The eyes are the most crucial element, so I develop them almost fully before painting the rest of the portrait. If they're not right, the entire painting won't be right.

• Art of Portrait Drawing DVD
• Drawing a Portrait from Life DVD
• Expressive Portraits

• a one-year subscription to The Artist's Magazine OR any North Light art book
  
• three months of unlimited access to all the online art workshops at ArtistsNetwork.TV
• and 10% off every purchase you make at the North Light Shop.

When mixing your oils, keep in mind that you're not painting color, but light and its effects. For example, you wouldn't paint the illusion of a red chair the same way that you'd paint a chair red. Instead, you paint the chair as light affects it—in shadow areas, it may become violet, and the highlights may appear more orange.

• Dramatic Light
• Brilliant Color
• Capturing the Essence of Landscapes in Oils

• The US Mint is seeking artists. Professional artists can apply through its Artistic Infusion Program, the first deadline for which is Nov. 1. You might get the chance to design a real coin—how cool is that?
• Ways to save the environment, as envisioned by 20 video artists.
  
• A block-printing tutorial by artist Lizzy House. It's a good introduction to printmaking if you've never tried it! (And check out Print Liberation and our article on printmaking in the September 2009 issue of The Artist's Magazine.)
• For "those" days: An invoice for services rendered day ruining.
  

The outdoor sketcher's best friend just might be a fisherman's vest. This multi-pocketed garment will hold pens, pencils, brushes, a small box of watercolors, oils, acrylics or pastels and even a small canteen. The fancier models boast a zip-on pouch that will hold an 8x10-inch pad. Best of all, a vest will leave your hands free; you literally wear your sketching gear.

• Artist's Sketchbook CD
• Sketching Landscapes in Pen and Pencil
• Plein-air painting books

The idea the warm colors advance and cool colors recede is central to creating believable space. To use this principle effectively, I choose a warm and cool variation of each color on my oil palette. Instead of mixing, you can use ivory black for a warm dark and Payne's gray for a cool one.

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The best papers are 100-percent rag, meaning they're made from cotton or linen rather than wood. They last indefinitely without becoming brittle the way wood-pulp papers do.

• Watercolor A to Z
• Acrylic Revolution
• Drawing from Within

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To break away from painting or drawing the outlines of objects, I concentrate on breaking the entire composition into tones and shapes. This way, the foreground and background participate in the overall value pattern.

• Splash 10: Passionate Brushstrokes
• Drawing for the Absolute Beginner
• Artist Trading Card Workshop

Instead of making numerous compositional sketches, simply draw your subject once, then make several photocopies. Then cut out the individual elements, place them on a sheet that's the same size as your working surface will be, and move them around until you find a composition you like.

• Mastering Composition
• A Painter's Guide to Design and Composition
• Simple Secret to Better Painting

No matter how dark a color is, if it's in direct sunlight, it always stays in the light value range. Because of this—and in spite of the face that it defies logic—the shadowed part of a white object will appear to be darker than the sunlit plane of a black object.

• Painting Outdoor Shadows in Pastel
• Splash 7: Celebration of Light
• Painting Light with Colored Pencil

• Sharpie's Project Backpack contest challenges you to decorate a backpack you buy at Office Depot with the two free Sharpie markers that come with it. (Or you can download a printable template to decorate.) The winner gets $5,000 and his or her design will be sold in stores next year. First- and second-place winners get cash prizes, too. The contest is open to US residents 5 and older. Deadline: Sept. 19
• Strathmore's illustration contest asks "how do you see green?" Just create a piece of work that expresses the environmental theme using dry mediums on Strathmore paper, and your work could be one of four to be featured on the covers of recycled drawing paper pads. The contest is open to artists older than 18. Deadline: Nov. 30
• Cray-Pas is seeking student artwork made with oil pastel. The 15th annual Wonderful, Colorful World Contest is open to US and Canadian students in grades K through 8. The winners get savings bonds and T-shirts. Deadline: Dec. 11

• The Pastel Journal Pastel 100: the deadline is today!
• The Artist's Magazine Over 60 Contest: Oct. 1
• The Artist's Magazine All-Media Online Competition: Nov. 2
• Splash 12: Dec. 15

The easiest and safest way to transport a very large watercolor when you're having it framed or photographed is to leave it stapled to the support on which it was stretched, and then to cover it with several layers of heavy-duty plastic and/or brown paper.

