The Artist's Magazine, Free Articles on Painting, Abstract Art and More

Letter from Maureen Bloomfield, in the December 2012 issue of The Artist’s Magazine:

This September I had the good fortune to attend American Artist’s Weekend with the Masters in San Diego, where artists of the caliber of Daniel E. Greene, David Leffel, Sherrie McGraw, Juliette Aristides, Quang Ho, Rob Liberace and David Jon Kassan, to name just a handful, maintained that, as artists, we have to pay attention—to look until we see. Looking until you see sounds easy unless you’ve spent a lifetime at it. In fact, David Leffel called painting a “problem-solving discipline”; Daniel E. Greene spoke of the challenge of realism and of the “extremely worthy goal of spending one’s life trying to excel.” Trying to excel is continual, an inner and outer process, a dilemma and a joy.

If you’re a new reader of The Artist’s Magazine, we welcome you. In every issue, we feature artists who are generous enough to share secrets of craft and wise enough to impart lessons as relevant today as they were centuries ago. In this issue, Michael Chesley Johnson demonstrates two approaches to painting in oil (“By Direct or Indirect Means”); M. Katherine Hurley walks you through a tonal landscape (Brushing Up); Grant Fuller offers a refresher course in perspective (Drawing Board), and Leonard D. Duboff explains more of the complexities of copyright law (Ask the Experts).

Finally, we celebrate the winners of The Artist’s Magazine’s 29th Annual Art Competition; we congratulate the finalists, as well, and indeed everyone who submitted work for our review. Keep at it! Perhaps the only point on which all the artists at Weekend With the Masters agreed was this: The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. Keep painting.~Maureen Bloomfield

Take a peek at this issue’s complete table of contents and get your print or digital issue today at www.northlightshop.com. And in the meantime, enjoy the following free articles and links from this issue.