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. ...
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What is it?
Continuing our mini-series on different reference methods artists use, today we'll be looking at painting from the imagination. Nearly everyone who has ever had an interest in art had at some point created an artwork from imagination or ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Welcome back to Technique Tuesday! Today we'll be looking at a fantastic substance that has been used to make art for thousands of years: charcoal!
What is it?
In the most basic sense, charcoal is the remnants of burnt wood. It's likely that it ...
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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"). ...
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Before we start to look at this week's Technique Tuesday topic of Tonalism, we're going to start with a mini discussion of two basics that are important to understand when talking about this style. So, in case you are not yet familiar with these concepts ...
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What is it?
Today's featured technique is the dry brush technique. Like last week's technique, the multi-loaded brush, this technique deals with the way that the artist loads their brush before applying it to the canvas. With the dry brush technique, ...
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