Making a Quick Color Gradient:
Before I start painting, I make a quick general color gradient curated for the area I’m about to paint. If it’s a green section, I mix a green gradient scale; if it’s yellowish, I make a ...
2025-09-27 13:16:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Will and I take questions from callers direct from the studio. We hope to do this frequently and with artists guests coming soon! Enjoy!
2025-09-24 10:53:09 +0000 UTC View Post
A little bit about making oil studies. Why I use them and what they’re good for:
They’re small, usually quick to make, not intimidating in scale.
Exploratory and curious, because they don’t take long, the handlin...
2025-09-23 17:39:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Back in 2023, I documented the making of a painting called Love Dogs. Created for an art fair in Brussels, Belgium, I shared every stage of the process in video format, taking viewers along as I explored the painting—even while figuring out what...
2025-09-22 16:23:33 +0000 UTC View Post
7 Guides for Strength and Mental Well-Being for the Artist-Mother
1. Begin with gratitude.
Know deeply and truly how blessed you are to be a mother in the first place. Let that awareness be your founda...
2025-09-18 15:31:57 +0000 UTC View Post
The Grisaille process begins with value tiling on the palette, placing down discrete blocks of tone from a prepared value scale. These tiles serve as structural anchors, preventing the painting from becoming vague in its early stages. Just as impo...
2025-09-16 13:00:19 +0000 UTC View Post
I don’t use a projector when I make my transfers. My go-to method is the oil transfer, where I print out cartoons, sometimes small, sometimes very large, and coat the back with oil paint before transferring them. For large works, the paper often...
2025-09-12 12:57:41 +0000 UTC View Post
I felt it was appropriate, as I fired up a Substack this morning about women, self-portraiture, narcissism in our culture, and what it means to paint the other. While searching for depictions of some of my favorite mother images from earl...
2025-09-09 15:44:01 +0000 UTC View Post
The Oil Transfer: Artists have long used transfer methods to move drawings onto their working surface, whether in fresco, where cartoons were pounced or pressed, or on canvas, where variations of tracing and rubbing were common. E...
2025-09-08 13:00:26 +0000 UTC View Post
After two days of seeing shows across the city, I was struck by how relieved I felt whenever I encountered female made painting that hadn’t absorbed Francis Bacon’s shadow. His legacy of arbitrary chaos rarely opens toward light, it a...
2025-09-06 12:25:09 +0000 UTC View Post
The Ébauche - literally “first attempt” in French - is the initial painted layer. When you begin, I recommend using a small round brush; I often use a Rosemary sable round. I like to hatch with the paint almost as if I’m drawing, laying in ...
2025-09-05 13:01:47 +0000 UTC View Post
Back in 2019, I was painting a lot of portraits, and this commission came out of that period. At the time, I was looking closely at late 19th-century painters—Abbott Thayer and John Singer Sargent in particular. My process was essentially two la...
2025-09-04 00:22:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Proportion: 1 Part Shellac Flakes / 6 parts Denatured Alcohol
Apply: Window Shade the shellac mixture one area at a time, left to right or reverse
Why Shellac Paper? It makes the paper...
2025-08-31 13:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
A little excerpt from my Love Dogs painting video documented in 2023 and released in March, 2024. I documented the entire process of making a figure painting from the original doodle, the canvas prep, the underpain...
2025-08-30 13:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post
On an August afternoon, a little description about the importance of pre- mixing. Make it a ritual.
2025-08-29 13:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
1. Don’t chase - summon.
Desperation has a scent, and dealers can smell it. Instead of running after opportunities, calmly go about your work. Make paintings that hold their ground and understand the landscape you’re ope...
2025-08-29 11:55:45 +0000 UTC View Post
I’ve recently returned to drawing after a seven year sabbatical, and here are some thoughts.
Drawing is a beast you feed, but it is never satisfied. It’s like the gym, you never leave thinking, that was my best workout, i’ve master...
2025-08-27 12:37:34 +0000 UTC View Post
Paper: Arches Water color paper 140 lb, hot press.
Tone: Sennelier Ink Walnut Stain mix with Water (2 tbs water, 2 or 3 syringes of ink) per piece.
Apply: Win...
2025-08-26 17:52:16 +0000 UTC View Post
For this new 11 x 14 panel, I’m layering a modern tronie of a popstar over the form of an ancient Janus bust. Janus is a Roman god, (he doesn’t have a Greek counterpart), and is always shown with two faces. He looks both backward and forward, ...
2025-08-25 13:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about ground color—and how the ground collaborates with the layers that come after it. It’s simple in my mind: if my ground is cool, I put a warm layer on top; if my ground is warm, I go with a cooler s...
2025-08-23 13:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
I’m applying the second pass on this African wild dog (also known as the painted dog). The underpainting—done in a mix of raw umber, white, and yellow—is now completely dry. My job at this stage is to create a thin film of color over it, wor...
2025-08-20 13:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Underpainting is the foundational stage of a painting, setting up structure, value, and harmony before the final layers of color are applied. Throughout history, artists have developed a variety of approaches, each with its own character and purpo...
2025-08-18 18:36:53 +0000 UTC View Post
(Wait till the end to see my palette) My neutral ground is a bit darker on this one. A value 4.5. I did this intentionally so that my single layer of paint sits easier and allows for one pass. At the very end I may glaze a bit but this is a "one p...
2025-08-16 13:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
So I’ve Returned to Drawing….
After what I’d call a seven-year sabbatical from making formal drawings, drawings for their own sake, I’m returning to that language again. Of course, I’ve never truly stopped drawing. Every painting b...
2025-08-14 13:00:19 +0000 UTC View Post
I really believe books, and the images in them, have a kind of quiet power for an artist. When I’m working on a painting, there’s usually a specific idea in my mind—often shaped by certain artists I’ve been looking at. Books carry an aura,...
2025-08-09 13:00:13 +0000 UTC View Post
1. Master Your Craft
Dedicate serious time—ideally in an incubator or school setting—to build your technical skill and visual language; for me, that meant 10,000 hours over ten years.
2. Build Community 2025-08-06 12:28:55 +0000 UTC View Post
The rules for glazing are actually pretty simple.
1. If you start with a cooler, more opaque underpainting, you can glaze warmer and darker over it.
2. If your underpainting is warm and dark, you can scumble cooler and lighter on top...
2025-08-04 13:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post
I made a painting entitled “Win, Win” back in 2022 for the Spring Break Art Show. Similar to The Feet Washers I painted these figures on an illuminated warm ground. What’s tricky about this system is that the transfer lines...
2025-07-29 13:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Here is a sneak peak into my process of tiling freshly mixed opaque oil paint masses onto a neutral ground base and imprematura (Italian for "first coat"). This approach allows for one pass of paint and minimal going back and retouching. Notice ho...
2025-07-22 13:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30890347228