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Getting Better
Some of you who have followed this thing for a bit know that I struggle with depression. This year been very challenging for a number of reasons, but I am doing everything I can to get better. A few months ago, I participated in an intensive outpatient therapy group to work on things. I met […]
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Gesture Practice
A big part of my recovery is focused on doing things. I spent a lot of time trying to reset by taking time away from things, and just slowing down a bit. Now, part of my next steps are getting back into things, though I’m trying to do so without putting so much pressure on […]
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Winter Brook: Rick Surowicz Tutorial
This is a painting I did, following along with a YouTube tutorial by Rick Surowicz. If you haven’t checked him out, you should. I really value his pedagogy. My version doesn’t look exactly like his, but that’s ok. Maybe I’m starting to see a little bit of a style of my own – with those […]
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Plein Air Monument Park
After my first day at IOP, I went to the park and painted this before I went home. I wasn’t expecting my first day painting outside in over a year to result in anything mind blowing – I simply wanted to force myself to go do it. I am intimidated by painting outside because so […]
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Sketching Practice: Faces and Gesture
I haven’t painted anything since my last Farm Road painting, but I haven’t been idle. I have been working on my draftsmanship by trying to draw my way through the Portrait and Figure Drawing courses on Proko.com. I purchased the Portrait course a long time ago, and won the Figure drawing course in the Proko […]
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Proko Challenge: Landscape #5
I wanted to write up each Landscape thumbnail that I painted, but I ended up needing to dedicate the time to the challenge itself in order to finish on time. I am very pleased with the results that I got from doing this, and I think I’ll be working thumbnails like this into my workflow […]
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Proko Challenge: Landscape Thumbnails #2
This is the second post about the Proko Landscape Thumbnails challenge. The challenge was to submit five landscape paintings, each 2 inches wide by 2 inches tall. I started this painting off wanting to paint trees in the distance using wet-in-wet. I tend to do this often, but in my mind, there is this technique […]
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Proko Challenge Landscape Thumbnails: #1
Proko has a challenge going right now, and I decided I would try to enter. I hope I can finish in time. The challenge is to paint 5 thumbnail landscapes. They can be painted in any medium, but they must be 2” x 2” large. The biggest focus of the challenge is to learn how […]
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Barn: #1
December is nuts. Thanksgiving, then three birthdays, then Christmas… it’s busy. And my favorite time of year. But that means I don’t have much time to dedicate to writing these posts. Tonight, I finished a painting I’m pretty proud of, so I figured I would post it. This is my attempt to put into practice […]
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Bluebirds & Random Drawings
I honestly don’t feel like writing about these, because I just typed a metric tonne about that Homer drawing. But I also want to publish these paintings, because I want to document my progress. Like I said, I’m really tired after working all day, then painting, then writing a ginormous blog post… I want to […]
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Bargue Plate: Homer
It’s been a while! I haven’t posted recently because I got Covid, and I’ve been playing catch up ever since. If you are curious, read on. Skip ahead if you don’t care about Covid. TL/DR; Covid is real, and really dangerous for some people – but I’m fine and I never got terribly sick. My […]
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Drawing Practice
I have decided to put a more concerted effort toward being a better draftsman, because of all the things I have tried, nothing has improved my paintings more than practicing drawing. I don’t know “how” to practice drawing. I have seen a thousand videos of people drawing. I’ve watched dozens of tutorials explaining perspective, edges, […]
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Farm Road: End of Year 3
Well, I’ve been painting for three years now. It’s time for me to do my little progress check. When I first started painting, I decided to try to paint the same thing every day for one month. It was the first watercolor painting I had ever really tried, and I figured painting it over and […]
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Lobelia Cardinalis: #1
This painting has been haunting my mind for years: This is by Oleg Kozak, a Ukrainian watercolor artist who unfortunately passed away in November, 2017. This man had the ability to capture light in a way that I haven’t seen in many other painters. I decided to try to look deeper into his paintings to […]
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Bluebird: #2
I have been feeling stuck in a bit of a plateau for a while now. I decided to take a break from painting for a bit because my lack of progress was troubling me. I then watched a video on YouTube that convinced me that I need to put more effort into understanding construction and […]
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Ray Hendershot Exercise: Lighthouse #1
I have been absolutely stuck for the past few weeks. Every time I sit down to paint, nothing comes to mind. Nothing inspires me, I have no intention. But, just as an act of discipline, I paint anyway. The results are nothing to write about. It’s all very ugly, muddy, cliche… just nothing that I’m […]
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One Pigment Challenge: #1
I decided to challenge myself to paint something with just one pigment. If you want to join me, here’s the challenge: use one pigment, and one pigment only. That means the paint you choose must be a single pigment paint. You can use water, ox gall, masking fluid, whatever, but when you are finished there […]
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Master Study: Michal Jasiewicz, Part 2
I went into excruciating detail about my proposed process for recreating this painting by Michal Jasiewicz in the previous post. Today, I’ll explain how I took the lessons I learned from that exercise to try the painting a few more times, and experiment with different options. This was my first attempt. A few things I learned […]
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Master Study: Michal Jasiewicz – Part 1
A user on Reddit posted this image, asking how the artist (Michal Jasiewicz) achieved the effect on the distant cliffs. I am not sure how he accomplished it exactly, but I posted this as my best guess. I don’t know how they did it, but here’s what I would try. Forgive the over explanation, I […]
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Ray Hendershot Exercise, Clapboard Siding: #1
This weekend I decided I would take my own advice, and paint from the book. I decided to paint from one of the books that I have because trying to learn from my own failures has been pretty discouraging. I’m only about a quarter of the way through Ray Hendershot’s “Texture Techniques for Winning Watercolors” […]