• Shipping Pastels (A Fragile Matter)
• Treating Bumps and Bruises

• What are the best ways to protect ourselves from being plagiarized when using the internet?
• What legal protections are given to an artist whose non-copyrighted images were stolen?
• Can an artist legally demand her images be removed from a website, even if it’s not being used for monetary gain?
• What are the steps you should take to confront someone who has been selling copies of your drawings online?
• When using photos for reference to create pieces of art or illustration, is there a percentage that has to be different from the original photo?
• How does infringement come into play in the realm of collage?
• What is the line between homage and infringement?
• At what point does an image become public domain?

To paint like J.M.W. Turner, emphasize the rhythmic movements within your subject to create a dramatic effect. Eliminate all whites from your paper by tinting it first with diluted, pure colors. But remember to restrict yourself to a range of very light to middle values. Create the effect of luminosity by contrasting clean colors against slightly darker, more neutral colors.

• Splash 10: Passionate Brushstrokes
• "J.M.W. Turner Combined the Real and Romantic"
• Exploring Watercolor

When you're painting a sunset on location, you have to move and think fast. To make sure I get all the information I need to create a good painting, I do pencil sketches and make color notes, then supplement this information by taking a few slides. Back in the studio, my combined references allow me to re-create the scene's glorious colors with ease.

• Artist's Digital Photo Reference: Landscapes
• Paint Along With Jerry Yarnell, Volume 8: Capturing Color
• The Artist's Magazine 2008 Issues On CD

• Post at least once a week—but several times a week is even better
• Let readers get to know you
• But don't get too personal
• Use lots of pictures!
• Always spell-check
• Add other art blogs to your blogroll
• Post comments on the other blogs you read

Make a one-color still life painting. Gather an assortment of objects that are the same color and compose a still life on the same-colored background. Then use it to explore all the nuances of color, shadow and form.

• Oil Painting: The Workshop Experience
• Brilliant Color: Painting Vibrant Outdoor Scenes
• Confident Color: An Artist's Guide to Harmony, Contrast and Unity

To liven up your work experiment with bright, unrealistic colors, such as an orange sky.

• Confident Color by Nita Leland
• Brilliant Color by Julie Gilbert Pollard
• Creating Confident Color DVD

• A blogger created an embroidered portrait of the moon. [via CRAFT zine]
• Greg LaMarche's collages are also just heavenly. [via It's Nice That]
• Mary Kate McDevitt's hand-lettered chalkboards make me drool. [via Pica + Pixel]
• And I'd love to wrap my packages in this Navajo-inspired tape. [via Kitsune Noir]

Virtual Worlds: M.C. Escher and Paradox
Through Sept. 13: Printmaker Maurits Cornelis Escher created visual puzzles in which logic and absurdity coexist. This exhibition traces the development of the artist’s work from his early stylized depictions of landscape and architecture to his later use of repeated geometric patterns.

Marking Portland: The Art of Tattoo
Through Sept 7: Experience the art of tattoo—through time and across cultures—with Museum-wide kiosks showcasing tattoo-related art from the permanent collections and interactive, multimedia presentations featuring Portland-area tattoos and their stories.

Sensitive Vision: The Prints of Beth Van Hoesen
Through Aug. 16: This retrospective of prints by San Francisco artist Beth Van Hoesen features approximately 70 prints drawn from the permanent collection of the Portland Art Museum.

Don't be discouraged by show rejections. No artist is accepted to every juried show. As in any other aspect of life, there are trends in art that you shouldn't care to follow, but jurors are human. What looks passe may look fresh and exciting a few years down the road. So hang in there.

