Articles

When I find I am trying to paint something new that I am not familiar with, like planet Earth, the only way to get good at it really fast is to gather lots of reference pictures and paint as many of them as I can.    I start with several pencil sketches to get the feel for drawing the Earth with the land and weather patterns.  I then start painting a couple of the reference photos to get a feel for how I am approaching this - how my eyes "see" the reference photos and how my brain transcribes this to the canvas [...]

Starting a new painting is always exciting. Motivation is in the driver's seat when it comes to gathering photo references, sketching ideas, and starting color studies. However, as time goes by and motivation in the painting process starts to subside, it's the grit and discipline that allows me to see it through to the end and to get that painting across the finish line. Definitely the case with this one.     Once I had a general idea of the layout, placement of the mountain and foreground, I started value sketches in pencil.  I know I wanted the mountain to pop in both value [...]