Morning Collection - August 17, 2026

⭐️ Something I Noticed

I've been thinking about why learning to paint can feel so overwhelming.

Imagine standing in front of a landscape - trees, flowers, a road, cows in a field, sunlight and shadow and a thousand leaves and blades of grass.

You notice all of it. That's a good thing.

Research suggests that people drawn to the arts tend to be highly sensitive to detail and beauty. But if you're a painter, it's good to have a way to process all that information into a painting.

Structure gives all that noticing somewhere to go.

Instead of trying to make sense of the entire landscape, you can begin with the big shapes. Then light and shadow. Then value and color.

Eventually, something interesting happens. You don't need to consciously think through every step anymore. The structure becomes part of you.

It's the structure that carries the load (at first) but eventually gives creativity more room. 

So that feeling of being overwhelmed in the beginning simply means you're noticing like an artist. What you do next depends where you are in your artist's journey. 

💚 A Loved Book

Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting by John F. Carlson

Carlson speaks my language!

Originally written almost one hundred years ago as Elementary Principles of Landscape Painting, and later revised into Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting, this book is chock-full of wonderful nuggets of painting advice.

And don't let landscape in the title dissuade you. So much of what Carlson writes is really about learning to paint.

What I especially love is his emphasis on basic principles and structure. Reading it has reminded me that the things I teach today aren't new ideas at all. They're part of a long tradition of learning the fundamentals of painting—fundamentals that perhaps haven't been emphasized as much in the last hundred years with more emphasis on modern art.

Ultimately, whether you want to paint realistically, impressionistically, or in a non-objective, modern way, the elements will guide you.