Most beginning painters think they’re painting things—a tree, a face, a barn, a vase of flowers. More experienced painters, however, understand that they’re actually painting relationships. That’s one of the hardest concepts to grasp because the relationships themselves shift with every brush stroke. Put a spot of paint here or there, and suddenly, you have a different painting.

Einstein said that measurements of time and space depend upon one’s frame of reference. While the comparison isn’t scientifically exact, the visual world—and that includes the world of your canvas—behaves in much the same way. One thing affects how another thing looks. This “affect” changes the “effect.”

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“I can’t find anything to paint!” a student lamented one morning. We were in a place of stunning beauty—colorful red cliffs reaching up from a sage-green landscape, white clouds piling up on the horizon. Yet somehow, she couldn’t find anything to paint. Casting my eye about, right off I found at least a dozen scenes worth my attention.

I’ve been in that situation, too. When on the road traveling from one workshop to the next, I sometimes discovered the locations offered to be, well, rather uninspiring. (I may be a bit jaded, having painted in some of the world’s most spectacular spots.) The person who organized the workshop, of course, thought differently. Never wanting to disappoint anyone, I always mustered my enthusiasm and found a decent subject to focus on.

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Years ago, while painting for the Grand Canyon Celebration of Art invitational, I was seeking a quiet place to get away from the crowds, which can be overwhelming in the fall. The event provided artists with a special permit allowing us to drive out on spectacular Hermit Road—a route private vehicles typically aren’t allowed on during prime season. As the road wound back and forth alongside stomach-dropping depths, I finally found the perfect, isolated spot. I set up my easel between two junipers just a few feet from the lip of the cliff, and tied up Saba, my dog, close by. She went with me everywhere.

As I painted, lost in my observations, suddenly a wave of tourists flooded in, chattering away and snapping pictures. More pushed up onto the cliff’s edge—and then I realized that just on the other side of my juniper sanctuary was a shuttle stop.

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I’m pleased to announce that I’ve developed brand-new, online and LIVE course with Mastrius: From Field to Finish.

Most plein air painters who gather references in the field for later studio work know the feeling. You come home with a small study that is full of life—but then somewhere between that study and the larger studio painting, something dies. The work gets tighter, the color goes flat, the mood vanishes.

This is one of the most common frustrations among intermediate and advanced painters, and it rarely gets addressed directly. Plein air workshops teach you to paint outside. Studio courses teach technique and composition. But very few workshops focus on the specific skills required to carry the vitality of an outdoor study into a resolved, larger work.

From Field to Finish is designed to close that gap.

(If you haven’t heard of Mastrius before, it’s an online community platform that accelerates the growth of visual artists by connecting them with master professionals for live, small-group mentorship, interactive workshops and peer collaboration.)

What This Course Offers

This six-week online workshop will guide you all the way from outdoor observation to a finished studio painting. Each week builds on the last, creating a framework that you can return to and use independently long after the course ends.

The course is grounded in two areas: observation and color. Rather than teaching a generic process, it focuses on the specific perceptual and color skills that make the difference between a studio painting that feels alive and one that feels copied.

You’ll learn not just how to work from a plein air study, but how to “read” what you captured and how to decide about what to preserve, what to amplify and what to reinvent.

Course Structure

From Field to Finish runs six weeks, with one session per week. Each session combines a demonstration, a concept presentation, and a focused assignment that builds directly toward your final studio painting.

The course moves through four phases:

• Gathering (Weeks 1–2) — You’ll learn to observe and paint with intention in the field, then develop the skill of reading your own studies accurately.

• Planning (Weeks 3–4) — You’ll learn to identify and consciously choose a color key, then move through composition, editing, and design decisions for the larger work.

• Translating (Week 5) — You’ll begin your studio painting with specific strategies for maintaining vitality at a larger scale.

• Resolving (Week 6) — You’ll bring your painting to completion, participate in group critique and reflect on building a workable field-to-studio practice.

By the end of the course, you’ll have completed a minimum of two plein air studies, a series of preparatory exercises and one resolved studio painting developed from your field work.

Who This Course Is For

This course is designed for beginning to intermediate oil or pastel painters who already have some plein air experience. If you:

• Feel your studio work lacks the spontaneity and color truth of your field studies

• Have accumulated plein air studies but don’t know how to develop them further

• Want a systematic, repeatable process for moving from observation to finished work

• Are ready to deepen your understanding of color key, light mood and pictorial decision-making

then this course is for you.

