If a watercolor painting becomes too dark, use a bristle brush to scrub out the paint. Be sure to use lots of water and light pressure to prevent abrasions on the surface of the paper. After scrubbing, blot the excess moisture with paper towels.

• Watercolor Essentials
• Watercolor Secrets DVD
• Watercolor in Bloom

Ordinary masking tape may be used to keep small areas white, mask horizon lines when painting juicy skies or produce a strong directional edge. First, place tape over the area to be protected. Using a sharp X-Acto knife, cut through the tape only to the paper's surface. Gently pull off the outside shape of tape, being careful not to tear the surface of your paper. Paint over the tape and allow the wash to dry before removing the remaining tape.

• Creating Textures in Watercolor
• Creating Nature in Watercolor
• Watercolor Essentials

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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"

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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18. If you wouldn’t do it without an audience, don’t do it all.

For example:

Take a field trip. Spend some time online and make notes about what sites you like and what sites you don't. Make sure to note what it is you like about each site. Do you like the color palette of a particular site? The way the navigation is structured on another? Does it annoy you how long it takes a certain site to load? All this information will help your Web designer create a design you love.

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