Painting swatches in transparent and opaque paint

Sample of my new Gumroad Tutorial called "Color in Practice: Black, White, and Complements." Premieres this Monday at noon Eastern time.  Link to Facebook video

Roger Bansemer, Host of the PBS series "Painting and Travel with Roger and Sarah Bansemer” says: “Even as a veteran painter, I find Jim's videos instructional in ways that always bring fresh and revealing insight to the table in a way even a beginner can understand. His observations of ordinary subjects when it comes to light, form and color always reveal helpful aspects I had not considered before which I can then apply to my own work. This is non-intimidating instruction at its best.”

Sketch Easel Ready to Go

Lightweight sketch easel, ready for anything. Search Facebook for the "Sketch Easel Builders" Group, where innovative makers share tips and ideas.



In this video, Will J. Bailey shows how to make a sketch easel using minimal tools. (Link to YouTube video)
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Check out my Gumroad video "How to Make a Sketch Easel"

Undercover Art Tools

In the May 2020 issue, Watercolor Artist Magazine will run a feature story on what I keep in my undercover art kit. Here's a linked list of my supplies.

New video tutorial comes out Monday, April 20

On Monday April 20 I’ll be releasing a new tutorial video called “Color in Practice, Part 1: Black, White, and Complements.”

Painting in full color can be an intimidating experience for many students, or even for professionals who want to explore a new medium. There so many colors and brushes to choose from. And there are so many variables to consider, including hue, chroma, value, and wetness.

What I’ll do in this video workshop is start with a few basic, inexpensive materials and foundational ideas. I’ll demonstrate grisaille (black and white) painting in gouache. We’ll explore the variations you can get with the contrast between transparency and opacity.

Then I'll paint Greg at his workstation in a tire shop, demonstrating a single-accent scheme based on the Zorn palette (basically, black, white, red, and an iron-based yellow).

The painting developed spontaneously on location and it takes advantage of a raw-sienna colored underpainting.

And we'll examine the opportunities of a complementary relationship using just two colors: ultramarine blue and burnt sienna.

The video alternates between simple practical exercises that are well worth doing, regardless of your skill level, followed by paintings made on location that put the principles into action. I use gouache and watercolor, but the painting insights are universal and will benefit oil and acrylic painters as well. 

What this video does is to take the concepts from my book Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter and translate them into basic practical assignments.

The video is 70 minutes long. The download will be $17.99, and the DVD is $24.50, but there will be a launch day sale of 15% off on Monday, April 20.

Tia Kratter, Teacher and Art Director at Pixar and Disney said:
“As an art instructor, I am truly grateful for this approach. Here's why: so many people who want to learn how to use color start out by squeezing every tube of paint on their palettes and end up with a confusion of color. Your method of beginning simply with black and white, and showing that one can get so much variety with just two tubes of paint is excellent. I love how you move forward by slowly introducing new colors one-by-one. It makes the whole process seem so much less overwhelming. Thank you for your generosity of information!”

Interview on Your Creative Push

You're just a link away from a wide-ranging podcast interview with Youngman Brown on his show "Your Creative Push."

Tom Blackwell, 1938-2020

Louis Meisel Gallery reports that Tom Blackwell has died at age 82 of complications of coronavirus. Blackwell was one of the pioneers of photorealism.

Tom Blackwell, 'HOWDY BEEF 'N BURGER' 1974
oil on canvas, 60½ x 84 in. (153.6 x 213.4 cm.)

Blackwell said that he had to overcome the feeling that working from photographs was somehow "cheating," When he shot his reference photos outdoors, he noted that "people are often disconcerted by someone who goes about photographing ordinary things with such intensity when there is apparently nothing worthy of being photographed. It makes them suspicious."

He was fascinated by the way photography interpreted reality. "We are so inundated with photographs in one form or another—movies, TV, newspapers, etc. that what a camera does to reality has become a kind of reality itself. This photographic vocabulary is very much a part of my painting."

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Quote comes from the classic book on Photorealism written by Louis Meisel.

Napping Chicks

High-energy hatchlings take mini naps between their curiosity binges. Happy Easter!

Should You Wait for Inspiration?

Do you have to be inspired and in the mood to do good work? Howard Pyle didn't think so. "That is all nonsense," he said. "I frequently have to force myself to make a start in the morning; but after a short while I find I can work. Only hard and regular work will bring success."

I can identify with what he's saying. There have been days when I had to drag myself to the easel and force my hand to move the brush around. Inspiration comes most often when I actually show up and work on a problem.

Durer's Melancholia. "It's ironic," observes the Metropolitan Museum,
"that this image of the artist paralyzed and powerless exemplifies
Dürer's own artistic power at its superlative height."

But there have been times that I've felt blocked from working because I eventually realize that something is wrong in the way I'm thinking. No amount of sitting at the easel and forcing myself to paint will solve the problem. In other words, if I don't feel in the mood, sometimes it's because I'm approaching my artwork in the wrong way or I'm trying to do a finished painting without having done the necessary preliminary work.

That's why it's so important to do these three things:

• 1. If possible, set up a different workstation for writing or sketching. Or literally wear a different hat and pretend you've hired a specialist to help you with the part of the process that stymied you.
• 2. Have a step-by-step process or a trusted workflow that you can plug yourself into. For me, that means doing thumbnail sketches, planning tonal studies, doing a perspective drawing, gathering photo reference, etc. 
• 3. At the end of the workday, finish up so that you leave yourself something fun and easy to do when you start up the next session. Then, when you arrive at work the next morning feeling sleepy and uninspired, you've got something you can achieve successfully even without inspiration.

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Young Watercolorist in the Louvre

Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, Young Watercolorist in the Louvre, 1889,
Hermitage Museum, oil on panel, 35.5x30.5 cm

Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret (1852-1929) did a couple versions of this charming idea, a young woman painting a copy in the Louvre.

Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, Young Watercolorist in the Louvre, 1881

In this version, he shows a pan-type watercolor set on the bench next to her. He eliminates the paintings on the floor behind her. The 18th-century-style painting on the wall behind her shows putti instead of a garden party.

Björck's Study of Krøyer

Peder Krøyer, preliminary sketch for Hip, Hip, Hurrah!

When Peder Krøyer wanted to paint a scene of himself and his friends sharing a toast after a luncheon party, he took a lot of photos and did a lot of preliminary sketches. 

But he needed a study of himself raising the glass, so his friend Oscar Björck obliged him with an oil study.

Krøyer used all these sketches and photos as reference during the four years it took to complete the final painting, entitled Hip, Hip, Hurrah! 

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