Did you ever wonder if there was a single thing that could differentiate professional artists from amateur artists? Apart from the getting paid part, of course, which I assure you is not much of a differentiator. One of the most significant differences between painting as an amateur/occasional painter and painting professionally/full-time is the amount of exposure you have to your art materials. There is a full order of magnitude of increase, and it has significant implications for the care you must exercise in order to protect yourself (and others) from harm. You hear the words “toxic” and “t ..read more

Everyone knows that picture made with a pencil and paper is called a drawing, whether it's a scaled technical drawing, a loose sketch, an architect’s rendering, or even a scribble. But is that a good definition? What part does drawing play in painting? And what do we mean when we look at a painting and say, “good drawing”? In this blog post I go in search of answers to these questions and a better understanding of drawing. I know that with a pencil and some paper literally anyone could make a drawing. Even a child can do it. So, you may be wondering why I’m doing so much handwringing. Here’s a ..read more

For almost the entirety of my painting career I have used digital photography to capture my reference photos. Even when painting in plein air, I've always taken a camera with me. Early on, I realized that reference photos became much more useful if I could get them closer to the way I wanted my paintings to look (I've never been much interested in doing it the other way round). The problem is that I found image processing software like Photoshop and GIMP to be complicated and time consuming when doing anything other than the most basic things. But that all started to change when I discovered G ..read more

On more than one occasion, I have mentioned that you can get great benefits from doing some simple processing of your reference photos before you start to paint from them. In this blog post I will introduce you to a simple automation script for GIMP (which I will hereafter refer to as a plugin) and show you that you can do incredibly powerful image manipulation with just a small amount of simple code. The benefits of this are twofold: you can do repetitive, complex image manipulation very quickly, and by saving these operations in a script you can repeat them at any point in the future without ..read more

A maquette is a scale model that is used by sculptors and architects for preliminary studies. Although they are not often used by 2D artists, they can sometimes be a useful tool. Earlier this year I set out to test the idea that the Blender software application could be used to create a virtual model that could be used in place of a physical one. Blender uses a mesh of nodes, edges, and planes in combination with textures, virtual lighting, and a virtual camera to render an image. It is easy to learn to do basic modelling—you can learn the basics in a few hours— but it becomes increasingly mor ..read more

Lately, I've become a fan of painting still life during the winter months. It is a super way to work on painting skills like observation, analysis, and drawing, as well as being a respite from the gloom and gray. The ability to work from life whenever I feel like it is offset only by the difficulty of figuring out what to paint in the first place. I prefer a contemporary approach to creating still life paintings—I like working with flat lighting and everyday subject matter. While I look for interesting shapes, contours, and colors, I do prefer painting objects that have a sense of accidental o ..read more

After spending the last seven years in Seattle, my wife and I have finally moved back to the east coast. I am now based in the suburbs of Boston, MA. I took a sabbatical while we prepared to move before driving cross-country from Seattle to Boston with my dog. That trip was on my lifetime to-do list and a wonderful experience. I especially enjoyed travelling across the upper Midwest and the great plains as they were making the transition from Winter to Spring. For a painter, moving is a more arduous process than it is for someone who does not paint. Adjusting to a new landscape is not difficul ..read more

Although it may feel like I haven't spent much time writing blog posts in 2021, I've been working on a more in-depth look at some still life work. However, it has taken longer than I would like to put together and isn't yet ready for publication. To keep things moving, I thought I would close out this year with a sample of the things I've worked on in the fall. This is an eclectic bunch of stuff, but it still fits within the universe that is described by my usual body of work.   The Road to Leyburn. 9x12, oil on linen panel. 2021 This is a virtual paint out of an English countryside scen ..read more

When I first started painting, I used to use my own photographs as a kind of bridge between blank canvas and finished painting without much thinking about ideas, composition, and design (except for the few seconds before pressing the shutter button on the camera). Back then, I would work directly from a photograph without editing or adding too much from my own imagination. Today, 20 years later, that photo-to-painting method doesn't work for me any longer: these days I try to use my photography more like a suggestion for a starting point in the painting process rather than the blueprint from w ..read more

My studio has been quiet since February. We have we recently moved (within Seattle), and I've spent most of my time packing and unpacking the studio, pitching unwanted stuff, and setting up the new place. In retrospect, I needed a break from painting. I find it difficult to be creative in winter, even at the best of times, but I had started to feel that my ideas were getting stale. Getting some distance from the studio has helped me to plan my way back. A change of season and being able to spend more time outside has also been refreshing. Among other things, my right shoulder no longer hurts ..read more