Bill, and I suspect many of you, spent many wonderful years at Oregon's Silver Falls State Park. It was the site of the annual Alexander Art meeting that brought together artists from all over the country. Of course, the television "stars" were there. Bill gave demonstrations and there were workshops for artists and teachers. We haven't forgotten Silver Falls and, neither … [Read more...]

Look around you in nature. There are no hard lines. There are no straight lines, either. These concepts and ideas must be in your paintings. Not because you are trying to copy nature but because you must be true to nature. … [Read more...]

Bill demonstrates a very simple technique of sketching a river. We have seen him do this before in "Autumn Dream" and a number of his other videos when he wants to outline the main object in his painting. Why is he using green and black to create the river? Might it have something to do with what will be surrounding the river? … [Read more...]

Bill rarely uses paint straight from the tube. He always mixes some color with it. Even his highlight color has some blue in it. No artist uses color straight from the tube. It's too powerful. This technique will not work with soupy paint. … [Read more...]

Bill does a switcheroo on us today. He highlights first with the shadow side of the boulder. Notice two things:  he holds the palette knife very flat to the canvas and lightly pulls it across the background layer. He lets the canvas pull the paint off the palette knife. … [Read more...]

We begin a three-part series of Bill painting a simple stone. Notice how similar creating this stone is to creating a mountain. All the basic elements are there. Today the underlayer - tomorrow the shadow highlights - finally, the bright highlights. In this clip, notice how much of the background he allows to show through the stone background layer. This is an important tip! … [Read more...]