Before I work with a painting knife, I usually set the mood and work out my composition and color with a brush. Then I use the knife to make clean, clear strokes where a brush would disturb or remove the underlying paint.

• "The Importance of Planning" by Joyce Pike
• Oil Painting Basics
• "A Look Back: Joyce Pike"

• Extraordinary Clouds: Skies of the unexpected from bizarre to beautiful by Richard Hamblyn
• Weather World: Photographing the Global Spectacle by The Met Office
• Watercolors Skies & Clouds: Techniques Of 23 International Artists
• Artist's Digital Photo Reference: Landscapes edited by Erin Nevius

• Deborah Secor paints a sunset in pastel
• Mark Willenbrink paints the sky in watercolor

In many instance no one knew that original paintings of some of these were ever made! The discovery of these paintings came as a surprise even to Charley's son Brett. "I felt like I was opening a buried treasure chest that had been locked up for more than 35 years."

Old, yellow photo album pages make great acrylic palettes. The pages are light and easily transportable for outdoor painting. You can also spray them with water and scrape dry paint off with a palette knife.

• How to read the rules and abide by them
• What the choice of jurors can tell you about a show
• How to choose works to make a strong, quick impression
• How the jurying process works
• What makes jurors see red
• How to act at the opening or during an interview, once you get in a show or win a contest

Changing your painting format can quickly get you out of a compositional rut. I find that I keep my ideas fresh if I break away from the standard canvas sizes because they lead to traditional compositional solutions. When I go into the field to paint or sketch, I carry a number of offbeat sizes—14x7, 10x17 and squares like 14x14.

• A Painter's Guide To Design And Composition by Margot Schulzke
• Simple Secret To Better Painting by Greg Albert

• a report on the Renegade Craft Fair
• a great artist from Franklin Bowles Galleries
• and a general report on New York City

Drawing what "isn't there" is often the best way to draw what is there more accurately. The voids, or empty spaces, around your subject can be the key to drawings that look like what you see. The next time you draw something, pay special attention to these "negative spaces"—the spaces not filled by the "positive" forms of the object you're drawing.

• The Artist's Magazine November 2006 issue
• All books, magazines and DVDs on drawing

To make a graded watercolor wash, turn the paper so that the part you want darker is at the top. then dampen the paper with a sponge and clean water. Start with a loaded brush of color and stroke rapidly across the top of the paper, moving down with even strokes across the width of the paper. When the brush is nearly depleted, recharge it with paint and start again at the top, stroking across and down until the desired depth of value is reached.

• All watercolor articles on ArtistsNetwork.com
• Watercolor Essentials book with DVD
• Watercolor in Motion book with DVD

• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• MoMA (and the MoMA store!)
• Cooper-Hewitt
• New York Public Library (the building with the lions)
• Brooklyn Museum

Once your portrait training is finished and you're ready to paint portraits for a living, you'll need to assemble a range of sample works. These should include children, adults, a person in a business suit and perhaps a clergyman or a person in academic robes. Paint real people and not movie stars or athletes.

• See all Portrait articles on ArtistsNetwork.com
• Drawing a Portrait from Life DVD
• Expressive Portraits: Creative Methods for Painting People by Jean Pederson

You can see more of Colombo's iPhone sketches at 20x200.

To keep your pastels clean and neat, place them in a container on a layer of rice. This will prevent them from rolling off your work surface and breaking on the floor, and also from acquiring a film of gray dust.

• Carole Katchen in the February 2007 issue of The Pastel Journal
• Painting With Pastels: Easy Techniques to Master the Medium by Maggie Price
• Pastel Painting Techniques by Guy Roddon

“Nobody wants me to do anything, so I’m just doing what I want,” she said.

• The Artist's Magazine February 2005 issue
• Illustrated Timeline of Art History by Carol Stickland

Paint relationships, not things. The immediate effect of a painting comes primarily from values. By getting these relationships right at the beginning, you've nailed the "big look," regardless of what you're painting.

