Here is a great painting lesson for your high school art students.  This lesson reinforces drawing skills related to realism, with an emphasis on proportion and form.  Furthermore, it teaches students to paint using old master techniques involving an underpainting and color matching.  One of the hardest things for art students is the act of matching value to color.  For this project, students first create an underpainting using only black, white, and gray tones. This helps them to see the values.  Next, they use a color copy to match colors.  They must place their mixed colors directly on the color copy to examine the value and chroma.  Most students are surprised to see how far off they are with their values.

I am excited to write to you about Cobra water-mixable oil paints made by Royal Talens.  I first came upon them when researching oil painting options for high school art students.  I teach 11th and 12th grade high school art, but I have never been able to teach them oil painting due to the harsh chemicals that are usually required.  I stumbled upon them, and they sounded good, so I purchased a small set to practice. Immediately, I was hooked and bought several more sets for my class.  In addition, I made my own switch from watercolor painting to oil painting and am now pursuing oil painting almost exclusively.  After two years of using Cobra paints, I feel confident in writing this review.

This past summer, Marla and I were fortunate enough to travel to the finger lakes area of New York.  We were there to attend my brother Paul’s wedding, which took place at theInn at Taughannock Falls, an old historic mansion that sits overlooking Cayuga Lake.  We marveled at the scenery, so green compared to Arizona!

Below is a free slideshow briefly detailing the 30 Most Famous Works of Art Everyone Should Know.  If you scroll down, you will find another slideshow that can be used as a self test to help you study. 

A few years ago, Marla, Liam, and I travelled to Monterey, California for a little vacation time.  This was a great trip with beautiful views of the coastline, as well as a fun experience at cannery row.  One of the highlights was renting electric bikes and riding the seventeen-mile road through Carmel and ending at Pebble Beach Golf Resort.  To say it was stunning does not do that drive justice. 

It has been exciting to spend so much time in the studio.  As I am leaning back into landscape painting, I have been wanting to start to paint some of Phoenix's most iconic locations, and of course Camelback Mountain had to be at the top of that list. Camelback Mountain dominates the skyline of the east valley, and thousands of people climb her steep sandstone slopes each year. 

While hiking the Grand Canyon several years back now, I paused at a nice little spot where a creek was bubbling over some red rocks.