Here's a new painting I started today. The scene is a field off Marton Road in Pittsfield Township, MI. I decided that I would do a...

A truly rewarding aspect of landscape painting is to enjoy the finer details added to the canvas, once the "basic" painting is completed....

A tortillion (pointed paper stick) and a piece of willow charcoal can be a pastel painter’s best friends when it comes to refining edges....

Often when viewing a landscape painting in progress, we feel that there is "something wrong" but don't quite know what that something is!...

Here's the completed version of "Lillie Park Vista,' started in the "Landscape in Pastels" class this January at the Michigan Art Center.

On our autumn tree I determined that the very bright yellow leaves catching the late day sun were a bit too bold. So my plan was to...

Working more blocks of value and color in the autumn tree painting, which i started at the Michigan Art Center landscape painting class....

As noted in my previous blog about "how much detail is too much," I continued to tackle the foreground of "Birch Ballet." I have decided...

The reference photo for the birch tree painting in progress has a tangled mess of grasses, weeds, small trees and shrubs that appear to...

While observing the current state of "Birch Ballet," I had a compositional epiphany. Although absent from the reference photo, placing a...

Simple, small format painting forces the artist to focus on blocks of color, light and value.

This painting is entitled "Barn Clip." The barn resides on Willow Road in York Township, Michigan, just east of US 23. I was riding my...

Working further on our class demo at the Michigan Art Center, I began building depth in the distant treeline and the distant ground....

Pastel painting; 10x12. Challenge here was muting the large distant tree in the background so that it shows distinctly behind the bold...

One of my local favorite parks to go jogging (often with my curious canine Cosmo). October anoints this park with layers of colorful...

Plein air artists need the discipline to capture a scene quickly before sunlight and weather conditions change. One way to train for...

Focusing further on the Birch Ballet painting, the distant shrubs can be further blended and faded-out by lightly applying pastel pencil...

Today's enhancements included focusing on the foreground tree, beginning to add the canopy of leaves. I began to bring the distant blues...

I could not resist painting this picked-over corn field in late September. The field is at the corner of Marton and Textile Roads, in...

At any time in my studio, there can be several paintings in progress. I allow these paintings to "mellow" and take on further refinements...