Bill does a switcheroo on us today. He highlights first with the shadow side of the boulder. Notice two things:  he holds the palette knife very flat to the canvas and lightly pulls it across the background layer. He lets the canvas pull the paint off the palette knife. … [Read more...]

We begin a three-part series of Bill painting a simple stone. Notice how similar creating this stone is to creating a mountain. All the basic elements are there. Today the underlayer - tomorrow the shadow highlights - finally, the bright highlights. In this clip, notice how much of the background he allows to show through the stone background layer. This is an important tip! … [Read more...]

Notice how Bill is pushing the paint into the canvas. It looks like he's applying a lot of paint to the canvas but not really. Look at the first frame of the video (above) and see how he's bending the bristles of that big brush. By pushing this layer deep into the canvas, he's able to add his highlights on top.   … [Read more...]

Bill is conditioning his canvas with his dark colors. These will be the background on which he will add highlight colors. Some artists call this an underpainting - Bill calls it "conditioning." An underpainting differs from what Bill is doing in that it generally is dry before the next layer of paint is added. Bill doesn't have time for that - sorry! … [Read more...]