happy with the result. I painted this as a relatively quick study from a cropped version of the [...]
May Challenge Composition Options
In case you are feeling a bit overwhelmed by the complexity of the May challenge photo, I wanted to provide a few sub-compositions for you to consider as well. I think each of these cropped versions of the photo would make nice paintings and not take a millenium to complete. If you are looking for [...]
Sedona Sunrise Oil Painting
With an amazingly busy week of work coming up I thought I would get my submission done this weekend for the April Challenge. As I was laying this out, I thought I was taking on too much. Trees and bushes give me fits and about half the painting is of such things! What’s more, rocks [...]
Digital Simplification and the Golden Ratio
One of the hardest things for me as a new painter is simplifying a scene for the canvas. It seems that landscapes in particular present so much information that it is very difficult to figure out what to leave in and out of a painting. One of the Kevin Macpherson books I read recommended using [...]
Steve Atkinson Demo
I thought I would pass along that Steve Atkinson is building a nice demo over on his blog that you may like. I have recently started approaching my own paintings in a similar way with a tight drawing and thin wash. Steve has some nice work to share and I recently saw some of his [...]
April 2010 Challenge – Additional Reference Photo!
Hi all. For those that have already seen the April Painting Challenge, I wanted to let you know that I have added another reference to give you some flexibility in the composition to add some foreground elements. I have also added this photo to the original challenge page for your convenience.