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

The artists and students I work with have been hard at work again. Below are several new paintings and drawings in various mediums, subjects, and artistic styles from a handful of the artists I work with. I love the joy they each experience once they have completed a new piece, and as always, we work through the difficulties and frustrations of the creative process. I hope you enjoy their new pieces! Are you interested in joining a mentoring studio? Visit my Drawing and Painting Instruction website at learn.rlcaldwell.com/p/mentorship-studios . I am also a Master Mentor with Matrius, where we meet monthly to receive feedback, suggestions, and critiques on current projects. Visit my profile page on Mastrius website at mastrius.com/robert-caldwell-mentorship . Urban Landscape, Oil by Paula Smith. Thursday evening mentoring studio. Wildlife/Landscape, Oil by Pam Landreth. Tuesday morning mentoring studio. Nature/Landscape, Pastel by Sonya Richeson. Thursday evening mentoring studio. Wild...

Now that section 1 of my Basic Color Theory course is complete and launching on July 25, 2022, I am now focusing on the production of section 2. Section 1 was filled with theory and mixing exercises. Section 2, after one more mixing exercise, begins to put all of the theory and exercises to use with painting the first still life painting of the course. Section 2 is a concentration on red, green, and their complementary color mixtures, so of course, the still life will have red and green subjects. Since this is the first still life painting and I want students to focus on mixing more than textures, I chose red and green peppers. Completed tonal painting for the first still life painting for my Basic Color Theory course. I paint using the indirect method, so naturally, I teach using the same process. I just finished and rendered the first lesson of the still life painting, which covers painting the tonal layer. I wanted to share a short clip of the lesson towards the end so you can see h...

March 14, 2022, is when I started to edit and produce my Basic Color Theory Course. When I started this project, I had no idea what it would take and how much I had to learn. Four months later, I am ready to launch the first section of the course! I have been teaching this course since 2011, and the recorded version of the course is the same as it was when I was teaching in person but on steroids. For the first time in my teaching history, students get a front-row seat right behind my shoulder and watch every brush stroke I make, how I work the paint on the palette even how I clean my brush. Students receive clear and precise instruction through real-time video and can pause or rewind the instruction. The one indisputable fact I have learned over the years is that not everyone learns at the same pace. I love this new format of sharing my drawing and oil painting instruction it allows students to work at their own pace. My Basic Color Theory course is a bundle of five sections, and each...

  Studio artist spotlight About this time last year, I received an email notification of a new student enrollment in my Basic Perspective course, which I thought was odd and exciting at the same time. Odd because I had not started to promote any of my online courses and exciting because I had a new student. After completing the Basic Perspective Course , my new student Christy continued with my introductory sketching courses “Eggs and a Creamer,” “Teapot and a Creamer,” and “Eggs in a Cup.” I later came to find out that Christy had taken my Drawing Fundamentals in-person course back in 2019 before my art academy had to shut down due to Covid restrictions. I had to apologize to her because I did not remember her taking that in-person course with me. I blame it on the stress of moving the art academy into its new location in September 2019 as well as the overwhelming pressure of having to close the academy down six months later. “Eggs and a Creamer,” Graphite pencil by Christy We...

I often say that I have the privilege of working with some very talented artists in my Mentoring Studios. Each week brings new challenges, questions, and of course, new paintings and drawings. Below are a handful of recent works that were painted and drawn by some of the artists and students I work with. You will see that there is a wide range of subjects from stilllifes, animals, people to water and sunsets and different mediums. I hope you enjoy their new pieces! Stilllife, Oil by Paula Smith. Thursday evening mentoring studio. Wildlife, African Wild Dog, Oil by Jan Priddy. Tuesday morning mentoring studio. Wildlife, Snowy Egret, Graphite Pencil by Rich Turney. Thursday morning mentoring studio. Wildlife, Goldfinch, Oil by Cindy Paris. Thursday morning mentoring studio. Sunset, Oil by Mary Lee Wetzel. Thursday morning mentoring studio. Portrait, Graphite Pencil by Katharina Robinson. Thursday evening mentoring studio. Figure, Pastel by Sonya Richeson. Thursday evening mentoring studi...

