Have you ever wondered how to make money as an artist? If so, you're not alone. Even the most prestigious Fine Art colleges in the world tend to forget to teach their art students this little important bit of information. Why is it that there doesn't seem to be a clear path or way for artists to make a living nowadays?

Learning to draw is one of the most challenging journeys you might decide to embark on. It will test you to the core of your being and make you want to quit almost everyday.

Choosing colors to use for you palette can be a daunting task - especially for beginners - but it’s essential for growth and creating the paintings you wish to paint.

I started painting while in my second year of college during a Color & Composition class. We had an assignment where we had to create multiple pieces with each one being done in a different medium.

Watercolors are one of the most challenging painting mediums out there - Unforgiving and mysterious. Feared by many, including myself. Then one day I finally decided to take them more seriously and try to harness their powers. It all started a year ago.

I painted this watercolor from a photograph that I took on a trip to Alaska in early May. This particular scene is of some mountains near the Denali Park Entrance.

So I made it back from Alaska in one piece, which isn’t too surprising. Although there was one part of the trip where things got a bit sketchy, but overall it wasn’t too bad. I had an amazing time and saw so many beautiful things.

After many years of wanting to visit Alaska, I finally planned a trip lasting 10-days across several different towns - Anchorage, Denali, Girdwood and Seward being the bulk of the trip. I’ve decided to go with watercolors and sketches for this trip and minimized my materials for ease of use when traveling.

I've always thought, 'what's the point of using and lugging around 10+ tubes of color when I can just use a limited palette and mix my own colors from just 3-5 main colors?'. And for the last 5-6 years of my painting career, I have relied heavily on a limited palette of red, yellow & blue to create 95% of my paintings. But things are changing - and I have decided to explore color more deeply in the hopes of creating paintings with stronger color moving forward.

I've had many artists over the last few years of my time on YouTube contact me with questions and concerns regarding fear and painting. Most of them were fearful to even begin a painting at all. They would tell me that the blank canvas was intimidating and they were afraid of not creating a great painting, so instead of giving it a go - they never started. This type of fear and level of perfectionism can be quite damaging to your art career or journey. I'd like to give you a few tips to help you overcome this fear so you can start creating and progressing with your art.

Since September 2013, I have been living in a 420 square-foot apartment [with a loft] with my girlfriend. As you can imagine, this has been quite challenging for me to create paintings, store all my materials in roughly a 7x7 foot corner of the living space, and still not encroach upon my girlfriend's space or the rest of the living area. And if that isn't bad enough,

For the past few years now I've been selling small paintings on Etsy and shipping them out myself and I've had to figure out the best way to pack them safely so they don't arrive damaged in any way. I use the USPS free flat rate boxes - usually the Medium size - as these allow for extra room around the painting for padding, in case the box gets stepped on or dropped the painting won't be touched.

It's quite evident from most of my paintings that I love trees and being in the forest. I didn't discover this love until I started creating art on a regular basis and could see that naturally, I liked to draw and paint trees. So it only made sense that when I stumbled upon Ecosia that I had to make a change.

I spent two full days in the Laguna Beach area recently to visit with family and I was also able to visit the Irvine Museum as well as the Laguna Art Museum and do some exploring around Heisler Park in Laguna Beach. Spending a good part of one day at the beach, I was able to explore the details of the shore and study the nuances of the ocean, waves and reflections as the day went on. My appreciation for the ocean and rocky shores grew very much on this trip as well as inspiration and ideas for future paintings.

After I wrote a recent post about Varnishing Oil Paintings with Gamblin Gamvar, I received some questions regarding how to varnish acrylic paintings. I don't really work with acrylics anymore but I do have some acrylic paintings laying around from a few years ago. So, I decided to experiment with a small painting - my first still life painted from life. On Gamblin's site it states that Gamvar can be used on oil and acrylic paintings and that Gamvar can be easily removed with Gamsol in the future when needed.