If you are going to paint a background, then you need to start working on your background early. Don’t wait until until you finish the foreground to start worrying about background.

I very often hear admonitions about the importance of value in painting. What I hear less frequently, except for advice that preliminary value sketches are helpful, is practical advice on how to go about choosing values. Although I don’t have a specific formula for deciding on values, I have [...]

A quick lesson in how to work out a value plan in your paintings.

Value does all the work; color takes all the credit.

I saw this quote on a bulletin board a while back, and it has become one of my favorites. There are so many times people have looked at my work and said: “Oh, the colors are so great.” The truth is that I pay very little [...]