
We all work in some sort of genre. We paint abstracts, landscapes, florals, or still lifes, for example. Generally speaking, we try to be innovative and give our work a unique spin or style. Perhaps pathetically, many of us venture into the world looking for things to inflict our style on...

A demonstration video by subscriber David Jon Kassan shows him frequently looking through a small pair of binoculars at his subject. Working at some distance from his model, he's making a head and shoulders portrait...

In the live comments of a recent clickback, I noticed a response by "Another in Anonymity": "At the peril of upsetting others," he or she wrote, "I think my main secret was my decision early on not to teach...

This morning, Sharon Cory of Winnipeg, Manitoba, wrote, "A woman came into my gallery today, looked around for a bit and asked, 'What is art?' It was so direct I was stumped. I rambled on for a bit, talking about my favourite artists, art movements, styles, etc, but it sounded vague even to my ears...

You may have noticed the odd times when something is irking you, putting you into a bad mood, and you sit down at your easel and do good work. While it's not as pleasant as when you're in a good mood and everything is coming up peonies, it works to your benefit in another way...

Yesterday, James Harris wrote, "I've always dabbled in art, but now I'm looking to make the transition to my dream of being an artist. It's been said that your income will never be larger than the average of the income of your five closest friends...

Up there on the scaffold we have Michelangelo shouting, "Form, form, form!" And then there's Gustave Flaubert writing in French: "Art is nothing without form." These commands might have you think form is everything. It is, just about...

Today it's raining in Chadds Ford, PA. Big drops fall from the ancient sycamores. Off in foggy Brandywine Valley, the witch hazel and pignut hickory still hold their muted colours. Great black trunks narrow down to sharp and random spikes...

A good friend, Ron Longstaffe, now passed away, was an off-and-on fishing companion. A significant collector of what we amusingly called low- and medium-skilled art, he and I frequently whiled away boat hours discussing the virtues of his multi-million dollar collection...

I'm laptopping you from Table 6 in an intimate restaurant in the Carlyle Hotel in New York City's Upper East Side...

During a recent short workshop, I reintroduced my legendary hourglass. Bought in a junk shop some years ago, its "hour" consists of only 37 minutes. Such is the deflation of time. The idea for the 25 participants was to complete a painting in one turn of the glass...

This morning, Michael Epp of Bowen Island, B.C., wrote: "'Just take away everything that doesn't look like a horse.' That's what the sculptors say. Which implies that as long as you avoid all the obvious mistakes, you'll end up with something good...

Yesterday, Roscoe E. Wallace of Fort Walton Beach, FL, wrote: "Do you recommend painting over acrylic paintings or should they be kept for reflection...

Yesterday, Melinda Wilde of Gabriola Island, B.C., wrote: "I'm design challenged. I see the shapes and I love the shapes but, for whatever reason, I just can't get my work to go WOW with them. I'm quite sure it's a design problem as technically I'm not bad...












