No Artistic rock left unturned.

In the Mind of the Artist: Accept that frustration is part of making art

There is a pervasive myth about the creative life that just won't die. It’s the image of an artist sitting peacefully in a sunlit studio, casually sweeping a brush across a canvas, or a musician effortlessly strumming a guitar, while a wave of pure, serene inspiration guides their every move.

It’s a beautiful picture. It is also a complete lie.

Whether you are pushing a watercolor wash, carving clay, or composing a melody, the creative studio is not a sanctuary of effortless peace. It is a blue-collar workplace. And the single most consistent tool you will use there isn't your favorite brush or instrument—it’s frustration.

After 25 years of holding a paintbrush, I have lived across the entire spectrum of this experience. I have been the wide-eyed student riding the volatile highs and lows of a piece that either clicks or completely collapses. Today, I am a journeyman artist and art teacher. I still feel a jolt of pure joy every single time I pick up a brush, but I also look at my studio through a very different lens. I have schedules to keep, exhibition deadlines to meet, and studio rent to pay.

What I have learned in a quarter-century of working is that the solution to frustration isn't to stop and wait for inspiration. The solution is to lean into the labor.

The Agony of the Masters

If you feel overwhelmed by a creative project that won't behave, you are in elite company. Throughout history, the greatest masters wrestled with the exact same demons. Claude Monet, the pioneer of capturing pure light and beauty, openly bled anxiety onto his pages, once admitting:

No one but myself knows the anxiety I go through and the trouble I give myself to finish paintings which do not satisfy me.

If Monet felt anxious and deeply frustrated by his own canvas, frustration isn't a sign that you are failing. It’s a sign that you are working. It is the natural friction that occurs when the magnificent vision inside your head collides with the messy, physical realities of your medium.

Punching the Clock: Rutenberg and Schaller

To survive this friction, we have to stop treating art like a mystical hobby and start treating it like a job. Contemporary landscape painter Brian Rutenberg talks extensively about this "blue-collar" approach to the studio. He doesn’t wait around for a bolt of inspiration to strike him while he's sitting on the couch. He shows up, punches the clock, and gets to work whether he "feels" like it or not.

World-renowned watercolorist and architect Thomas W. Schaller lives by a similar discipline. Schaller frequently notes that music profoundly influences how and what he creates daily, proving that this mental grind spans all artistic disciplines. He often shares a timeless piece of advice for anyone paralyzed by the fear of doing it wrong:

“If you want to paint, just paint. All the rest of it will work itself out.”

When you combine Schaller’s bias for action with Rutenberg's blue-collar work ethic, the role of frustration changes entirely:

• It removes the emotional stakes: A bad day at the canvas or the piano isn't an existential crisis; it’s just a tough day at the office.

• It forces momentum: You don't need to be happy to create; you just need to do the work. Inspiration doesn't find you resting—it finds you with a dirty paintbrush or a pen already in your hand.

Cooperstown and the "Disaster Painting"

As an art teacher, the most common roadblock I see new creators face is the expectation of immediate perfection. Students will get 95% of a piece completely right, make one minor misstep at the end, and want to tear the whole thing to pieces.

To those students, I always offer a bit of perspective from the baseball diamond: A professional baseball player who hits .300 over their career is heading straight for Cooperstown and the Hall of Fame.

Think about what that means. A legendary, Hall-of-Fame hitter fails to get a hit 70% of the time.

Why do we expect ourselves to hit a home run every single time we pick up a brush? At every level of the artistic journey—whether you have been doing this for 25 minutes or 25 years—you must allow for "disaster paintings." They are the cost of tuition.

If a piece falls apart, we have to learn to laugh at ourselves, study the mistake like a scientist, and immediately get back to work. Treat frustration like studio rent. Pay your dues, do the manual labor, and let the work solve itself.

Keep Makin’ Art!

