This month’s Landscape Art Club theme is Sunsets, which works for me: I love sunsets! Painted by Natalia has a great feature this month on sunset technique with lots of reference photos, and looking through them got me thinking about the science of sunsets – and for that matter, sunrises! Why are they the way they are? And can that knowledge help to paint them better? I had fun learning about the moon for my Artist’s Guide to the Moon, so I thought I’d put together some info on sunsets.
The hidden artistic benefits of poor visual memory
“You must have a good visual memory, you’re an artist,” a teacher once told me, trying to talk me out of my discouragement about geometry. But in my personal experience, art-making and visualization ability are surprisingly unrelated. I’ve always been interested in art, and I’ve always had poor visual memory and spatial reasoning skills. Some … Read more
Why I only use human-made photography for artistic references – not AI
Over the last year or so, I’ve seen some of my traditional artist fellows using AI-generated art as references for their traditional artwork – something without knowing it, other times crediting them as outputs of Midjourney or similar. Here is my stance. I will never knowingly use AI-generated art for references. Here’s why. Why I … Read more
Monthly Retrospective: June 2024
After two years of 3x/weekly posts, I finally ran out of runway! I had enough posts saved up to see me through my move, but I didn’t count on my move-related exhaustion hitting me most in the month after we arrived. Not only have I not written posts this month, I also haven’t painted much. … Read more
What’s the difference between Perylene Scarlet (PR149) and Perylene Red (PR178)?
Today I’m comparing two colors that are both named Perylene Red, but use different pigments.
- DV Perylene Red (PR149) is a transparent, mid-chroma scarlet (warm red). DS’s version of this pigment is called Perylene Scarlet.
- DS Perylene Red (PR178) is a semi-transparent, mid-chroma red (neither warm nor cool).
Monthly Retrospective: May 2024
There is a real before-and-after to this month: before I moved and after! Either way, it’s a very light month because it has been such a month of upheaval and I haven’t had my paints set out most of the time. In Massachusetts A random landscape and some birds. In BC I did only one … Read more
Poppy Balser Class Notes, Part II
In my Artist Palette Profile of Poppy Balser, I shared some things I had learned from taking a class session with her. That session, which could be taken as a standalone or part of a series, focused on colors and supplies. I have continued to take her class series, which moved onto different types of demos.
Vancouver Colors Revisted + palette update
The big question in my last palette review was: will I use the “Vancouver colors” Perylene Green, Carbazole Violet, and Quin Burnt Orange? Answer: yes! I found even more uses for them than before, including making a lovely kind of dull violet gray with the violet + green. This is a good color base for … Read more
What’s the difference between Imidazolone Lemon and Imidazolone Yellow?
In this Color Comparison, I’ll compare two similar yellows that I love: Imidazolone Lemon (PY175) and Imidazolone Yellow (PY154). Both are very bold, lightfast yellows that can be used as a primary yellow in a palette. Either one of them, if you showed it to me, I would be like “yup that’s the platonic ideal of yellow,” but next to each other I can see how they are actually kind of different.
Photo to Painting Archive: Sky of the Day Summer 2022
Lately, I’ve been doing a “photo to painting” post just about each month, showcasing paintings I did recently and the photo inspiration (which may or may not be old or bad photos). Going through my old photos, I found a run of photos from 2022 that were used as inspiration for my “Sky of the Day” photos in summer 2022. While I posted those in various contexts (e.g. my year 2022 retrospective), I’m not sure I ever posted the references.
As always, you are cordially invited to paint any of my photos that you wish. See the curated highlights on my Unsplash.