Using Gesso to Texture Your Painting Surface

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Using Gesso to Texture Your Painting Surface

In my workshops students often ask about the texture on my painting surface and how I achieve it. It's quite simple actually. I use gesso. When you buy a canvas at an art supply store it comes primed with gesso which covers and protects the surface of the canvas itself. The gesso allows the artist time to move the paint around on the surface without it soaking into the canvas. I take it a step further and use very rich, thick, creamy gesso to build up a textured surface on my canvases and the watercolor paper that i paint on.

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Artists: Use the Color Wheel to Develop Color Harmony in Your Work

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Artists: Use the Color Wheel to Develop Color Harmony in Your Work

I teach painting workshops all across the country. I find that when I begin a discussion about utilizing the color wheel to develop color harmonies in paintings I receive lots of blank looks on student's faces. I have come to realize that nearly all amateur painters paint from photographs, trying to exactly match local colors without any thought given to creating harmonious color combinations. I guess they think that everything in a photograph provides color harmony. It doesn't.

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Artists Must Maintain Consistency in Their Work

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Artists Must Maintain Consistency in Their Work

Consistency may be the most important word to describe the activity of a successful professional artist. Consistency in the type of work created; consistency in the presentation of what is produced; consistency in the marketing message; consistency in the brand; consistency in posting to social media; consistency in studio practices; consistency in producing work; and consistency in keeping up with customers are just a few that come to mind.

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So You Want to be a Better Painter? Make More Paintings

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So You Want to be a Better Painter? Make More Paintings

There are so many resources available to artists in these days of data and information consumption. Ads can be seen everywhere promising that we can be better painters or sell more paintings or be masters of color just by signing up for this or that seminar, or newsletter, or whatever the ad du jour happens to be.

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Painting on Raw Canvas is Like Painting With Watercolor

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Painting on Raw Canvas is Like Painting With Watercolor

I began my painting career as a watercolor painter more than two decades ago. I loved it because of the way the water acts as a medium to let the paint flow onto, and be absorbed by, the paper. I eventually tired of the limited size of available paper and the need for framing and made the jump to painting in acrylics on canvas - thus retaining a water based medium, but on a larger substrate.

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What's In A Painting Signature

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What's In A Painting Signature

My painting signature, which is not to be confused with my cursive handwriting signature, has evolved only slightly over my 24 years of painting. Early on I did not exaggerate the two "S"'s, or run the end of the "R" off the edge of the piece. Other than that it is nearly the same. Why would I not want my signature to change you ask? 

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