In the studio with artist, photographer and instructor Robert Louis Caldwell

 It is almost October, and I am getting ready to start my next round of instructional courses, and I thought pumpkin still lifes would make the perfect subject. While taking the reference photos, I got a bit carried away with setting up the still lifes and took more images than I could need for this go-around. I narrowed it down to seven different images after looking through them, cropping, and editing. My goal is to create one drawing course, one intermediate-level painting course, and one intermediate/advanced course from the still lifes. I have selected two images to choose from for my drawing course, two images for my intermediate painting course, and three different images for my intermediate-advanced course. Decisions, decisions... decisions? And that is why I am writing this post today to get feedback from you, my students, on which one in each category I should choose.

  As I am getting back into my daily and weekly routine, albeit a different routine from a few months ago, I find time to get back into my stack of books that I want to read. Over the past week, I picked up my copy of “Traditional Oil Painting; Advanced Techniques and Concepts from the Renaissance to the Present,” written by Artist Virgil Elliot, an artist I respect. I am only a few chapters into the book so far, and I am again grateful to be reading another book that stresses the importance of a traditional approach to learning how to draw and paint. Virgil emphasizes the importance of learning to draw first, then starting to paint with only black and white paint before moving on to color. The more and more I read these books that outline the traditional approach to a fine arts education, the more I become dissatisfied with the arts education that I received and see the many holes in the curriculum taught to me. The book is filled with great information, but the introduction chapter g

I believe I have honed my video editing skills a bit more with the release of my recorded online course for Basic Perspective . In this foundational course, I walk students through the basic concepts of perspective, discussing the importance of the horizon line, vanishing points, and perspective lines. Then how we use them in one-point and two-point perspectives. The last exercise in this course is fun because we create a street scene without using a reference completely using a two-point perspective. We may not need to use perspective as dramatically as we do in the exercise for this course, but we need to be aware of perspective issues in our drawings and paintings. This course gives you the ability to spot potential problems in your work. The recorded version allows learning at your own pace, starting and stopping the video as needed, and you can ask a question in the comment section of the lesson that I will answer. Learn more by visiting the Basic Perspective course . The complete

 Find your own voice but build it on a solid foundation of understanding value, color, and design. I thought I would share three new paintings created by different students to highlight their approach, application, and level of detail each created in their finished works. First and foremost, in my work and my instruction, I push value and constantly remind all of my students of the importance of creating a strong contrast in value. The strong value contrasts grab a viewer’s attention from across a room and pull them in. My students can tell you that the phrase they hear from me the most is “Go darker.” The pieces below show that the black and white version holds up very well in black and white. The other part that I wanted to highlight is the approach to each painting; one student approaches her painting as I do in the indirect painting method, building the painting with layers. Another jumped in using the direct method and created the painting in one layer. And the third painting was