The Art Toolbox

Learned the basics, but feel stuck?

This page is for you.

Here you’ll find a curated selection of free content that I’ve built out over the last decade— blog posts, reviews, and YouTube videos, organized to provide a curriculum for you to explore and learn from. It’s based on what I call “The Four Pillars”- Shapes, Value, Edges, and Color.

Because so much of art making is about seeing and thinking, a lot of this info is “media agnostic” and applies just as well to oil, acrylic, and pastel painters as it does to watercolorists. I’ll be building this out over time. I hope it is of use to the larger art community!

-Steve

Composition-

  1. What is Composition? And Why You Should Study It

  2. Is It Technique That’s Your Problem?

  3. What Makes a Compelling Reference Photo?

  4. The Nuts and Bolts of Composing a Compelling Reference Photo

Notans-

  1. How to Make a Notan- a 15 minute how-to video

  2. A Reading Guide to Arthur Wesley Dow’s “Composition”

    (a 5-part series on this classic book- pt. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5….

    pt. 4 “Deeper Into the Masters” and

    pt. 5 “Notan in the Field” are the most easily accessible)

  3. Anatomy of Notan Sketches- examples of sketchy notans

Wet-into-Wet Painting-

  1. Why Notans and Wet-into-Wet Painting Should be Tightly Integrated- applying notans to your painting process!

  2. Cliff Notes for Joseph Zbukvic’s “Mastering Atmosphere and Mood in Watercolor”, pt. 1- all about the watercolor clock, with a video and a breakdown!

  3. Book Review- Ewa Karpinska’s “Wet on Wet Watercolor Painting”- a deeper dive into the Water Cycle and controlling wet-into-wet painting; a stellar tandem with Joseph’s book

Color-

  1. Color Mixing, pt. 1, pt. 2- this covers concepts such as Navigating the Color Wheel, the Rubberband Method, and Mixing Greens

  2. Navigating Color Space- includes a great 20 minute video I link to

  3. Using Color Space- using color for effect, with examples

  4. How I Work With Greens, pt. 1 and pt. 2 - the basis for how I teach my class on Color