I have been asked many times about private instruction, and I am happy to announce that I have just created a private coaching program on the studio website. The Private Coaching allows artists/students to check in with me either 2, 4, or 6 times a month at a time that works within their schedule. The program is for artists/students working on their own projects and simply seeking guidance with their current projects. Questions may be asked about composition, color theory, reference materials, techniques, framing, basically anything to help you with your artistic endeavors. Visit the Private Coaching web page to read more about my new Private Coaching Progam , pricing, and submission form.

It may seem silly, but I can not express how happy I am that I have finally found and purchased my first plaster casts! I started instructing students in 2010 and have wanted to purchase plaster casts to use in my drawing and painting instruction since then. I have only bought my first three, a male foot, a female hand, and the Mary mask from Michelangelo's Pieta. Drawing from plaster casts is terrific because the plaster does not create any harsh highlights allowing the artist to focus more accurately on the transitions of values. They are excellent teaching aid and have been used for a long time. I can not wait to draw these, create future drawing courses, and create reference images for my students.

 I took a break from teaching classes for the week of Thanksgiving, but I didn’t sit around twiddling my thumbs; I recorded two new sketching courses. The two new courses finish my introductory sketching courses focusing on a simple subject matter with relatively no textures. The first one in this set is already available, titled Still Life - Eggs and a Creamer; the additional two will be titled Still Life - Eggs and a Cup and Still Life - Teapot and a Creamer. As I mentioned, the subject matter for these introductory sketching courses is being kept simple. An artist can focus on the purpose of my sketching classes, see the larger shapes first, and then break them down into smaller and smaller shapes. I continually stress to my students not to get bogged down by the details but to focus on the larger shapes that support the details, to see through the curtain of details. To work from general to specific. Now that I have the courses recorded, I will spend the next week editing the v...

It has taken me six months to get to this point, where I can now successfully create an instructional video that looks good and communicates the instruction in the manner that I wish it to. If you had told me back in March of this year that by the end of the year, I would be able to create a video that looks like the one below, I would have asked you what you had been smoking! It seems like it would be easy to create an instructional video, but many variables go into creating a successful video. The first part is how you want to communicate what you are trying to teach. It was imperative for me that you can see what I am drawing and painting clearly and that you can also see the reference that I am looking at and zoom in on it and mark up the reference. I also wanted to include a picture in a picture of me when I am talking and painting classes a picture in a picture of my palette. I also wanted to make sure that I could add a graphic letting you know what pencil or brush I currently h...

 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.

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 ...

So, my grand idea moving forward is to offer several new instructional classes a month, short classes that are only a few hours, and multi-day classes. Both of which I want to prerecord so I can offer them immediately to the students who took the live online class. I didn’t realize the tremendous learning curve there would be in learning how to use and edit Adobe Premiere, a video editing program. I started Wednesday of this past week and just finished the promo video (Saturday at 10:15 pm) for my live online class Painting Technique - Cloud Study I that I am offering on September 2, 2020. I also put together the preliminary lessons that will need to be completed before the day of the class. My brain hurts immensely and my back hurts from parking my rear end in a chair for days on end but I am happy with the results. And I feel like Neo from the movie Matrix when he downloaded to his brain how to fight in martial arts and he turns to Morpheus and says “I know Kung Fu!” Of course, after...

End of an era, the Midlothian Art Academy sign in the county dump Well, I guess the first post on this blog, in a long time, should be about why I am back here. It was not my intention to build an online art school platform; well, maybe that isn’t the complete truth. In 2016 I had initially thought about creating some online instructional content, but then I had the opportunity to open my art school studio. I started with a 1200 square foot space that I designed and constructed consisting of a teaching studio, a small personal studio, and an exhibition space. And it was going rather well, and in hindsight, I should have stayed in that spot. I had brought on other instructors, and we had multiple class offerings, so it made sense to expand. In September 2019, I moved the academy into the new building, two large teaching studios, an administration office, a waiting area with a library, my studio, my lead instructor’s studio, John Sims, and a framing/storage room. I would be lying if I di...