In my blog posts, I rarely mention other blogs I follow—but I do follow quite a few. Most of them concern landscape painting, but a few reach outside of this category. I'm particularly fascinated by illustration art. Illustration art is commercial art; that is, an illustrator is an artist who creates images for a variety of industries, such as animation, book publishers, billboard agencies and the like. I'm fascinated by this craft because most illustrators went to school specifically for it, and they learned—and are expert at—many of the skills we plein air painters often learn only through workshops, books and videos or (alas) trial-and-error. Illustrators are people we plein air painters can learn a great deal from.
Here I'd like to mention Muddy Colors. From the “About” page:
Muddy Colors is a collective of more than 20 artists, dedicated to providing a free, online resource for aspiring and professional artists alike.
With a library of thousands of articles, and a new one being posted each day, Muddy Colors is the largest educational website dedicated to the Fantastic Arts.
“Fantastic Arts” isn't all about buxom ladies in dire situations being rescued by steroid-pumped he-men wielding laser pistols or, depending on the milieu, broadswords. It's about landscapes, too. Even the most fantastic, otherworldly ones draw on elements from our own world. You'll find many similarities in terrain, weather, lighting effects and more. The illustrators who depict these worlds use the same techniques we plein air painters do.
As an example, here's a useful post by Gregory Manchess on mixing color: https://www.muddycolors.com/2020/09/10-things-mixing-color/
By the way, at the bottom of my blog, way down below the last post on the left, I offer a short list of some of the blogs I follow. The most active blogs are at the top.
Happy reading!
