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Stapleton Kearns: "Good layins lead to good paintings, cursory efforts lead to gremlins." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Stape talks about the importance of layins in preparing your paintings.

Tags: learning | mastery | skill | technique | All Quotes by Stapleton Kearns

Lori Woodward Simons: "Refuse to give in to defeat. Maybe it'll take you months to get really good at this new dimension, so what? Mastering anything difficult takes time." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Do you take artistic risks or is your work stagnating?

Armand Cabrera: "Although the subject matter in the image is what draws many people to a particular painting eventually it is the structure and handling of the painting that gives a work power and separates it from current fads or cliché. It is the strength of the design that allows it to stand the test of time." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: How to make your paintings more interesting by using variety.

Stapleton Kearns: "Color is a wonderful servant but a dreadful master." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Stape talks some more about pigments.

Stapleton Kearns: "Unless you are an experienced painter learn to mix all of your colors from a chromatic palette. If you have built enough expertise to keep it in check and use black judiciously it is a handy pigment to have around. " Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Stape shares his thoughts on how to use black in your paintings.

Tags: learning | mastery | skill | technique | All Quotes by Stapleton Kearns

Andrew Loomis: "The way you draw characterizes your work. It is one of the chief means of identification, and has positive value for you and for no one else. For this reason, if for no other, it is foolish to allow another artists style of drawing to influence you too much." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Some quotes from Andrew Loomis on drawing.

Tags: learning | mastery | skill | technique | All Quotes by Andrew Loomis

Stapleton Kearns: "Design is a human construction and can not be copied from nature. You use decision making to add it to your painting. Design is a decision making and not a transcription process. No matter how carefully you copy that which is before you, you won't end up with a designed painting." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy:

Tags: learning | mastery | skill | technique | All Quotes by Stapleton Kearns

Stapleton Kearns: "The world has lots of ordinary paintings, it doesn't need another." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Stape gives a rundown of what he spoke about at a demo he did.

Tags: learning | mastery | skill | technique | All Quotes by Stapleton Kearns

Stapleton Kearns: "Do you know what type of paintings sell best? Good paintings. Take care of your art and it will take care of you." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Lots of great advice in this post from Stape.

Stapleton Kearns: "Keying a painting is setting the range of light to dark, and where the different elements will be placed on that value scale" Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Stape explains what it means to "key" a painting.

Tags: learning | mastery | skill | technique | All Quotes by Stapleton Kearns

Stapleton Kearns: "You cannot observe good color into a painting. Good color is poetic and creative, it has to be installed." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Stape talks about color in paintings.

Keith Bond: "It is common for us artists to get so caught up with either the technique, the content, or the abstract that we lose sight of how they need to be used in conjunction." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Keith asks if your work has the "Triple Impact" - if it looks good from far away, from normal viewing distance and up close.

Tags: learning | mastery | skill | technique | All Quotes by Keith Bond

Armand Cabrera: "Simplify, simplify, simplify as much as possible without losing the essential of what is sought " Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Some wonderful excerpts from Frederick Waugh's unpublished notes.

Tags: mastery | skill | technique | All Quotes by Armand Cabrera

Stapleton Kearns: "A GOOD PAINTING IS A POEM ABOUT ITS SUBJECT, AND NOT A VERBATIM DESCRIPTION! Its not what you paint, but how you paint it that matters." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Stape critiques a painting and talks about how every painting needs a "raison d'etre".

Ted Seth Jacobs: "I am not your teacher: nature is your teacher. But you have to have knowledge of the principles of form to understand what nature is showing you. These principles are helpful only as far as they help us see nature. If nature disagrees with a principle, nature is right, the principle is wrong. Nature is our teacher always." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: So much wisdom here from master artist Ted Seth Jacobs.

