New work

summer plateau To let be or not to let be, that is the question.  One of the more challenging parts of the creative process is to know when ...

Young Picassos all around us

Marla Olmstead .  Painting on the right: Dory , 36 x 48 inches, painted at age 5 (2005).  [image sources: map , marlaolmstead.com] Kids love...

The magic of pinhole photography

Leigh-On-Sea , Geon Park, United Kingdom In a few days, many pinhole photography enthusiasts around the world will be grabbing their makesh...

My Week

Apparently, I'm digging reds and greens right now . . . my latest work, Cherry Blossoms // it just got snatched up as a swapathon trad...

Blast from the past

Today, I spotted a bumper sticker that I had designed over 20 years ago for my high school!  Just to make sure my claim was correct, I went ...

The art of pojagi

[image sources: Jung Yul Park , London Korean Links , Sri Threads ] A pojagi is a Korean wrapping cloth, normally hand-pieced together from ...

Small Treasures

When I taught high school art, I had several tackle boxes in my classroom.  Inside the tackle box compartments resided tiny natural objects,...

Portland art shop and artists helping local schools

I went bridge jumping once, and all I got from it was a sore bum.  My adrenaline rush doesn't come from extreme sports, it comes from sh...

How it all began

My mother dropped by yesterday with a box of memorabilia.  Included in the box were my class pictures from elementary school.  Here's my...

Portland/Brooklyn Artist Series: Kate Bingaman-Burt

I'm thrilled to be partnering with Art Hound in a six-week series featuring some of the foremost independent artists from Portland and ...

Brush up on your art vocabulary

When I teach drawing, I spend most of the time talking about perspective , which is the method used to create three-dimensional space on a f...

Bones, a great subject for value drawings

My favorite art class to teach is drawing.  I believe that drawing is the foundation of all other art forms.  It's also one of the more ...

Henri Rousseau's jungle paintings, an inspiration to young artists

A few years ago, I left the education field to open a shop.  Although I'm not in the classroom every day, I'm still passionate about...

Exquisite chairs made out of paper

One of my favorite group projects for art students is the "Cardboard Chair." Students are in teams of 3 or 4 and the objective is ...

Plan a free family trip to the art museum

Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night Over the Rhone, 1888. Art is meant to be experienced in person.  It's hard to capture an authentic respon...

Wooden mannequins for drawing and decor

A live model is always ideal when drawing the human figure, but wooden mannequins are handy as a reference for proportion. The adjustable fo...