Feeling stuck? Need a fresh approach to your creative practice? Dürer's Melencolia I Here are four tips to help overcome creative melancholy: 1. Set up a different workstation. For most people, doing work means facing a computer. If it's a laptop, bring it to a new spot in the ho … | Continue reading
Not all head paintings are intended as portraits of specific individuals. Joos van Craesbeeck, 1605/6-1660/1 The Smoker Sometimes the goal is to capture a facial expression, a character type, a weird angle, an exotic costume, or an exploratory lighting arrangement. Adriaen Brouwe … | Continue reading
All of the films by Laika Animation have "Art of" books available, including Paranorman, Boxtrolls, and Kubo. But their first film, Coraline, doesn't. Much of the concept art had been shared online, but it wasn't organized, and hard to find. So a group of fans gathered up everyth … | Continue reading
Frederic Edwin Church had the ability, even in a small field study, to capture a lot of convincing detail and texture, working quickly over a pencil line drawing in a single pass of oil paint. View of Wimmis, Valley of the Simmental, Switzerland by Frederic Church, 1868, oil on p … | Continue reading
Donkeys are very friendly and sweet, but it’s hard to sketch when you’re in there with them. | Continue reading
Cell phones occupy so much of people’s attention that they hold still and they don’t notice you sketching them. I paint this guy in a New York City park. He is talking into his earbud mic for a long time, not moving much, and he doesn’t look over. When I’m done, I show him the pi … | Continue reading
When light comes from the farther, foreshortened, or “short” side of the face it's called "short" lighting. It’s still three-quarter lighting if the tell-tale lighted triangle appears on the shaded side of the face. This time the lighted triangle is on the cheek closest to the vi … | Continue reading
In today's Substack post I paint a street scene where the goal is to capture the feeling of objects against a bright sky. The technique uses watercolor and gouache over casein. I add a bright light effect with pastel once the paint is fully dry. Also I answer a few of your questi … | Continue reading
Getting the best light on your artwork while sketching outdoors makes a huge difference. Ideally you want soft, diffused white sunlight at a level close to the brightness of the scene itself. The worst thing is cast shadows or dappled light across the painting. That's where a dif … | Continue reading
Lilias Trotter’s mentor, John Ruskin, said that if she stuck with it, she could become the “greatest living painter” and create immortal works. She did stick with it, but her first calling was as a Christian missionary. She overcame resistance from people around her and traveled … | Continue reading
Let’s consider three essential factors: Aptitude, Interest, and Market, which you can remember with the word “AIM. *AIM diagram by James Gurney Here are three overlapping circles. One represents “What I’m good at,” the next represents “What I love doing,” and the third is “What s … | Continue reading
My Dinotopia books are intended for all ages, but my favorite readers are between ages 8 and 18. That’s the age where their brains are almost fully wired but they’re not yet locked into routines or mortgage payments. At St Columba’s School in Ballarat, Australia, 1993 Young peopl … | Continue reading
Contre-jour lighting is a type of backlighting where you place the subject right in front of a bright, sunny sky. It's a mysterious effect that makes your paintings glow. More today on Substack | Continue reading
I just put part 2 of the Dinotopia Audio Adventure on Substack. So anyone (psst, you don’t even have to give your email) can escape this world for an hour of free listening. Part 2, Dinotopia Audio Adventure | Continue reading
The story begins with the wreck of the Venturer. We follow Will and Arthur Denison as they try to figure out this place where people live alongside intelligent saurians. Link to free 14 minute sample of the Dinotopia Audio Adventure. | Continue reading
Artist and teacher George Pratt is featured in an exhibition at the Ringling College Museum of Art in Florida. The show is called “Carnet de Voyage: Maroc,” and it’s based on a sketching trip George took to that fabled land Gurney: “What's in the exhibit?” Pratt: “The exhibit has … | Continue reading
When Frank Vincent Dumond (1865-1951) taught at the Art Students League, he said that the center of interest or focal point of the work could be in any of the four quadrants of the canvas but not in the middle-too dull and boring, he said. Paintings by Frank Vincent Dumond One fo … | Continue reading
How do you build an art career online? Today's Substack post is a deep dive on managing social media and narrowcasting to dedicated fan networks. | Continue reading
Balancing art with family can be a challenge. We artists owe a lot to those around us for their long-suffering patience. Jeanette Reading, oil, 8 x 12" I understand how some artists need a separate studio, but I've always had my studio in the house, and I feel lucky that I could … | Continue reading
Here’s what it looks like when I’m premixing oil colors on a palette made from a roll of freezer paper. 🎨 The goal is to premix a “string” of four or five values of each of the subjective primaries that appear at the corners of the gamut. 🎨 The “gamut” is a sector … | Continue reading
Ilya Repin (1844-1930) had mixed feelings about impressionism when he visited Paris. He knew it was the future of painting, but he was turned off by “the incredible number of awful, sloppy paintings” that he saw in the exhibitions. More on Substack | Continue reading
