Category Archives: Art

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How To Start Oil Painting Without Getting Discouraged

You know what it’s like – you want to start oil painting and get your canvas and paints out. The excitement builds and fantasies about how fantastic it’s going to turn out from in your mind. It’s a glorious dream before the actual work begins.

How to start oil painting without getting discouraged

Then reality sets in. The dog throws up. A hangnail needs immediate attention. Ummm, how did this much laundry accumulate? TAXES. It’s one distraction after another. If you’re finding it hard to get started, you may be succumbing to resistance.

Fear not! Resistance Is Part Of The Creative Process

Whether you think of yourself as an artist or not, you are a creative being and go through

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Painting On The iPad Using ArtRage – It’s Fine Art On-The-Go

Painting On The iPad Using ArtRage – It's Fine Art On-The-Go pin 1

Painting On The iPad Using ArtRage – It's Fine Art On-The-Go pin 2

So far this year, I’ve been painting on the iPad using ArtRage in between working on larger oil painting projects. I love the immediacy of digital painting and I can paint even when there is little to no good light to work with, which is a challenge when creating traditional paintings during the winter months or on dreary days.

Painting On The iPad Using ArtRage – It’s Fine Art On-The-Go

The Teacup Challenge

“Teatime” is a painting on the iPad I started over a month ago using ArtRage. It was a more complicated painting which took me longer than usual to complete. I painted it whenever I had

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How To Paint A Cat In Oil Step-By-Step With Jorge & Nacho

Today I’m going to show you how to paint a cat step-by-step in oil in 7 steps. I’ll show you how I start the portrait and my approach for creating life-like and expressive eyes.

How to paint a cat in oil with Jorge & Nacho

Watch Out Dogs, Cats Are Looking To Steal Your Spot

While I’ve only painted a few cat portraits recently, it’s significantly more than I’ve done in many years. Dogs have always been the majority of my pet portraits, but I’m beginning to think cats are gaining more social status in society.

It makes sense with all the funny cat videos on YouTube and the growing popularity of events like CatCon (ya, that’s a thing). And it

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What Is The Purpose Of Painting A Still Life?

For most of my artistic life I’ve wondered what the purpose of painting a still life was. In school, I found them to be the most boring subjects of all and a waste of time. They felt painful to work on and I had a lot of resistance to drawing and painting them. Portraits were my sweet spot and I loved the challenge of capturing someone’s essence on canvas.

What is the purpose of painting a still life

Things started to change for me this year when I took up painting again. I knew I would be staying home more because both of my dogs were very ill and I needed

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Painting Dog Portraits & The Gifts Dogs Give Us Unconditionally

Painting dog portraits is something I’ve done for as long as I can remember. Last weekend I continued working on my digital painting skills by doing this portrait of a dog named Scoby.

Painting dog portraits & the gifts dogs give us unconditionally

If you’ve ever had kombucha, you may understand his name a little better. His momma, Donna Schwenk, is the founder of Cultured Food Life and is a

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Learning How To Do Fine Art Painting Using Procreate And ArtRage

I’m finally learning how to do fine art painting using Procreate and ArtRage with the iPad Pro. I resisted getting an iPad for SO LONG and was one of those traditional snobs who thought “digital art wasn’t real art”. BUT, the world is changing and my mind is changing regarding the subject. Bottom line, I’m coming to realize there is a definitely a place for digital art in today’s world.

painting using procreate and artrage

Painting Using Procreate And ArtRage – Is It  Cheating?

To me I thought it was too easy to cheat or difficult to do very “painterly” art digitally based on some of the work I’ve seen out there. However, there are a lot of ways to

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Painting Failures And Mistakes – Should I Give Up Or Start Over?

The odyssey of one of my painting failures begins…

Life is full of failures. I’ve had small painting failures before, but this one had me starting over. I had primed one of my panels improperly and the painting just wasn’t working. This painting was a commission and had to be done within a specific time frame and a mistake was not part of the plan.

Painting Failures image

It started out great, or so I thought…

Above you see the progression of the painting I’m talking about. It might look good in the photo, but the first two shots are of the panel that failed.

I started the drawing and captured the likeness, but as I continued to work I noticed I was struggling with the paint on the surface. I had just started painting in oils, so I really didn’t know if this was a normal thing or something going terribly wrong.

All I knew is that the struggle was getting really, really, real!

Step 1: The pain begins:

Painting of Sammie step one - painting failures

Sammie step 1 – a disaster waiting to happen

For step 1 on this little painting of Sammie, the cutie-pie Cavalier King Charles, I was feeling pretty good about how the drawing

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