Technique

Lessons from Claire Giordano’s Adventure Art Academy

by

Claire Giordano is one of my favorite online teachers (you may remember I featured her in an Palette Profile awhile back). In her Adventure Art Academy, she shares inspiring and beautiful videos of her own adventures hiking across the USA and painting on location. As a field artist, she is accustomed to working quickly in … Read more

Loved & Learned from Kolbie Blume’s Intermediate Landscape Course Module 1: Light

by

After two years of painting, I am finally beginning to allow myself to think of myself as intermediate rather than a beginner, and accordingly I am working through Kolbie Blume’s Intermediate Landscapes course. (I actually started it before I did the beginner course!)

A four-module course, the first module concerned light, layers, and contrast. The paintings in this module involved planning multiple layers, making decisions about value contrast, and capturing light effects like glow, shadow, and backlighting.

Read more

Watercolor Doodling!

by

I’ve always been a big doodler, usually with pencil or pen. As a student, I was always doodling in my notebook during class in order to have something to do with my hands, which allowed me to focus on what the teacher was saying. (Whenever teachers used to say “Stop drawing and pay attention!” I … Read more

Loved & Learned from Kolbie Blume’s Beginner Landscapes

by

Beginner Landscapes is a mini-course offered by Kolbie Blume in the course library for members of the Artists Co-op, their monthly subscription service. After nearly two years of watercolor, the most recent of which was spent working through most of Kolbie’s other products (like their 10-Day Painting the Wilderness Challenge, 10-Day Seascapes Challenge, and Wilderness … Read more

Should I only get single pigment paints?

by

Single pigment paints are those that contain only one pigment, or color-making chemical. By contrast, mixed paints or “convenience mixes” contain multiple pigments.  A frequently-given piece of advice is to stick to single pigment paints. But why?  What are single pigment paints? The most obvious attribute of a paint is “what color is it.” The … Read more

Lessons from Shelby Thayne’s Layered Mountains

by

One of the first watercolor classes I ever took was Shelby Thayne’s “Night Skies” class, back in April 2021. Recently I took her “Layered Mountains” class, and it feels like I’ve come full circle.  It’s a funny story how I found Shelby. It was early 2021, at that point in the pandemic when everyone was … Read more

Lessons from “Making Color Sing”: Mouse Power

by

In Making Color Sing, Jeanne Dobie advises on the best ways to use color (primarily in watercolor, but in general). In the first chapter, “Mouse Power,” she takes on a common newbie issue: how to make colors look bright?

The urge is to use bright paints. And you know I love bright colors! Yet, you may use lots of bold, exceptionally bright colors in your work, and still create a piece that looks muddled. Meanwhile, someone else may use much more muted colors, yet achieve a kind of glow. Why is that?

Read more

Palette Updates After Taking Liz Steel’s Watercolor Class

by

I recently went through Liz Steel’s Watercolor course, which was a great way to geek out about color. The course is appropriate for beginners but probably ideal for people with, say, about a year of experience (like me!), and focues on color choice and pigment characteristics, brush technique, and trying different styles. One of the … Read more

I Loved Maria Coryell-Martin’s Cloudscapes Class!

by
All my paintings from Cloudscapes class

I took a wonderful “Cloudscapes” class from Maria Coryell-Martin, founder of Expeditionary Art / Art Toolkit. Due to a time zone mishap, I missed the actual class, but I caught up on video and had a wonderful time. In two hours, we painted ELEVEN SKIES. I love skies!

Read more

The “Warm” and “Cool” Color Binary Doesn’t Make Sense

by

I’m just going to say it! 

Dividing colors into “warm” and “cool” categories is a common way to organize them and think about color theory. (It’s a scheme I use to organize my dot card swatches, for example.) But it never really made a lot of sense to me, and now I know why. It’s inherently confusing!  

Read more