• The Painterly Approach by Bob Rohm
• Simple Secret To Better Painting by Greg Albert
• The Complete Guide To Painting Pictures From Photos by Susie Hodge

Always start a painting or drawing with big shapes and tools—big brush, big charcoal or large graphite stick—anything that precludes your getting prematurely enmeshed in details. Beginning with something big forces you to see the underlying masses and shapes that tell viewers what the subject is.

• First Steps: Drawing And Painting Animals by Bill Tilton
• Mastering Composition: Techniques and Principles to Dramatically Improve Your Painting by Ian Roberts
• A Painter's Guide To Design And Composition by Margot Schulzke

Using thousands of dollars' worth of paint, brushes and paper shipped from New York Central Art Supply in the East Village, Mr. Bleckner, 59, worked with a group of 25 children — former abductees and ex-soldiers — for more than a week at a Roman Catholic aid center. The children made 200 paintings that will be sold at a benefit at the United Nations headquarters next month at which Mr. Bleckner will be appointed goodwill ambassador.

He said that after several days of teaching them rudimentary painting and drawing skills, many began to open up to him and to create work that powerfully expressed their experiences. ... "What this mission accomplished is what I call microcreativity," Mr. Bleckner wrote in a catalog of the children's work. "It is a personal interaction which gives someone the tools to create something that they can be proud of, and which can help them on the arduous path to restoring their dignity and sense of self-worth."

See a slideshow of the children's work here.

When you're just beginning to paint in an impressionistic style in oils, it's useful to exaggerate the color somewhat. On a sunny day, for instance, make the light places brighter than you think they are, then bring the work inside and see whether it looks like a sunny day. If not, exaggerate the color some more.

• See all our articles about landscape painting
  
• Fill Your Oil Paintings With Light & Color by Kevin Macpherson
• Oil Painter's Solution Book: Landscapes, Answers to Your Oil Painting Questions by Elizabeth Tolley

"There’s a challenge of rebounding from economic disaster and from people moving away after the collapse of the steel industry," says Curt Gettman of Pittsburgh's Sprout Fund. "But what was left was a really great infrastructure, a lot of assets, and a city that understands the value of art and that quality of life isn’t necessarily measured in dollars and cents."

No one can help you sell your Warhol fast like Cash For Your Warhol™! Sell your print or painting for cash regardless of the size, price, or condition. Cash For Your Warhol™ has been in business for several months so you can concentrate on moving on with your life.

• Read about papercutting in the April issue of The Artist's Magazine
• Journal Revolution: Rise Up And Create! by Linda Woods

A great way to study wild birds and animals at close range is to attract them with feeders or salt blocks. At my cabin I have both hanging feeders and a platform feeder. These have provided opportunities to sketch hundreds of birds: Goldfinches, purple finches and grosbeaks have all joined the regulars at the feeders. Carolina wrens, summer tangers, indigo buntings and other visitors that aren't even interested in the feeders seem to be drawn by the activity.

• Creating Nature In Watercolor, An Artist's Guide by Cathy Johnson
• More books on painting animals and wildlife
• Post your work in the Plein Air Channel on WetCanvas

• Post your work in the Photography section of WetCanvas
• A-Z Of Creative Digital Photography by Lee Frost

1. Photography is both a craft and a tool.
2. Start small—physically and/or financially.
   
3. Stick with the big brands.
   
4. Fight the urge to think bigger.
   
5. Do your homework. 
6. Hold it in your hand.
   
7. Buy from reliable sources. 
8. Learn how to use it.

Keep a notepad in your car. Then, whenever a potential subject catches your eye, make a note of the location, the time of day and the season.

Carry a camera with you to capture more information on any scene that draws your attention.

To paint like James Abbott McNeill Whistler, group objects into simple silhouettes over the whole page, and avoid adding too many details. Use opaque pigments and a limited palette to create a feeling of weight and mood. But more quickly, since dry opaque pigments are difficult to work with. Focus on contrasts of intensity rather than differences of light and dark, to convey the effects of reduced light.