By the way, this is not a beginner’s introduction to plein air painting. You’ll want to have basic painting experience and at least occasional outdoor painting practice.

A Note on Approach

This course reflects a belief that the plein air study is not a reference photo. It is a first painting, filled with decisions about color, value and feeling that no photograph can replicate. Teaching you to read and understand what the study contains, and to carry it forward into larger work, is what this course offers.

The goal is not a studio painting that looks like the study enlarged. Rather, it is to create is a studio painting that feels like the experience that produced the study and carries your full artistic intention into a resolved, finished work.

Dates and Times

The workshop will run six consecutive Saturdays, starting November 14 and running through December 19. Each session runs two hours, from 10 am-12 pm MST (12 pm-2 pm EST / 5 pm-7 pm GMT.)

I am limiting this workshop to just 10 students so that each session will give us plenty of time to discuss our work.

You can find much more information here and also sign up. I hope you’ll join us on this adventure!

Greens, it is said, are the landscape painter’s nemesis. Like some supervillain, they flood the world come springtime, drowning earthy ochres in a sea of greens, forcing us mere mortals to yield and flee. Superhero painters recommend forgoing “tubed” greens and mixing your own—an act of desperation in which the artist adds complements in the hope of ransoming a canvas that remains kidnapped by green.

Now on Campobello Island in the Canadian Maritimes, where I spend my summers, springtime greens have burgeoned into the greens of summer. Imagine a modest zucchini in May suddenly swelling to the size of a golden retriever come June; that is what this season is like: green becoming more green, and becoming yet more green.

But there is great beauty in all this green. The other day, wandering up to my studio on a foggy morning, I passed through a gathering of birches; the cool light, almost a pink, from the overcast sky lit up some of the leaves with a green-gold glow, and deeper in, where the pink light couldn’t reach, the leaves darkened to a sap green, then cool viridian. It was such a breathtaking moment that I wanted to see if I could bring that experience to the canvas—without the greens overwhelming the viewer. The painting’s success would depend on green, and lots of it, but was there something I could do to make it less about green and more about experiencing that glow, that transmitted green-gold light?

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[My Sunday posts are usually for paid subscribers, but this one’s free! If you haven’t already, I invite you to become a paid subscriber!]

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I recently took up learning to play the electric bass guitar. As part of my ongoing learning, I attend weekly online group practice sessions steered by a master of the instrument. This past week, he said that a bassist needs to develop a connection to his guitar—rather than playing while thinking of pentatonic scales and fretting hand mechanics, to practice enough so all that thinking dives below the surface.

I’m certainly not there yet. Often, my fretting hand takes off on its own and invents something unexpected and awful. My picking hand, taking its cue from its partner, then decides to randomize rhythm. The effect is something like a spider suddenly slapped off a wall by a rolled-up newspaper and falling in a spasm of flailing legs.

This practice as a beginner reminds me of the days when I was first learning to paint. Oh, I struggled! Painting—and we’re not talking plein air painting here, which adds a whole other layer of complexity to the craft, but just studio work—required me to master the brush. How to hold it, how to pick up color, how to make a variety of marks. It was frustrating for a long time.

But then one day, I was busy painting a landscape—and it suddenly occured to me that I wasn’t thinking, not at all. Using a brush became as comfortably unconscious as eating with a knife and fork. Mixing color by adding a bit here and there, adjusting an edge, I painted as if my fingers were the brush.

The connection, of course, came through practice. But it also came through not thinking. The less I thought about how to hold the brush and manipulate it, the more natural the brush felt in my fingers. Just doing—not thinking—was the secret. Sure, you need to know the basics, but ultimately, quieting the mind is all it takes.

One of the best ways to quiet the mind, I’ve found, is to work on a small format on a cheap surface with a very short time limit. Say, a 9x12 on gessoed heavy paper for 30 minutes. And you want to cover the entire surface in that time and bring the painting as near as you can to completion. Then intersperse these exercises with a little study—did the effort accomplish the goal? Why or why not? Asking yourself this question will help train the mind for the next session, even if you don’t have time in that 30 minute window to think about what needs doing.

Make many of these, and you’ll find that things will become more automatic. freeing you up to make Art with a capital “A.”

Now if I can just apply all this to the guitar!

Next week: Oil Demonstration!

[By the way, by the time you read this, I will have made my annual trip across the United States, from my winter studio in New Mexico, to my summer one on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada. Stay tuned for maritime scenery!]

