Streamline Publishing

By Christopher Volpe

Lots of people who wish they could paint say things like, “I can’t even draw a straight line.” The irony is, in painting you don’t even have to – you just have to be willing to keep adjusting and correcting until it “straightens itself out.” 

For that matter, plenty of folks who become artists later in life would have started a lot sooner if...

Edgar Degas never wanted to leave well enough alone.

He arrived in painting almost sideways — a year at the École des Beaux-Arts, three years studying in Italy, then a return to Paris where he dutifully followed convention and worked in oils, like everyone else. His early masterwork, The Bellelli Family, took nearly a decade to complete. It was accomplished. It ...

At a glance, a landscape can feel overwhelming — an accumulation of trees and rock, atmosphere and light, foreground and background. The painter’s challenge is to distill that complexity into something understandable, something that invites a viewer in. For landscape painter Ellie Wilson that requires physically experiencing a place — hiking it, moving through it, and seeing ...

Gouache may seem like a trendy rediscovery, but it’s actually one of the oldest forms of water-based paint — and it has a long, global history. Its roots can be traced back to ancient Egypt, where artists used a mixture of natural pigments and gum arabic to create opaque images on papyrus. A similar approach was used in Persian miniatures and medieval European illuminated man...

By Christopher Volpe

“In summer,” says poet William Carlos Williams, “the song sings itself.” 

If these paintings are any guide, to invite summer into your paintings, you have to let it be itself by putting the emphasis on mood. 

Consider the painting by Monet titled “Cliff Walk at Pourville” (above). Monet downplays the figures in every way and gives us ...