May 26

How to Mix Darks
This is an excellent article about mixing and using darks  in watercolor, a subject we've recently discussed on Tuesday morning. I highly recommend it.
How to Mix Darks in Watercolour
by Art Tutor - Thank you, Pam

May 19

Cult of the Machine

Connections between the past and the present will be explored throughout this large-scale survey, which will feature more than 100 masterworks of American Precisionism by such modernists as Charles Sheeler, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Charles Demuth.
Mar 24 - Aug 12
Cult of the Machine at the de Young

Open Studio at Kay Russell's Studio

Thank you, Heather

Arcenio Martin Campos

"It is at this moment that the thousands of loose body parts floating around inside my head are beginning to come together – not just as the completed figures I have been drawing for years – but as individual lives that are trying to complete themselves and come into existence."
Martin Campos - Website
YouTube: Martin Campos, Painting the Human Trace

May 12

Standard Color Wheel Theory

 Here's a plain-English introduction to colour schemes for artists and anyone struggling with colour mixing, by tutor John Cox.  The monochromatic, analogous, complementary, split complementary, triadic and tetradic (or double complementary) colour scheme. 
An Artist's Guide to Colour Schemes
Thank you, ArtTutor

Green

Greens come in cool and warm hues that are often named after places and things in the natural world. From forest green to pine to mint, teal and chartreuse, greens can push into brown and blue territories, have pastel moments and can be so rich and verdant that they look almost radioactive.
Fertility, Freshness, Harmony and Greed
Thank you, Artist Network

May 05

Make Every Brushstroke Powerful

Have you ever approached a watercolor painting as if each stroke would be your last? Practitioners of calligraphy approach their art something like this, and the results are fresh and spontaneous, not overworked.
Landscape Painting, Meet Calligraphy


“I will live by my watercolors.”

Perhaps America’s greatest maritime painter, Winslow Homer became one of the masters of the watercolor medium as well. Mostly self-taught, Homer is known for the visceral force of the waves in his oil paintings, but his watercolors are an antidote to any visual heaviness and weight. As his early paintings reveal, watercolor is where he shined as an artist with a graceful, innovative hand.
Winslow Homer

Color Theory

We are beginning to work with Color next week so I thought it would be interesting to check out how we see color. A joy or a geek like me, probabaly a yawn for a lot of you. He speaks of Blue-Red-Yellow, Cyan-Magenta-Yellow and Red-Blue-Green palettes and how the interact. He is working with acrylics, but the science is the same.
How To Use Color Theory
Learn How To Paint & Draw With Mural Joe!

Watercolor Paper
Excerpts:
. . . "Arches watercolor paper is the brand most readily available in sheets, rolls, pads, and watercolor blocks. Arches paper is mouldmade in France only during certain times of the year because the water from the river used to wash the paper becomes muddy during the winter. This accounts for the slight variations in whiteness from batch to batch as the water begins to change."
. . . "The 300 lb. rough in the Artistico series is said to be produced on an especially slow-running papermaking machine, which allows the water to drain slowly. This process creates a paper with characteristics close to those of a handmade paper.  '
True Art Information > Art materials