Do you have a drawer full of dried-up watercolor tubes? I do. Here’s an idea to protect your newer tubes from suffering the same fate. Store...

At age ten, Ilya Repin watched his cousin paint a watermelon. The budding artist regarded the process of creating an illusion out of raw pig...

The French language, which has the richest vocabulary for art, has a wonderful word: “pompier.” Literally it means “fireman.” It is used as...

We take it for granted that all landscape painting in oil should be undertaken “alla prima,” that is, starting with a blank canvas and compl...

How much did the Hudson River School painters alter what they saw? Did they move mountains and trees around to make a better landscape compo...

I first met Sean Andrew Murray twelve years ago when he was an art student at Syracuse University . He held still long enough during our pi...

Here are two plein-air paintings I made during of the last hour of the same day, as the sun was setting over the Hudson River. I painted the...

Here's the answer to Patrick's question after the last post. Yes, I did pose the models outdoors, in the open shade behind my house....

Yesterday we looked at how the French academic masters used overcast light to orchestrate complex scenes. Those artists are a tough act to ...

When a thin veil of clouds covers the sky, sunlight is diffused and indirect. The sky appears light grey or white. It gives a soft overal...