مايو 2020

Joseph (who calls himself Sansu the Cat)   had some questions for me: What do you think it is about dinosaurs that excites our imagination, ...

We’re coming up on the deadline for the May Proko Challenge that I’ll be officiating. The goal is to reimagine something as a creature or ch...

Howard Pyle and Frank Schoonover Illustrator Franklin Schoonover said that it was Howard Pyle's custom to take his students on frequent ...

Heiligenschein , is an optical effect where a bright spot appears to surround the cast shadow of the head of the observer. The glowing spot ...

At our forest campsite: roasted hot dogs, French potato salad, a sketch in gouache, and a thought about continuity.

In this YouTube video ( Link to video ), I paint a quiet estuary from the edge of a forest. I'm using casein paint, a gouache-like paint...

Adolph Menzel  (German 1815-1905) undertook this ambitious painting without a commission. It was a battle scene, but it didn't glorify t...

"Alas, poor Yorick," scene from Hamlet by Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret Compositional tip: If you're staging a scene with more than ...

Luis Jiménez y Aranda  (Edit: and his brother Jose) (1845–1928) painted moments from ordinary life in Spain.   Jose  Jiménez y Aranda The B...

Wildlife artist  Ken Carlson  (born 1937) learned to draw animals at the zoo." Eventually the director gave him the keys to the animal ...

Charlie asks: What’s in your kit? Everything I need for drawing or basic painting lives in a belt pouch which I bring everywhere. It's s...

Here's Alfred Munnings painting a white horse while a stableman holds the subject roughly in position. Scenes like this could have been ...

View this post on Instagram Smooth, the husky mix rescue, sketched in acrylic. #dogart #instadog #dogsofinstagram #husky...

Daniel asks: "I have been drawing portraits for some time, then chose gouache as my painting medium, not oil, because I have a very cra...

( Link to YouTube ) I enjoyed this conversation with Justin Donaldson. I should have explained that I can't do a video chat, because my ...

In a vintage audio recording, Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) talks about art and popular taste.  He argues that advertising and illustratio...

I'm looking forward to seeing and reacting to the new Proko challenge to draw or paint an object that comes to life as a creature or cha...

 Charley Parker, in his blog  Lines and Colors , reviewed my new Gumroad tutorial " Color in Practice "      Here is an excerpt of...

How do you draw kids without them being self conscious? Adolph Menzel "would go out in wind and weather but one day when there was too ...

Nicolai Fechin  (1881-1955), born in Russia and ended his years in the southwestern USA. Beneath the eye-catching brush texture is a solid u...

Classic characters from 1930s animation often used a ball for the head or the pelvis.  A good source of this style is the 1936 book  Cartoon...

The  notes from the Brooklyn Museum  say: "Already established as a landscape painter in oils, William Trost Richards began working in ...

View this post on Instagram Meet Hiram and Joe, two pals from Brooklyn and Queens. They're my entry for New York...

Here's a photo of Parisian-trained American artist Edwin Lord Weeks (1849-1903) in his studio. He was known for his paintings of the Ne...

The new issue of International Artist magazine has an article on basic painting in black and white, based on my new Gumroad video . 

Art Battle Manchester was a performance event in Manchester, England, where a group of artists competed in an event where they produce a pai...

In an affectionate tribute to the history of visual effects, filmmaker Michael Shanks ( Link to YouTube ) imagines a stop-motion skeleton mo...

I've got the mask and I'm social distancing, so why not head into the wilderness and paint a mountain stream? New 7-minute YouTube v...

By using just two colors of gouache ( ultramarine blue and burnt sienna ) along with white , you've got everything you need for creatin...

My most basic portable kit is just three tubes of gouache: Titanium white, ultramarine blue, yellow ochre, and light red.  Those colors can ...

"A new study comparing the genomes of birds suggests that, genetically speaking, the turkey and the chicken is closer to its dinosaur a...