Category: Painting
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James Gurney’s Painting Animals from Life
James Gurney has an uncanny ability to take on challenging painting subjects, and then make his methods clear and easy to understand in low cost, high quality instructional videos. In his newest video, Painting Animals from Life, he tackles the problems of painting animal subjects that move and change position, and shows how to successfully…
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French (Box) Easels, Field Easels and Other Plein Air Painting Systems
This post is an adjunct to my extensive article on pochade boxes. In it, I will showcase some alternative outdoor painting systems and portable easels. While plein air painting goes back further among individuals, it was with the invention of tin paint tubes and the portable “Box Easel” in the 19th century that painting en…
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James Gurney: Flower Painting in the Wild
Flower Painting in the Wild is the latest full length (hour-long) instructional video from author, illustrator and plein air painter James Gurney. As Gurney points out in the introduction, the approach to painting flowers he takes here is different than the usual flower arrangement in a vase common to still life or the traditional garden…
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Gurney Journey at 10
Congratulations to James Gurney for 10 years of authoring his superb blog, Gurney Journey. What started as a modest intention to chronicle his travels on a book tour — in a way mirroring the journaled adventures of the character Authur Denison in Gurney’s popular illustrated adventure series, Dinotopia — has grown over time into not…
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DIY Pochade Boxes – make your own cheap pochade box from simple materials
As I pointed out in my previous post on making DIY pochade boxes out of cigar boxes, the cost of a commercial pochade box can sometimes be prohibitive, particularly for those on a tight budget or who are as yet uncertain if they want to commit serious resources to plein air painting. So blog posts…
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DIY Cigar Box Pochade Boxes – make your own cheap pochade box from a cigar box
As I described in my original post on the subject (which will be updated shortly), pochade boxes are small, usually wooden boxes, meant to serve as a portable artist’s palette and easel for painting on location. Many also contain storage for supplies. Most are equipped to be mounted to camera tripods, but some are simply…