I was painting in mt gallery today, which is not often, and a couple of ladies were watching when one asked me if my gable roof lines were off.

I was painting like roof lines in #2 and they felt they should be as referenced in #1.

Once I showed them that #1 had no vanishing point Like #2 they were happy and continued their tour of the town.

Just a small tip and hope she works for you.…

Here is my definition of PLEIN air painting..:) :) :)

PLEIN P = poor weather L = live bugs E = even lighting – sure I = insufficient facilities – no restrooms N = nonsense -  what am I doing here

I would like to hear your definition?

Fresh of the easel. An abstract in blue on a 18x24 canvas. Thanks for looking. Jim

I have a painting demo on my blog. of Zebras and their reflections at a waterhole.This painting is on a 16x20 canvas and has been quite an experience so far.

I just finished this oil painting and my first attempt at reflection and though it is quite a challenge the effort was a great learning tool and will defiantly do more. Thanks for looking.…

A couple of weeks back I took a photo editing class and this opened up a brand new way to work with my reference photos. 

As you can see one of the many things I learned was the ability to take an elephant from a standing position in this photo of the elephant (The white areas) to a walking position giving the painting much more…

What color is it, When I start a new painting from a photo, especially my still life projects,  I generally get the temperature by using Irfan View (always free) photo editor  I crop an area to see what my colors are going to be by creating a white area within the photo. Now with the color picker I click on areas of the photo and using a…

Click on this link Photo editing for artists for some neat tips and tricks for artists that work from photos.

Only six hours away for me. Yea

A new class on Photo Editing For Artists; is coming later this month  I am real  excited to see something like this for 9 bucks. See you there

All the editing tools they will be using in the class are available in all the the major photo…

This is a 6X6 painting of one of my roses in full bloom. I put this one up for auction yesterday.Something I normally don't do so anxious to see the results.

My one on one photo learning trip was a long one. It is a 100 mile round trip when I have to go to the big city. I learned my approach to taking the photos is right on and the camera, a sony cyber-shot,  is OK. It is my computer skills that are my problem. So working on that today. I found this site to be helpful. http://www.betterphoto.com/exploring/shootingPaintings/6DigitalFix.asp

Ever have trouble figuring the complement color you should use to create color harmony in your paintings Here is a simple solution.

I painted this piece of yellowish orange cloth and wanted to know what would work best in the shadows of the folds. So I painted a swatch of that color on a piece of matt board and placed a black dot in the center. Next to the swatch I placed a black dot.

I stared at the dot intensely in the color swatch for 20 seconds or longer and then stared at…

Today is the day. Spring is here and my Rhino is full of gas. I have been experimenting with a new plein air pallet this winter and anxious to give it a go.  

My three primaries are Ultramarine Blue, Brown Madder and Cad Yellow Light. I have 2 kicker colors in the kit of Thalo Green and Vermilion Light.

 The reason I choose these colors is everything in my immediate environment is forest and the town architecture is predominantly old wood and rusty tin roofs. Pretty mid to dark…

We have A world class event finishing here today in tiny Idaho City, 3 Id women cyclist are trying out for London Olympics in the Exergy Tour 3^rd leg. Should be exciting to watch as they come around the corner in front of my Art  Gallery It is raining hard and the street is wet so hope no one goes down as they execute the turn off the highway. These gals may be tiny but they are tough. 

I am occasionally asked, and I have asked, from other forums and blogs how to paint greens.

This is how I  paint my evergreen trees. That is about all I have to paint in plein air within a 50 plus mile radius of my home base. So I have painted a few.

Well here is my family secret formula and why it works.

The base color is just Ultramarine Blue and Grumbacher Raw Sienna. Since UB is a reddish blue and RS is a reddish yellow there is enough red in the mix to gray the…

Woke up to a beautiful spring day and an early breakfast yesterday. So I loaded up my Rhino with paint gear, an over kill for sure. Packed bags like a woman going for a half day trip. No offense ladies but you need to know my significant other to understand.

The advantage of living in the mountains having 5000 miles of roads and trails surrounding  a town smaller than a shopping mall is there is no need to trailer your off road vehicles.

So my adventure began. I took trails…

This 6 color pallet consists of like family colors. EX; green yellow and green blue, red yellow and yellow red along with red blue and  blue red. When like family colors mixed with each other give a purer secondary colors as the arrows indicate.   However when mixed with a non-family color the color is grayed. EX: ultramarine blue mixed with either yellow is a grayed green.  This method of mixing continues to react this way all around the pallet.

Not shown is mix the two blues, the…

This is how I teach the 1/3^rd composition.  Once it is understood the students will go right to the spot they want without drawing a bunch of lines on their canvas.  They say “A” is the prime spot  with b ,c and “D” are  the lesser…

This is a recent studio piece of my friends and I when we use to do a lot of horse back riding.

It is available at

www.jimmoyerfineart.com