I love pen and ink drawing. It has a visual charm and character unlike any other medium.
I assume that I came by my affection for it from realizing as a teenager that pen and ink drawing was the basis for comic books and cartoons, but I was also exposed at a pretty early age to [...]

You may have heard the term “Web 2.0″ bandied about in the last couple of years.
Steming from an O’Reilly Publishing conference a few years ago, “Web 2.0″ is a rather nebulous term referring not to actual changes in the technology, but to a shift in the way information is disseminated and accessed using the [...]

Though the practice by individuals can be traced back further, painting en plein air, meaning in the plain air or simply painting out of doors, was first practiced in significant numbers by artists in the Forest of Fontainbleau in the mid 19th Century. Around that time, the advent of soft metal tubes for carrying [...]

Here's one for the artists out there!
These are the most common question I get from other artists - always about my glazing. So I thought I'd try to answer here and share what I can.

What medium do you use?
Now, I use water. But I used to use Golden's fluid matte medium, and after that Golden's polymer medium. I would use touches of paint in a pool of medium, mixed with a palette knife. I first used the matte medium because I wanted my paintings to have a matte finish but later read Golden's own advice about it and they said sometimes a lot of layers of matte medium could cause a milky finish. While I hadn't seen that result I knew I was using upwards of 20 layers of medium so decided to switch to their recommendation of polymer medium instead. (At this point I also decided to start varnishing to get my matte finish.)  read more »

Relaxed
Graphite 9 x 12
copyright Jeanette Jobson

After a busy day yesterday, this image pretty much sums up what I intend to do with my Sunday.

Every teaching opportunity provides me with food for thought and the one yesterday that I gave was no different. The individuals attending were from a variety of backgrounds and skill levels. Many of them were more familiar with painting than drawing.  read more »

Hollywood Birds - Power Players
Originally uploaded by DonnaGrayson

Ah Twitter! New love of my life!

Twitter is a strange, random, chaotic place with 140 character long chats from you and people you follow. I found it recently through other bloggers and have formed an attachment. There are two stories here really: Why I like Twitter, and why it can be useful to us artists.  read more »

I can't remember if I've shared this drawing or not previously. I was looking through old drawings and found this one. I remember the drawing and the model well, even parts of the conversation of that night in the life class. The model was Pip. The setting was the studio of Tom Greenshields on the farm in Hawkchurch in Devon. The year was...I'd say 1981 or 82. Time does indeed fly.  read more »

Were living in the midst of a resurgence of realism in painting. At the same time theres a revolution in realistic CGI animation and digital effects. I thought it might be helpful to take a closer look at the various words that we use to describe art that looks real. Trompe l'il Art whose purpose is to deceive the viewer into believing he or she is looking at an actual, dimensional scene. Above, museum diorama backdrop by James Perry Wilson.  read more »

The Jumper - work in progress
Coloured pencil on Canson paper 11 x 14
copyright Jeanette Jobson

I never know if its because of internal or external factors or simply because the planets are aligned in your favour, but some days drawing just is easier than others. Other days you can struggle forever and nothing comes out as you want it. Today was the former for me and I'm hoping it will stick with me for the rest of the weekend so I can make some progress.  read more »

The National Portrait Gallery have announced the four artists short-listed this year for one of Britain's most prestigious art prizes - the BP Portrait Award. The backgrounds to both artist and portrait are explained below. The portrait they painted in the above montage is indicated in brackets after their name, the title of the work and the media and size.
Simon Davis for Portrait of