Sublime

If you get stuck with your painting, make a sketch of the model in another medium. It will give you a fresh eye.

No matter what painting technique is employed, oil paints are most cooperative when applied from dark to light, wet-into-wet.

For oil painters: Increase the fluidity of your paint by mixing the colour with glaze medium (a mix of linseed oil, dammar varnish and solvent), and apply with a fine round or rigger brush for flowing, even, unbroken lines.

Keep a bad drawing until by study you have found out why it is bad.

And as I gazed at the image I’d done, the next color leaped up at me. Orange. Not just a simple orange, but a flaming orange, a color that had both a strong vitality and also a premonition of decay. Like a fruit slowly rotting away. Creating this color was much more of a challenge than the green. It wasn’t simply a color, but had to be connected wi