If there is nothing about your art that makes it stand out, experiment and try something more creative, something that can be recognized as your own. Don't confuse style with quality, your imagination, originality, and creativity are what determine quality. Style is what you do with the elements of design. [...]
In the sight-size painting method the artist stands back and looks at the subject and painting, the subject must appear to be the same size as the canvas. Then the artist walks up to the easel to draw or paint what he/she saw and again backs up to see the painting and subject in order to check for errors, this process is repeated until the painting is finished [...]
California Oranges - This is one of my 'painting a day' pieces. I painted it with a palette knife in under an hour and then went on to a larger painting. It is 11x14 inches. They were laying out on the patio at my dad's house. Every yard in the area had various fruit trees with not enough people to eat the crop. ‘Honey’ and I have been in California for the last two weeks. The first week was spent with my family and the second with ‘Honey’s’ family. Every minute of every day was taken up with brothers, sisters, uncles, [...]
Selling isn't the most important benefit of daily painting. What is most important is getting out of your comfort zone and painting a new subject, something different from your signature work. [...]
That's when I realized I had fallen into the perfection trap. In the process of entering shows and handling the business end of being an artist, I was no longer enjoying the process of making art. [...]
You will have to make sacrifices and the only way to succeed is to keep your mind on your goals. [...]
Today was a car day. ‘Honey’ and I were driving from our home in NJ to Lancaster, PA. Because it was only a 3 hour drive Honey gave me the option of helping with the driving. Since this was just a short ride, I chose to sit in the passenger seat the whole time catching up on reading some art magazines. The time went by in a flash and I arrived well rested. ‘Honey’ is fine as well, only a little tired. My magazines turned out to be interesting and productive. While delving into an old issue of Palette magazine, [...]
Creativity is what makes us unique. It's about being inventive, experimenting, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun. It is not about being perfect or having technical expertise. [...]
I painted Dr Ross was a retired doctor doing a friend a favor by modeling. My reference was a photograph I took at a watercolor workshop. Several years went by before I was inspired to do the painting. I loved his girth and the way he was sitting. The background is my own creation. I know what it’s like to look at a photograph or scene and think there is no way I could make that any better than it is. The problem is… I wasn’t looking at the photograph with the eyes of a thinking artist; I wasn’t considering creating [...]