When I was just starting out on my journey to learn about painting, I recorded some readings from books that inspired me. I'm just starting to post these readings in my Substack archive. Painting by Harold Speed The readings are from Harold Speed’s 1924 book Oil Painting Techniqu … | Continue reading
Link to YouTube Here's a practical method for isolating a living plant so that you can paint an accurate portrait of it on location. Roadside Weeds, casein, 14 x 18" Most landscape compositions are designed to lead the viewer deep into the scene. If there’s a foreground, it serve … | Continue reading
Eliot Hodgkin (1905-1987) was an English botanical artist who switched from oil to tempera in 1937. He said he liked opaque, water-based paints because: "It is the only way in which I can express the character of the objects that fascinate me." "With oil paint I could not get the … | Continue reading
The appearance of dark objects reflected in water depends on three factors: 1. The amount of silt or sediment in the water 2. The amount of light shining into the water 3. The shallowness of the water. In this plein sketch, the trees might have reflected more darkly had it not be … | Continue reading
Wow, what a nice surprise from the wonderful blog BoingBoing. Thanks to Bob Knetzger for mentioning my new Substack page. | Continue reading
Edward Catich demonstrated that the Roman letters on Trajan's Column were created with a brush, not a chisel. His research challenged the long-held assumption that the inscriptions were solely the work of stonemasons. Catich was a Roman Catholic priest, calligrapher, and expert o … | Continue reading
Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki says: • Do not paint stickily and paint after wiping the extra paint and water off. • Don't paint with too much pigment and water on your brush, to the point that it's dripping with paint. • Paint thinly the bright part. Read the rest at … | Continue reading
Here's the short answer: It’s not easy to create an adaptation of the first two books that preserves the utopian appeal of the world, but also introduces enough conflict to make it work as a three-act drama for adults. If you make it too sweet, it feels corny or preachy; but if y … | Continue reading
One of the challenges of my career has been how to channel all my crazy vocations and avocations. Which is why I laughed when the editor of Watercolor Artist Magazine (Spring 2024) asked me about dealing with issues at the opposite extreme. | Continue reading
James Gurney's Newsletter "Paint Here" on Substck | Continue reading
If you draw in line, there’s a principle called line weight hierarchy. Thicker lines seem closer and more important, while thinner lines float to the background. Examples by Charles Dana Gibson, Gustave Doré, and Alphonse Mucha at the link. | Continue reading
Jeanette custom-made this vest with the v-neck a bit lower so that I can get to my shirt pocket, which always has reading glasses, fountain pen, and pencils in it, for drawing emergencies. The design is based on the Shaped Vest (Plan 14) in Priscilla Gibson-Roberts’ book “Knittin … | Continue reading
Skies are a major source of light, and they should generally be painted lighter than they appear.A wash of very light, cool, color is often enough to convey the feeling of a blue sky. Any small form that is seen against a bright sky should also be painted or drawn lighter than it … | Continue reading
The goal here is to simplify. I'm interested in the truck but not the setting. I ignore the fence in front of it. Extracting the truck and putting it against white lets me focus on the little reflectors, the graphics, and the wheels. | Continue reading
In this YouTube video, I demonstrate step-by-step process of painting two restorations of the dinosaur Spinosaurus under the direction of Dr. Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago. Dr. Sereno's scientific paper, called "Spinosaurus is Not an Aquatic Dinosaur," set out to refut … | Continue reading
In a new video on YouTube I paint Trinity Church in Newport, Rhode Island, and consider how the human eye interprets reality differently than the camera does. | Continue reading
International Artist Magazine celebrates its 25th anniversary by interviewing long-time contributors: Harley Brown, John Lovett, Richard Robinson, and me.Plus, an article on using drawing tools over a watercolor or gouache painting to add lines or textures. International Artist M … | Continue reading
Animals are able to communicate in the realm of sound with much more complexity and nuance than scientists had suspected.Using new digital tools, researchers have begun to decipher auditory communications from many non-human life forms, such as elephants, birds, bees, bats, and e … | Continue reading
What happened to this van? Whatever it collided with tore a gash in the passenger side door and dug a crease halfway back on the side doors. It scored the metal like paper, broke the antenna, knocked off the bumper, and bent all the panels.As I sketch in ballpoint pen, pencil, gr … | Continue reading
In the year 1904, Joaquín Sorolla (Spanish, 1863-1923) produced nearly 250 works, which included sketches and finished paintings. His working method was documented by his friend Aureliano de Beruete:"The execution of each work was preceded by a period of preparation in which, by … | Continue reading
Engineer and oceanographer Derya Akkaynak has developed an algorithm called Sea-Thru that removes the blue-green atmospherics of underwater ... | Continue reading
How do you get exactly the colors you want in a picture….and no others? This is the third post in a Sunday series about a method called colo... | Continue reading
Moonlight is about 400,000 times weaker than direct sunlight. It’s so dim that the color receptors in our retinas, called the cones, can bar... | Continue reading