In a recent column, painter Bogdan Luca ponders the question, When does something become art? The upshot of his column is that he feels the term “art” is bandied about a bit too freely.

His essay got me to pondering, too. Is what I do “art”? I remember something plein air painter Stapleton Kearns once wrote:

To me, “artist” sounds pretentious and a little too casual. I am always flattered when other people call me an artist, but I call myself a painter. If people ask what I do, I say, “I am a professional oil painter.” If people ask, “Are you an artist?” I reply, “Oh! I sure hope so!”

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I’ve always recommended that my students practice drawing. There are many reasons for drawing, which I don’t intend to elaborate on here. Sometimes, though, you can just skip what for some artists is an agonizing process.

As I mentioned in my last post, I paint self-portraits now and then. Recently, I wanted to make another one—but I really wanted to skip the drawing and get right to the fun part. The fun part, of course, is color.

Yet I did want the portrait to look like me, so I needed to employ some technology to get the basic shapes down. There’s no shame in using technology to get past the drawing if it doesn’t suit your goal. Here’s the commonly-used method that I employed:

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Like many painters, over the years I’ve resorted to painting self-portraits to fill a gap. That gap is usually the lack of a model. But more than that, I feel the self-portrait is a tradition that needs to be honored. Any painter who paints in a representational style should make one now and then, if only to pay respect to the practice. Besides, it’s a good way to exercise one’s skill in drawing and modeling. There is a higher aim, of course: to create a picture that will convey to posterity one’s true inner nature. But that is often difficult to achieve, given that one is looking at the outside of the skull and not the inside.

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Because of a cancellation, I have two openings in my August 3-7 plein air painting retreat this summer! The retreat will be based in Lubec, Maine, but we will also be painting on Campobello Island, New Brunswick. If you haven’t painted here before, you’re in for a treat!

Price of the retreat is $300, which does not include lodging and travel, for which you are responsible. If you would like join us, let me know right away. This retreat is VERY popular, and every summer I have a waiting list. If you decide to come, you will want to secure lodging ASAP, as August is a busy time in Downeast Maine and the Canadian Maritimes.

Here are the details:

August 3-7, 2026 / Lubec, Maine, & Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada

Join me for a week of painting in Downeast Maine and the Canadian Maritimes! Lubec, Maine–the “easternmost point in the US”–is a scenic historic fishing village with rustic fish buildings, lobster boats and lighthouses. Nearby Campobello Island, just over the International Bridge, offers a bounty of ocean scenery such as bold rocky cliffs and cobblestone beaches, all in the Roosevelt-Campobello International Park and the Herring Cove Provincial Park. Cost is $300 USD for four and a half days, Monday-Friday. (Retreat ends Friday at lunch.) A passport is required, as this will allow you to cross the border for painting and also visiting my studio on Campobello Island.

This is a painting retreat, NOT a workshop. Participants need to be comfortable outdoors painting on their own. Although I will offer demonstrations and help, I won’t be giving any formal instructions. I will also be hosting daily critique sessions, art talk and more! Plus—since I’ve been painting here for over 20 years, I’ll take you to the best spots!

You will need a car, since we will be driving to spots, and I can’t guarantee carpooling. There’s plenty of lodging available both in Lubec and on Campobello, but things fill up fast, as August is a very, very popular month. Visit www.visitlubecmaine.com and www.visitcampobello.com for suggestions.

Payment Details

Contact me to make sure there is space, and then you can make payment either via check or Zelle. (Payment details sent on inquiry.)

Cost of the retreat is USD $300 (Unless otherwise noted)

Full payment of $300 USD required at signup. Payment is non-refundable unless your reserved place can be filled by another participant.

Payment may be made by check or Zelle.

Before you sign up, please note again that a passport is required. This will allow you to visit my Campobello Island studio and to paint on the island.

Please note that a passport is required. This will allow you to visit my Campobello Island studio and to paint on the island.

(This is the second part of a two-part series. Read the first part here.)

Shadow is where many landscape painters go wrong, and usually because they treat it as the absence of light. They paint shadow areas as simply darker versions of illuminated areas. But shadows exhibit their own color, often much different from lit areas. Without observing and painting the particulars of this difference, the artist often creates a scene that appears disjointed, not unified.

In Part 1 we looked at light across a range of conditions—the warmth of early morning, the washed-out intensity of midday, the cool constancy of an overcast sky. Let’s now look into the shadows.

