Want to paint? Start here.

Wherever you are in life, you can be making art.

I’ve been making art professionally for over 45 years, so I can pull from my long career as an illustrator, painter, and writer to bring you helpful insights about drawing and painting.

What do I talk about?

Topics might include:

  • Plein-air painting techniques

  • Portable sketching setups

  • Academic methods

  • Fantasy world-building

  • Stories about early illustrators.

What you’ll get in your inbox

If you subscribe for free, you’ll get two or three posts per week delivered by email. Every week or so we do a deep dive into a single topic. I try to weave in personal revelations, thoughtful insights, and practical takeaways.

And I’m proud to say that the comment section after each post has become a lively impromptu discussion forum, with truly helpful and thoughtful discussions—kind of like the way the internet used to be in the early days.

If you want to pay a modest fiver, you get access to the ever-growing archive of previous posts, and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve pitched in to help a fellow creative.

Join the community

There’s a growing movement of people who want to make art out of real materials with our own eyes, hands, and imaginations.

We can all do it better if we can do it together.

That’s my hope: to build a community around making art in the old fashioned way, yet tuned to the technological and cultural moment we’re all living through.

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Regular servings of inspiration for visual artists from the bestselling author of Dinotopia, Color & Light, and Imaginative Realism.

People

Author and illustrator of Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time and the art instruction books Color and Light and Imaginative Realism.