One of the seven videos currently offered on ArtistsNetwork.tv—a new site from F+W Media that offers instructional (streaming) videos from today’s leading artists—features beloved artist Stephen Quiller on color theory for watercolorists. Click below to see a preview of the video.




You can also click here for previews of the other six 40-plus minute videos to help you decide if you’d like to subscribe to an individual workshop for a six-month period, or subscribe to all of them for a six-month period. You don’t have to download anything, and you can watch any time of the day as long as you have a high-speed Internet connection.

Take note that more artists’ workshops are on the production lineup, including ones from watermedia artists Mark Willenbrink and Jean Grastorf, so visit often, and sign up to receive the e-mail newsletter for advance notice on new workshops.

While strolling around the web today, I noticed that Nita Leland is blogging. In addition to authoring several popular art-instruction books for North Light, she's also contributed a number of articles to the magazine. In fact, we debuted our Creativity Workshop column with an exerpt from Leland's The New Creative Artist: A Guide to Developing Your Creative Spirit. With the recent success of the column (the entries for the June installment of the column positively flooded our inbox), it strikes me as fitting to take a look back at the column's genesis. So, let's take a look at what Leland is doing these days: She's got a new book in the works (check out her pre-pub offer) and she's taking a look at what her readers are doing with her Photoshopping tips. Visit her archives for some insightful ramblings on gouache.

As a writer, and a former college professor, I've often found myself in debates--many of them heated--about the role of politics in art. I've always been uncomfortable with art that tips political themes into the realm of propaganda, but I also find the argument that almost all art is (in some sense) political very compelling.

I'm not sure what to think of watercolor artist Tim Hinton's "Obama paintings." Over the weekend, we recieved a press release about the artist's most recent work, which depicts the presidential candidate before the backdrop of the American flag, and I've been thinking about them all morning. They're striking paintings and they most certainly have artistic merit, but I wonder what the presence of a political message does to their meaning and value as works of art.

From the press release: "Love or hate the politics of Barack Obama, the man has enraptured the American people and moved the world to closely watch as America is precipitously poised on the eve of history. Only Tim Hinton has captured the soul of the man, the presence of the man, the heart of all America stands for: unyielding faith in the face of unrelenting circumstances."

Loving or hating a painting's subject seems (to me) somewhat besides the point as a viewer. And I'd hate to think of my favorite paintings becoming subject to similar standards of evaluation. Imagine how polarized and stratified our galleries and museums would become if collections were determined entirely by the meaning of the subjects in the curators' lives.

Incidentally, I hunted for "McCain paintings" in the interest of affecting the appearance of political balance on the blog, but the closest thing I could find was a handcrafted model of the fighter jet he flew in the war. Feel free to send links to portraits of the republican candidate our way if you have any.

(Note on the images: I was unable to pull images of Hinton's paintings from his site, nor were any included in the press release; for that reason, I've included an image of the flag, an image of the artist and an image of Obama from the web.)

Perhaps the recent swell of controversy surrounding the Democratic primaries has cast a light on the question of the persistence of sexism in the US and beyond, or perhaps it's just a good time to talk about these issues, but there has been quite a lot of chatter (online and elsewhere) on the matter. People are asking some good questions. For example, What precisely does the fact that women are still under-represented in major museums mean?

This short piece in The Guardian's Art & Architecture Blog argues that women's struggle in the arts is far from over. And just last year, Jerry Saltz wondered "Where Are All The Women?" By his estimation, only 8% of the artists represented in the new MoMA were women. No matter the occasion for the conversation, it seems inevitably to spark frustration, even among those who feel as though they do their part to promote women artists.