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Although I live in the high desert of New Mexico, a land of stunning beauty, I like to head north often to Colorado, a land of a different kind of stunning beauty. Here I hike through sage brush thickets with a broad view of mesas and wind-sculpted cliffs; in Colorado, in the San Juan range, I pick my way along trails that follow boulder-strewn creeks and thread between sharp, snowy peaks.

I went to the San Juans this last week for some hiking and sketching. Seeing all the green—and the apparently plentiful water—lifted my spirit. In New Mexico, it has been exceedingly dry. In my area, the drought is stressing the piñon trees, and many have died. But in southern Colorado, the mountains and valleys are green and lush, partly from irrigation, partly from snowmelt. That’s not to say Colorado is not in a drought, too; it is, but it certainly has received more precipitation this winter than New Mexico.

Although I stayed in a little cottage just outside Durango, I spent most of my time on trails between Durango and Silverton. The area around Silverton, especially, has become one of my favorite places to sketch, and the drive along US 550 with stops at Molas Pass (10,970 feet) and Coal Bank Pass (10,640 feet) is breathtaking. (Yes, it was chilly, with a stiff wind and a temperature around 45°F.) And Silverton itself enjoys several creeks with visual interest: the Animas River, Mineral Creek, Cement Creek and Arrastra Creek—not to mention views of the surrounding mountains.

Below I’d like to share some of my 5x8 gouache sketches from the trip. But first, I want to tell you about a wildlife encounter. Although I’ve seen plenty of moose back east in Vermont, Maine and the Canadian Maritimes, I’ve never seen a single moose out west. But as I was driving up a particularly narrow and steep, single-track gravel road from a creek, I spied a young moose blocking my route. I wondered how this would work out, as there was no way for either of us to pass; to my right was a vertical rock wall, and to my left, a dizzying drop-off. But I continued, grinding up the steep grade, spinning gravel. As I slowly drove the moose ahead, it finally decided to attempt the very, very steep scree slope and leave the road. It quickly vanished from sight.

(This is the first part of a two-part series. Read the second part here.)

Light and shadow are the mood elements in landscape painting. They can stimulate you with the contrast of a bright, sunny day or evoke a feeling of peace with the somber mid-tones of an overcast day.

Light and shadow are an inseparable pair; you can’t have one without the other, and each deserves equal consideration. With that in mind, I have decided to make “Painting Light & Shadow” a two-part column.

But first: dominance. A painting feels static with equal parts of light and shadow. For a more dynamic feeling, one must have a bigger footprint than its companion. A painting that is mostly light feels one way; a painting that is mostly dark, another. Even in a situation of overcast light, one value will dominate, and that will be the mid-tones. Darks and lights will be minimized to serve just as accents. (Of course, you can have darks that are sunlit. I consider shadows to be a subset of darks.)

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As one of my dedicated readers, you’re probably already deep into plein air painting. But if you’re not and want to get started, or are an experienced painter looking to "up" your game, check out my new discount codes for my online courses: https://www.mchesleyjohnson.com/essentials

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming. (Do the networks still say that these days, or is that a thing of the past?)

[Every Sunday, I publish a post for paid subscribers. This Sunday, I’m giving it away for free. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, you can subscribe with this button below. Next Sunday, I start a two-part series on Light & Shadow—don’t miss it!]

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Often, a painter is his own best model. Or at least, his cheapest! I thought it would be interesting to explore the history and concept of self-portraits for a future article. (I’ll have more to say about this genre in a series soon.) But in the process, I’ve been inspired to work on a new one myself. Yet I discovered I need a little help — what to put in the background? I’d love your input.

At this point, the head is surrounded simply by white, untouched canvas. It’s rather a modern look—I’m thinking of artist Alex Katz who often leaves the background either white or a single flat color—but a few artists I’ve asked think it needs something more. Here’s the painting at the moment:

What do you think of this? If you have a moment, look at the following mock-ups I made digitally (Wacom tablet + Krita) and take my poll at the end. Also, if you have other opinions, feel free to comment!

[A] For this one, I added a blurred-out version of my studio wall. Maybe put in an easel instead?

[B] Here, a simple checkerboard. Other colors are possible, of course.

[C] Channeling Alex Katz, I added a flat color background. (It could be white!)

[D] Abstract backgrounds are always hard. Here’s one of many possibilities.

