I'm very happy to say that I've just started a mentoring program with artist, Dave Santillanes.  I've admired his work for years and have taken 2 workshops from him before, one at Capital Reef National Park in Utah, and the other in Sedona Arizona.  Dave has a unique mastery of color relationships in terms of warm and cool colors relative to perspective.  I'm looking forward to producing many more works and continuing down the artist road.  ..read more

I've been offline for a bit so here's what's happening:  I made it back from the glorious Grand Canyon & Arizona trip with some nice small plein air studies in watercolor and in oil.  I did become ill with bronchial infection while on the river and so had to take some time off for recovery.    This summer I've been immersed in some quite fun painting studies.  First, I dove into a fantastic painting workshop with artist, Barbara Jaenicke, in July here in Bend Oregon.  I believe that Barbara describes her painting style as impressionistic realism.  It's f ..read more

Several weeks ago, I wrote an article about the oil painting plein air gear that I’m planning to take with me on this upcoming river rafting trip, Gearing Up for My Grand Canyon Painting trip.  And last week the blog post was an update to this Plein Air oil painting kit.  And the last post was about my watercolor palette.  This time, I’ll be describing my watercolor kit that I’m also taking besides the color palette.    You may ask, why take both watercolor and oil.  Well, let me explain.  First, my oil painting kit is normally stowed away on a raft, while w ..read more

Several weeks ago, I wrote an article about the oil painting plein air gear that I’m planning to take with me on this upcoming river rafting trip, Gearing Up for My Grand Canyon rafting and painting trip.  And last week the blog post was an update to this Plein Air oil painting kit.  I also did a special blog on my plein air oil colors for this trip.  In this post, I’ll be laying out my watercolor color palette that I’m also taking on this trip.    Like in the previous posts about oil colors, the watercolor colors that I’ve selected to take are based on the colors tha ..read more

Many teaching artists talk about the importance of the landscape composition, i.e. the importance of transposing objects of your painting around the canvas to enhance visual interest, symmetry, and perspective.  And, as springtime throws us hints of imminent arrival with daffodils and hyacinths popping up from the once frozen ground, I can’t help but consider once again how garden design is so similar to designing a composition for a painting.  For example, in garden design, you want to draw the visitor forward into the garden, you want to give them a reason to enter.  The same ..read more

Several weeks ago, I wrote an article about the oil painting plein air gear that I’m planning to take with me on this upcoming river rafting trip, Gearing Up for My Grand Canyon Painting trip (1/8/23).  I’ve made a few changes since that post and so will review these final tweaks now.  On this particular trip, more so than say one of my regular plein air outings close to home, the weight and volume has to be as low as possible for several reasons.  The first one is out of respect for the guide company, Arizona Raft Adventures (AzRA), and the trip’s river guides because this raf ..read more

Several months ago, I wrote 2 blog posts about readiness for my upcoming plein air painting vacation to the Grand Canyon.  These posts were as follows:  Gearing Up for My Grand Canyon Painting trip (1/8/23) and My Grand Canyon Plein Air Palette (2/19/23).  This blog is a first of several follow-on posts about changes I’ve made to all the gear and the colors as I finalize the preparations.    First, just a refresher, my trip is a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon with the guide company, Arizona Raft Adventures (AzRA), and will be a 14-day trip.  This is not th ..read more

Evoking meaning into the landscape painting can be tough, if as an artist you’re working beyond just sunsets, sunrises and exciting weather.  Not to disrespect those, I love exciting sunrise and sunset sky colors, as well as exciting moody clouds and stormy weather.  Other ways to add special significance to landscape paintings is to add people or animals to the painting.  Or add objects such as boats, farm implements, flower gardens, garden benches, etc. to lend more special connection.  I once had a painting instructor who said that as soon as you add an object, person ..read more

I’ve come to enjoy creating both watercolor and oil paintings of the same scene, but I create a watercolor rendition first.  In both media, each painting has similar highlights, shadows, color and lines.  I find that they complement each other really well when used this way.  Plenty of master artists of the past have created in both mediums too.  They don’t necessarily create one scene in both media but you can study their work and find similarities.   Check out these John Singer Sargent works in watercolor and oil.    https://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/jo ..read more

This post is for all the oil painting landscape artists out there.  It all goes back to the ole saying “The main thing, is to keep the main thing, the main thing”.  What’s your “main thing” in a painting?   I define it as the area of the painting where you want the viewers to focus the most attention on.  You want your viewers eyes to go right to this area of the painting when they look at it for the first time.  In other words, the main thing is the focus area or focal point (not to be confused with focal points in perspective).  You see, I was always taugh ..read more