Don't paint sitting down. Stand in front of your painting with legs apart, brush in fist, as though you're addressing something of great importance. When things stop going smoothly, sit down and try to recall the last time things went smoothly. Then stand up and find out where you went wrong.

Go to museums as often as you can, for so much of what you see in person can't be reproduced in print, and look for such things as how the masters treated edges, determined scale and built their colors.

To create a striking surface texture, Edgar Degas would steam the pastel with boiling water. Depending on the thickness of the pastel layers, the steam might produce a paste, workable with a stiff brush, or a wash that could be spread with a soft brush.

• The latest All-Media Paint-Off is underway on the Forum. The challenge is to create a still life that includes these five objects: a feather, a key, a candle, a scarf and a pen. See all the details here to learn how you could win a $50 gift certificate.
• New merch in our CafePress store, like T-shirts with the new mag logo and a poster of 25 years of Artist's Magazine covers!
• And we've got a secret sale going on at ArtistsNetworkShop.com—get 30% off anything when you use the coupon code ART225. It's good through this Sunday, March 1!

What do you think of my video debut?

Carry a 3x5-inch pad of drawing paper and some kind of ballpoint pen and use it. Get the idea that everything around you, everything you see, is worthy of your attention. It's like practicing the scales. A musician can play incredibly complex compositions, but these basic exercises strengthen the muscles and impulses used to paint or perform.

Don't be discouraged by show rejections. No artist is accepted into every juried show. As in any other aspect of life, there are trends in art that you shouldn't care to follow, but jurors are human. What looks passé may look fresh and exciting in a few years down the road. So hang in there.

• pepperminte (stylized watercolor portraits)
• kelcan (abstract oil landscapes)
• rplowman (collages—I interviewed him for the June issue of The Artist's Magazine!)
• jezze (gorgeous prints—I interviewed her for my book!)

To limber up your imagination, find a quiet spot, shut your eyes and call up an image of something you know very well, perhaps your cat. Take time to let the image form clearly in your mind. Then change it—make the cat another color, give it wings, watch it fly.

"We need a voice that looks broadly," said Robert Lynch, president of Americans for the Arts, a national lobbying group. He is advocating a senior position, not necessarily a Cabinet post. "We are calling for a person at the executive office level who understands there is a National Endowment for the Arts, but also understands the arts portfolio in the Education Department, the State Department—and in addition to the nonprofits arts, is looking at cultural tourism, broadband access and trade through records, movies and videos."

The easiest way to make gray with an opaque medium is to mix black and white. The richest grays, however, are made by mixing complementary colors.

Wyeth gave America a prim and flinty view of Puritan rectitude, starchily sentimental, through parched gray and brown pictures of spooky frame houses, desiccated fields, deserted beaches, circling buzzards and craggy-faced New Englanders. A virtual Rorschach test for American culture during the better part of the last century, Wyeth split public opinion as vigorously as, and probably even more so than, any other American painter including the other modern Andy, Warhol, whose milieu was as urban as Wyeth’s was rural.

Act like a professional. "I don't have to be businesslike; I'm an artist." If you've said this before, you're fooling yourself, and you'll probably be taken advantage of. Successful artists place a premium on professionalism and good business practices.

Hal is living a perfect life. Everyone adores him and everything always seems to fall right into his hands. He's got the looks, he's got the charm and he's got Dali, his new girlfriend. Little does Hal know...his whole world is built around him.

Using the data, they painted what people want. It turned out to be a landscape, with a mountain and a lake, and deer, and a family, and George Washington.

Draw something white. Find a white object, or paint any object pure white, and then, with a strong light source from one direction, draw the shapes and values in charcoal with as much detail as possible. This is a great exercise in studying values, and you might try it as a painting exercise, too.

A sturdy, lightweight drawing board can be made from two pieces of corrugated cardboard. Glue them together with the ridges running in opposite directions. Trim the board to a size that's 1/2 inch larger than the paper you're using, and then bind the edges with packing tape. Secure your paper to the board with four strong paper clamps.