[E] Finally, a simplified landscape.

Now, here’s the poll. Thank you! And feel free to comment!

A reader asks, How can you lead the viewer’s eye through a painting? Well, the concept of “leading the eye” is a myth, a result of centuries of artists proposing a hypothesis without any scientific basis. Eye-tracking studies from the 1960s consistently show that the eye does not “flow” in smooth lines. Instead, it moves in saccades: rapid, jerky jumps between points of high interest. Basically, it jumps first to high-contrast areas, human faces or sharp details, and then bounces back to a central anchor point.

So, unfortunately, the eye doesn’t really make use of the path that the artist so painstakingly constructed.

I used to worry about creating such a path. But over time, I began to feel that it was a ham-fisted way to keep the viewer engaged. A sunny country lane or a cool brook wandering from foreground to distance—too much of this, and suddenly your paintings begin to look like something a less-enlightened shopper might pick up at Bed Bath & Beyond to hang over the living room’s slipcovered couch. And when I learned how the eye actually views a painting, I felt I now had permission to abandon building these paths.

Here’s what I do instead.

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It’s been a couple of years now since my book, Beautiful Landscape Painting Outdoors: Mastering Plein Air, was published. If you haven’t gotten it yet, I think you’ll enjoy it and learn a lot from it.

Why?  Because this is the comprehensive guide to painting outdoors.  It gives you everything you need to know about plein air painting, from A to Z.  Fifteen master artists share their knowledge—and their secrets—in this 160-page book that is packed with demonstrations in the major mediums, helpful techniques and many, many, many gorgeous images.  

I've written the book so both beginner and advanced painters will benefit from it.  If you're a beginner, you'll learn everything you need to get started and, better yet, how to have an enjoyable and satisfying experience.  If you're an advanced painter, you'll learn the tricks that the masters learned the hard way, through long experience.  (All you have to do is read the book!)

So who are these master artists?  They are:

Rob Adams / UK / oil
Tony Allain / UK / pastel
Lyn Asselta / US /pastel
Marcia Burtt / US / acrylic
Lorenzo Chavez / US / oil
Nathan Fowkes / US / watercolor
Marc Hanson / US / acrylic 
Michael Chesley Johnson / US / gouache & oil
Margaret Larlham / US / pastel
Calvin Liang / US / oil
Kim Lordier / US / pastel
Mark E. Mehaffey / US / acrylic
Sandra Nunes / Brazil / pastel
Stephen Quiller / US / watercolor
Colley Whisson /Australia / oil

I’ve had many people tell me how useful this book is, and I agree!

You can get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Landscape-Painting-Outdoors-Mastering/dp/1684620457

www.MChesleyJohnson.com

Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing scores of painters for magazines. I’m often surprised by how clueless some of them are about why or even how they paint. What inspires or motivates them, what guides their hand as they work, what pleases their eye as they near completion—all crucial questions on the path to becoming self-aware as an artist. But I’ll tell you a secret: The best painters are those who know exactly who they are.

Why does it matter? If you can’t articulate the “why” and the “how,” you can’t troubleshoot your process and therefore can’t improve. You’ll always be frustrated because you won’t know where you are or where you’re going.

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A reader who recently retired asked a question that many of us ask ourselves: not can I improve, but how do I improve when there’s no class to enroll in, no grade to earn, no teacher looking over my shoulder?

It’s a good question. Those of us who are years, perhaps decades, out from any formal schooling—which most likely had nothing to do with art—encounter a roadblock when trying to learn something new. Workshops have their place, of course, and so do online courses and books, but they can only take you so far. How do you get past that roadblock on your own?

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This video popped up on my feed recently, and I thought it was worth sharing. It’s interesting to note that animators, illustrators and other commercial artists often hit the field to gather information for their indoor creations.

(As an aside: Several years ago, I encountered a group of artists—I can’t remember the name of the group now, unfortunately—painting at Grand Canyon. I asked if they were a plein air painting group, and they said they were commercial artists gathering reference material for paintings they would be making of Martian landscapes for NASA. I thought that was fascinating.)

Disney artists were (and are) no exception. Below is a video, introduced and narrated by Walt Disney, of four of his animators going into the field to paint a tree. It’s interesting to see their very different approaches. The four artists—Marc Davis, Eyvind Earle, Joshua Meador, and Walt Peregoy—demonstrate how individual style and intent drastically change the interpretation of the same subject: a single old oak tree.