The New England Palette

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Before I first traveled to Vancouver, I researched colors that might be particularly useful there, such as paints in the M. Graham “Pacific Northwest” kit, and the palettes of PNW artists such as Molly Hashimoto. Based on that research, I decided to add Dioxazine Violet and Perylene Green to my travel palette, and to make … Read more

Photo to Painting: Late October Trees

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I feel like I was precipitate in posting Photo to Painting: October Trees, since I ended up painting more trees from photos at the end of October! So here’s another post. School Tree This one’s not exactly a “photo to painting”: I painted the tree from life, through the window. I am including it mainly … Read more

Monthly Retrospective: October 2024

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I spent much of October “convalescing in the countryside,” as I jokingly called it, on an extended visit to family in rural Massachusetts. From there, I did some job interviews in the city and wound up getting a job! I still have some business to take care of back in Vancouver, but very soon I will be back in Massachusetts to stay, and for many reasons I am feeling better about that than I felt about my attempt to move. I just love this landscape and I can’t explain it.

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Photo to Painting: October Skies

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After painting the aurora this month, I went back into the archive to paint photos from September as well as several cool skies from last winter. Now that I am back in Massachusetts, it feels a lot more emotionally possible to paint my old Massachusetts photos. Suburban Aurora Like many in North America, I was … Read more

Autumn Palette 2024 Revisited

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I’ve been using my autumn palette outside and in timely paintings for about a month, and I feel I have gathered enough experience to quickly review the colors and see if my expectations matched reality. Top Tier Colors I’m using these a lot: Also Good Borderline Not used as much as I expected What am … Read more

Sketching Palettes vs Triad Palettes

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Reading Hazel Soan’s The Art of the Limited Palette and trying some triad paintings has given me a different perspective the colors that I reach for and the way that I think about my color library. The colors you choose for a walking-around sketching palette are somewhat different than the colors you choose for a triad.

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Photo to Painting: September BC Sunsets

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I’m back to painting some of my own photos! Many of these were intentionally taken as reference photos, to remind me of a scene that I wanted to paint more than to create great art in and of themselves. These are my favorite types of photos to show alongside the painting because it shows how it takes imagination and heavy mental editing to get to a scene from a snapshot.

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Artist Palette Profiles: Jill Gustavis

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Jill Gustavis is a watercolor artist from Western Massachusetts. On Instagram, she did a 100 Days project where she painted with different triads, which is definitely interesting to me with my newfound interest in limited palettes. She has some great blog entries; I’ve read her post, Magic Happens When You Repeat Paintings, several times. I don’t usually like repeating paintings, but she makes a great case for exploring, and I love every iteration of her example.

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