What is it? If you’ve ever amused yourself by holding up your thumb and noticing how someone across the room appears to be tiny and thumb-sized next to it, you’re well on your way to understanding the sight-size method of painting and sculpting. Sight-size is a technique long used in schools and ateliers to teach … More Technique Tuesdays: Sight-Size
Happy Tuesday! Today’s post is part one of a mini-series of posts looking at the different methods artists use for reference when they’re working on a painting. Essentially, there are 5 ways an artist might paint: 1. From life (this applies to both plein air painting and indoor painting from a still-life set or a … More Technique Tuesday: Painting from Photos
Remember the Technique Tuesday post where we took a look at chiaroscuro? Today’s post is going to take a look at a very cool technique, closely related to chiaroscuro: tenebrism. What is it? Tenebrism, like chiaroscuro, is all about the use of lights and darks. Where chiaroscuro is used to create a sense of depth, … More Technique Tuesdays: Tenebrism
What is it? Today’s Technique Tuesday takes a look “behind the scenes” at a handy artist’s tool known as the mahl stick (sometimes spelled mahlstick or maulstick). A mahl stick typically looks something like this: This kind of mahl stick is held in the non-painting hand, though some mahl sticks (like one we’ll see in … More Technique Tusedays: The Mahl Stick
Remember last November, when Cindy Procious and Mia Bergeron had that fantastic two person exhibition with us? One of Cindy’s largest paintings in that show was “Yin and Yang in a Crustacean World”. Check out these in-progress photos Cindy took to see the awesome journey these two lobsters went on! And the finished product…. For … More Yin and Yang in a Crustacean World
What is it? This week we’re taking a look at a method that some artists use to help enhance their work by creating color harmony and balance–the use of a limited palette. This is pretty much just what it sounds like. Thanks to the advances made over many centuries, artists today can go into an … More Technique Tuesdays: Limited Palette
What is it? Alla prima, also called “wet-on-wet” and “direct painting,” is a very popular method of painting in which the artist applies paint to the canvas essentially in one sitting (“alla prima” is an Italian phrase that translates to “at once”). One way to better understand the technique is to examine the alternative way of … More Technique Tuesdays: Alla Prima
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