Stapleton Kearns: "Value is more important than color, as it is a part of drawing., Color is a decoration you hang on your drawing. Since it is so important to get the value right." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Some great advice on how to "key" a painting

Julie Jackson: "Instead of thinking of varnishing as an afterthought, it is good to remember that the varnish is part of the structure of your painting. The longevity of this artwork you have put so much time, effort and thought into depends on everything from the support to the varnish. T" Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Some really useful tips on varnishing both oils and acrylics.

Tags: | skill | technique | All Quotes by Julie Jackson

Stapleton Kearns: "Stay back on that brush. Holding it like a pencil, up at the ferule ( the shiny part) makes crabbed and "short" stingy looking strokes. This will absolutely destroy your brushwork!" Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: A great demo on how to hold your brushes.

Tags: | mastery | skill | technique | All Quotes by Stapleton Kearns

Robert Genn: "Before starting in with the "busyness" of working, stop to think of the simplest and freshest way a passage might be conceived and executed. Very often a move up to a larger brush, together with a careful mixing of the desired colour, and an elegant, well-contemplated stroke or two can carry the day." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: How to keep from overworking your paintings.

Tags: | mastery | skill | technique | All Quotes by Robert Genn

Jeff Hein: "If you have a simple yellow, red, and blue, you can pretty much mix any color. The palette is important, from an individual standpoint, but... it's not critical. The important thing is that you see and interpret the colors accurately, and make smart decisions." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Thoughts on artist's palettes.

Stapleton Kearns: "Try to learn how to say just enough to make your picture work and no more. Contrast detailed passages with simpler passages, and your work will have more sophistication and poetry. " Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Some thoughts on mystery in your paintings.

Stapleton Kearns: "What you don't want to do is try to shove the paint around on your canvas until it is right. The more times you touch a stroke, the weaker it becomes.There is a beauty in the look of a painting that has been fearlessly executed." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: If you struggle with "licking" your paintings, Stape explains the technique you should use to avoid it.

Tags: | mastery | skill | technique | All Quotes by Stapleton Kearns

Joseph Rodefer DeCamp: "Don't draw eyes, noses and mouths but put on a splotch of paint the size and shape of the light or shadow. Don't let your mind do the seeing, it tells you too much... draw the shadow shapes." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Some advice from Joseph Rodefer DeCamp and John Singer Sargent.

Stapleton Kearns: "Licking is the opposite of putting a brushstroke on the canvas and leaving it alone. Instead the painter repeatedly smooths out and worries the brushstroke after it is made. Its a bad habit and if you have it you need to break it." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Stape talks about more precise brushwork.

Tags: mastery | technique | skill | artists | All Quotes by Stapleton Kearns

Stapleton Kearns: "It is evocation and not description that takes a picture to the level of greatness. I don't mean to dismiss technique, only that it is expected as a tool, but is not in itself the end. Just as having a command of vocabulary and grammar is essential to being a writer, it is more important to have something extraordinary to say." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Stape gives his opinions on what makes a painting great art.

Stapleton Kearns: "The world is full of average paintings. It doesn't need any more. You need to look for ways to make each one special." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Stape offers some tips on designing paintings when you're "en plein air".

Robert Genn: "The outdoor workstation is a place of invention as well as toil. The eternal puzzle draws us back. It was ever thus. We are not donut machines. " Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Robert Genn gives his thoughts on plein air painting.

Stapleton Kearns: "Amateurs look at nature and say "what does it look like?" Pros look at nature and say "what can I do to it?" " Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: Stape talks about changing the color temperature of a painting.

Tags: | mastery | skill | technique | All Quotes by Stapleton Kearns

Jennifer King: "I feel that this tool and the ways I'm using it actually contribute to the content and message of my paintings. " Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: By using your techniques consciously, you avoid creating artwork that seems "gimmicky".

Tags: technique | mastery | All Quotes by Jennifer King

David Billings: "Techniques are easy. Ideas are hard. They're also more valuable." Visit this link >>

Sarah Lacy: While the techniques are important, it's what you do with them that counts.

Tags: techniques | ideas | All Quotes by David Billings

Links and Quotes Tagged Under "technique"