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5 ways to lay out your painting palette.

There are no hard and fast rules to laying out your oil paints and over time you will each have your own way of doing this, that best suits your own style of painting. But if you are a beginner it is a good idea to have a system because then you can paint without thinking just like driving a car, it becomes an automatic action. (More …)

The Louvre just put its entire art collection online.

There is nothing like spending a rainy afternoon at a museum, soaking in the beauty and wonder of art and history. Now the Louvre, the world’s most visited museum, is letting you do that right from home.

The French museum has released an online platform featuring all of the museum’s artworks, consisting of more than 480,000 pieces. Art lovers and researchers alike will now be able to view the entire Louvre collection online for free. (Read more…)

Artists Materials – Review of Medieval Italian and Russian Tempera Painting Technique – Natural Pigments

The technique followed by painters in medieval Western Europe to prepare and paint tempera panels and that used by painters in Russia of the same period are closely allied. However, there are some differences in the process from the preparation of the panel to the final varnish. These differences are interesting to note and can provide some insight into the technique and process used by the earliest Byzantine artists to make panel paintings. (Read more…)

A New Book by Philip Guston’s Daughter Explores the Origins of the Painter’s Ku Klux Klan Imagery—Read an Excerpt Here

When Philip Guston was young, social injustice and the cruelty of the world reverberated deeply through his paintings. In 1968, the United States was again in a state of profound unrest, with its moral leaders assassinated, its inner cities rife with looting and rioting, and its police violently suppressing protestors; halfway around the globe in Vietnam, the death toll was steadily mounting. The art world had seemingly detached itself from the real world and was busily gazing inward, celebrating formalist abstraction and elevating consumerism. (Read more …)

Squeeze Bottles Simplify Studio Life

Recently I purchased some squeeze bottles; the kind that you might use to put mayonnaise on your hamburger or hot dog in a restaurant.

I use them to organize my oils and solvents. Now it’s very easy to access these liquids. No more breaking my hand prying off a frozen linseed oil cap or overtightened Gamsol bottle.

It’s also much cleaner to apply them either to a cup or my pallette or wherever I want them to go. Less wasted product too. The precision tips are great and they allow me to direct the contents precisely.

It may not seem like much but it’s a pretty amazing and simple solution that really makes my studio time more efficient, cleaner, and much more organized. Give it a try and see what you think.

I would love to know what your experience with this is so leave a comment below and I will feedback with you.-