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A collection of 38 posts

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Color magic: mixing made easy

We have been updating a bedroom into a studio space in slow motion over the past year, and this past week Danielle installed beautiful hardwood floors. There were a few places that needed wood filler, and it stood out in contrast the rest of the flooring color. Now, I don&

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Using Color, pt 3: Brit's Abstract Diagrams

I wanted to show you specifically how I apply these concepts of limited palettes, blending and mixing in my open-ended abstract diagram series. I thought it might be interesting to run through some of the pieces I've made over the years and take note of color considerations that

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Using Color, Pt 2: Blending vs Mixing

Let's talk about the difference between blending and mixing color. Here's how I'm using these terms: Blending: to create a gradient or area of mixed paint on your paper/canvas by mixing wet paint into wet paint. The goal of blending is to soften

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Sketching from photo inspo

Last month we looked at reference photos: abstracting them, taking them, and finding them. Today I wanted to show you how the photos I used as examples have made their way into my representational sketchbook practice. These sketches are one of my favorite ways to consider the world and slow

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Reference photo resources

This month we're talking reference photos: how to use them and how to take them. Besides taking out own, there are tons of reference images available online either free for use or available in large sets for a small fee. It's important to not rely on

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How to take a good reference photo

When I shared the big folder of reference photos last month, a question came up in our EDI Live class about how to take pictures that are useful for painting – so, let's dive into that today. I love using reference photos. They make painting the world, whether representationally

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For you: Spring Reference Pics

So many times I have sat down to sketch and ended up using my time searching through my phone or royalty-free photo archives (like pexels or unsplash) just looking for something to paint. There can be some value to this process – really asking ourselves what we are interested in, the

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The flowers are here

The flowers are here! So I will be out painting them, sneezing and alive. Spring sun breaks are the perfect time to get outside and paint: they don't last long, and the light is magic. I've been continuing my project of using up my sketchbooks, and

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Monthly Guide

April 2024: Use your supplies (up)

If I could offer one piece of creative practice advice it would be this: Use your supplies. Think of them as experiences – like a concert ticket or a birthday cake – not a collection of treasures. We're never meant to keep them. Plus, they don't last forever

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Drawing Sticks & Value

Last month I shared two posts about becoming acquainted with a new material, in my case: oil pastels (here and here). If the new material is any kind of drawing stick – a dry material that comes in distinct colors that are not easily mixed – it's important to get

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Collaborative decisions: commissions

This time last year I was writing to you about painting the burnt out forests of the mountain ranges near me, and I'm back at it painting the mountains again this winter. After camping with a friend in the southern Cascades earlier this year, she asked if she

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note-to-self zine

In our live class last weekend we made two types of zines, and I want to show you one of them. I didn't have a name for it last week, but now that I've sat with mine on my desk for a week I've

Process

A stance against bombs

This month I experienced a great, wide disconnection from my creative self. I have felt acutely aware of death and war and genocide, I have been under that deadened sense of facing something horrific, when everything in me says, do something! and the rest of me says, like what? I

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Stepping around perfectionism

Earlier this month I wrote about stepping around perfectionism instead of tackling it head on. Here's one of my favorite ways to do that: Take 6 or 8 or 10 pieces of small/medium sized paper (I used watercolor paper that I tore down from a large sheet)

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Value, Part 2

Welcome to Part 2! Let's continue to play with value. Here are some ways to get started: Getting it right: actual gray 5! I tend to mix my middle gray chart darker than it should be. When we look back at this month's first post you

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Art chat

Today I have some creative miscellany for you, the kinds of things that I might go on about if we were getting coffee, chatting and showing each other our sketchbooks. So grab a cup of something nice and let's go! Painted backgrounds Earlier this month I had an

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Zorn Palette

In this month's main post I introduced one of my favorite limited palettes: the Zorn Palette, which is made of a bright warm red (often cadmium red, but I'm using pyrrol red here), yellow ochre and black. You can click here if you want to read

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Warble: the breath and the line

When I need to slow down, but actual holding-still, breathing-on-purpose meditation or relaxation is too much for me, I draw. Here are some favorites: 1) The breath line. I close my eyes, put my pen on the page and draw upward on the inhale and downward on the exhale. I

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Limited palettes

Earlier this month I shared a way to understand color as relative. Another way to explore this concept is to paint the same image with different limited palettes– in each case I'll be using a red, blue and yellow plus white. Each combination I choose will create a

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Ways to use a journal

I wrote to you earlier this month about how using a notebook helps me as an artist. In this post I'm going share a few ways I've learned to use it as a tool for processing and cultivating creative ideas. Bullet Journal Method Ever since I

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Watercolor Flowers & Fruit! 🍒

Flowers and fruit are wonderfully flexible objects to paint. There's room for a lot of variation while still allowing for recognizability, so they're some of my favorite things to sketch when I want to get a feel for new paint or paper. Here are some that

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Swatching Oils

Today's post is a quick one. I want to show you some swatching I've done recently as I've been trying out some new paints. I started on a set of large commissions last year and was several weeks of work into it when the

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Surprising myself: Painting the forest after the fire

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Mixing your media

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Developing an idea: making 3 abstract diagrams

In my first two posts this month I've written in depth about how my editing process allows me to have protected self-expressive space to create and then revisit it and transform it into something that I can share with others or even sell. Here's a look