How to Gift Your Art Without Stress

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In various periods of my life when I’ve been big into art in a public way, I’ve had friends and family ask for art as a gift, or received comments at the holidays such as “Gift-giving will be easy for you this year since you can just give your art.” This is always intimidating, because the idea of giving my art as a gift can be stressful!

At the same time, I have happily and successfully given my art as gifts on a number of occasions! In this post, I’ll offer tips on how to come up with a great gift idea and keep your stress level low.

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Alternative Paint Suggestions for Kolbie Blume’s World of Color 10-Day Challenge

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Kolbie Blume’s new 10-Day Challenge, World of Color, starts today! I thought it would be a fun public service for anyone else who is participating to present my mapping table of color alternatives to the colors Kolbie indicated using in their Supplies video.  Slot Kolbie Uses Alternatives Yellow WN Lemon Yellow Deep (PY159) – unusual … Read more

Monthly Retrospective: January 2023

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For my 2022 Retrospective, I put all my paintings for the year on one post, which ended up being a Lot. So, I thought I might make a monthly habit (if I remember) of retrospecting one month at a time, including the paintings and goal updates. Goal Updates My New Year’s Resolutions for painting were … Read more

Granulating Mixes

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I recently took Nilam Roy’s Watercolor Granulation Techniques class on Skillshare (I’m on my free month trying to decide whether to keep it). The main part of the class was this snowy tree painting, which I don’t think is my best work ever, but I really enjoyed the middle part which just involved swatching mixes from the granulating paints in your collection. It occurs to me that this a homebrew version of making supergranulating paints. Here are mine.

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Reflections on Lisa Spangler’s Nature Spot Challenge

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I previously profiled the palette of Lisa Spangler (@sideoats on Instagram), a watercolor artist based in Austin, Texas who pioneered the concept of “nature spots,” swatches of colors in the natural world. Nature spots can be less intimidating to paint than full scenes, especially if you’re on the go, but can be a great way … Read more

Building Community

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I started this blog without having any idea of whether anyone would read it. It was a place for me to gather my own thoughts and organize an increasingly unwieldy amount of notes I was taking in Google Drive about watercolor technique, supplies, tips & tricks. I’ve really enjoyed actually getting comments and “meeting” you … Read more

Lessons from Claire Giordano’s Adventure Art Academy

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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

Neon Palette II

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A few months ago, I presented the Neon Palette, a set of 14 colors that I grouped into an Art Toolkit Pocket Palette that were the brightest ones I owned. I wasn’t totally happy with that palette, feeling that it could be more balanced; it contained some redundancy, a lack of useful dark values, and at the same time a few not-so-bright brights that dragged the average down. Can I do better?

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

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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.

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The Winter Palette

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Here in the northern hemisphere, it’s January, the bleak midwinter. After doing a summer palette and an autumn palette, it’s time to for me to do a Winter Palette!

I was initially tempted to include lots of dark, muted colors, but in gathering inspo photos, and in paying attention to my favorite real-life sights of winter, I have noticed so more bright colors than I would have expected! Sure, the trees are bare and the grass is dry, but there is color if you know where to look. Winter sunsets are explosively bold with fiery corals, pop oranges, and deep lilacs. On sunny days, winter golden hour is more intensely gold than at any other time of year. Snowy landscapes are bright with fresh, clear blues and gentle violets.

Let’s break down the colors I chose, and why I chose each one.

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