Lessons from Olana and painting on hallowed ground... For the past month I've been teaching a plein air pastel class at Olana, this...

How to mix greens and avoid the "salad bowl effect" by Shawn Dell Joyce When you paint landscapes, especially plein air, you use a lot of...

When you are just starting out, it can be daunting to paint a larger or more complicated painting. I've heart novice artists say that...

I first learned about using a complementary palette from reading The Yin and Yang of Painting by Hongnian Zhang, from the Woodstock...

"Success happens in clusters..." Julia Cameron The Artist's Way I asked my friend A. (for anonymous) how her painting was going in a...

I really appreciate when press comes my way. It's rare (although it may seem to happen a lot to me) and it's usually because of my...

As a painter, I am easily amused. I can watch light wrap around figures and forms, captivated, for hours. Often when I am at the beach,...

Recently, I was asked by Ampersand Art Supply to be featured in their upcoming blog. As part of this process, they asked me to answer...

Anyone who has had a class with me has experienced an honest self appraisal at the end of class. This is different from a group critique...

I teach classes in painting sunsets, both in the studio and en plein air. No surprise that I LOVE painting sunsets and the rich chroma...

Most people have no idea what color temperature is. Only geeky artists ever use that term, and maybe a wayward interior decorator. But we...

Every painting has an ugly stage. You know when you are about 30% into it and its not working out the way you want and your mind starts...

Each medium has it's strength, and weakness. Pastel is magic because you can layer color, and even light over dark and dark over light...

Perfectionism makes me silent when I need to speak up. Because I stumble over words, I often choose to be quiet instead of speaking my true

When I'm plein air painting, I have a different process than when I'm painting in the studio. In plein air, you have a short period of...

What we have done so far is break it down into values and shapes. At this point, we can start assigning color to those shapes.

There's a whole new world that opens up when the sun sets. Night changes the values and colors of the landscape; everything becomes low-key,

Nature doesn't always give you the perfect view. Sometimes you have to improve upon it by playing with the color or the light to juice it...

Workshop teachers refer to this as "Workshop Frankensteins" when new artists pick up "trees" from this artist, "skies" from that artist...

Many artists don't really think much beyond the basics of the color wheel. Warm colors are red, yellow, orange, etc. cool colors are blues,