Sure, you’re online. But how much time do you waste finding useful sites for artists? We trolled the web—so you wouldn’t have to—and came up with 73 sites we found most useful. The results can be found in the October issue of the magazine, but you can also download the document by clicking here to have the document right on your desktop and, with the click of your mouse, go directly to the sites.

Obviously, you’ve found the Watercolor Artist blog, so there’s a start.

In the June 2008 issue of Watercolor Artist, Wendy Hill challenged readers to loosen up with a spontaneous background. "Deciding how to handle the background can sometimes be the most difficult part of making a painting," she said. Hill recommended that artists experiment with unconventional tools--tea bags, coffee filters, sponges, leaves, paper, plastic wrap and salt, to name a few--in order to liberate the painting process. (Click here to read an excerpt of the column)

Artists from all over the country responded to her call in record numbers and sent us images of experiments of their own. We're now pleased to announce the winner of the $100 gift certificate from Jerry's Artarama: Gail Gwinup with What's Black and White (see below). Runners-up include Nancy Standlee, Helen K. Beacham, Mary Hopf and Doreen Spoor. Click here to see all of the winning works and read about their creation. And thanks to everyone who entered!

A reminder: There's just one day left to enter your Speedy Delivery paintings for a chance to win your $100 gift certificate to Jerry's Artarama. Click here for the details.

Artist Al Setton celebrates and honors the long career of beloved painter and teacher with a very special feature in the Henry FukuharaOctober 2008 issue of Watercolor Artist.

“A modernist in his approach, Henry celebrates freedom of expression above all else, demonstrating a regard for daring color shape and design choices over a detailed or realistic depiction of the natural world,” writes Setton.

Click here for a slide show of some of the artist's works.

Despite the somewhat tempting impulse to stay up all night, working out your painting's compositional dissonance, recent studies suggest that that better choice might be to sleep on it. Scientific American has published "Sleep on It: How Snoozing Makes You Smarter," which argues that our minds are hard at work while we're snoaring away:

"While we sleep, our brain is anything but inactive. It is now clear that sleep can consolidate memories by enhancing and stabilizing them and by finding patterns within studied material even when we do not know that patterns might be there. It is also obvious that skimping on sleep stymies these crucial cognitive processes: some aspects of memory consolidation only happen with more than six hours of sleep. Miss a night, and the day’s memories might be compromised—an unsettling thought in our fast-paced, sleep-deprived society."

I'd be surprised if you could find a better excuse for taking a nap on a Monday afternoon. I know I could use one.

I thought I'd continue on Jessica's travel theme today and mention my recent trip to San Francisco's de Young museum in Golden Gate Park, which is amazing both outside and in. I was disappointed to find that the Chihuly exhibition was sold out when I arrived (big sigh), but there was plenty to see, including Timothy Horn's Bitter Suite, a good deal of which is made out of sugar. Jane Hammond's large scale works on paper were also a treat. The number of American paintings in the de Young's collection is not small and I got to see a painting I'd long desired to see in person: John Singer Sargent's A Dinner Table at Night. In short, no matter what's going on a the de Young, there's always enough happening to fill an afternoon, if not an evening too.