Carl

The topic of this week's blog is something that has been on my mind a lot lately.  I am looking around and realizing that after years of working to become a technically good painter (not great but proficient in getting my paints and brushes to say what I want).  What do I want to say?  To put it another way what kind of painter do I want to be?  All of my painting is about light form and value, but what about subject? Do I want to be a protest painter in this more often than not ugly world.  Do I want to be edgy?  Will that sell?  It doesn't feel honest.  I'm maybe the least edgy guy you are ever going to meet.  When I look at the subjects I've chosen over the last twenty-five years I think I have found my answer.  I paint subjects I like that are a little on the sweet and nostalgic side.  You could say I make the comfort food of art.  I've decided that's ok,  that's me at my most authentic self.  If my work speaks to you great that makes me happy.  If not no harm no foul theater are tons of other artists out there.  I'll just be here in my studio or my classroom making art that makes me feel good.  I have maybe another thirty years of painting in me to improve and refine my technique, but don't hold your breath waiting for me to make my important masterpiece that everyone talks about.  It probably will never happen and I'm quite ok with that.

The Vulnerability of Sweetness: Finding Your True Voice in Light and Color

There is a quiet bravery in painting the world softer than it is.

When your natural artistic voice leans toward the sweet, the nostalgic, or the slightly romantic, your canvas becomes a sanctuary. You are capturing fleeting moments of warmth, quiet tenderness, and gentle beauty. But for a professional artist trying to sell their work, staying true to this innate style comes with a unique set of challenges.

In a contemporary art market that often rewards the edgy, the provocative, or the hyper-abstract, embracing a softer aesthetic can feel like swimming against a very powerful current.

But as an artist working across watercolor, gouache, and oil, you likely know a secret that critics often miss: the real magic isn't actually about the objects on the canvas.

The Secondary Nature of "Subject Matter"

When people look at a romantic or nostalgic painting, they often fixate on the subject—a quiet porch, a blooming garden, or a soft figure. But for the artist, subject matter is almost secondary. The choice of what to paint is just an invitation, a beautiful excuse to explore what truly matters: light and color.

Whether it is the luminous transparency of watercolor, the matte richness of gouache, or the deep, buttery glow of oils, your primary language is how light hits a surface and how color evokes a memory.

The challenge? The casual viewer—and sometimes the traditional art market—sees the "sweet" subject and stops there. They label it as "pretty" or "decorative," completely missing the complex, technical dance of light and color happening underneath.

The Challenges of the "Sweet" Aesthetic

Choosing to paint with a romantic, light-filled lens brings distinct hurdles when transitioning from a passionate creator to a selling professional:

• The "Sentimentality" Trap: The art world can sometimes be cynical. Critics occasionally dismiss softer, nostalgic themes as overly sentimental, failing to see that capturing pure light requires immense technical mastery.
• The Pressure to Pivot: When looking at what is trending on social media or winning prestigious contemporary art prizes, it is easy to feel a pressure to change. You might find yourself thinking, “Should I use darker colors? Should my work be more intense or brooding?”
• Pricing and Perception: There is a misconception that art must be dark or complex to carry a premium price tag. Art that brings immediate joy, warmth, or comfort is sometimes undervalued by collectors who confuse "accessible" with "simplistic."

Why Giving In to the Trends Doesn't Work

When sales are slow, the temptation to pivot toward what is currently trending is incredibly real. But filtering your authentic voice through a lens of what you think will sell rarely works.

First, art collectors can feel inauthenticity. Viewers connect with the raw emotional truth of the creator. If you force yourself to paint something edgy when your heart is inherently drawn to light and romance, the work will lack that magnetic, invisible spark.

Second, you will burn out. Painting is too demanding—logistically, emotionally, and physically—to spend your hours creating work that doesn't feed your soul. Mastering three distinct mediums like oil, watercolor, and gouache requires immense dedication. That dedication only thrives when you love what you are chasing.

The Flip Side: The Market Value of Nostalgia

While the challenges are real, the advantages of staying true to a sweet, light-focused style are profound.

The world is often loud, stressful, and fragmented. Because of this, people deeply crave comfort, beauty, and escape. A painting that evokes a sense of nostalgia isn't just a decoration; it is an emotional anchor for the buyer. It reminds them of a feeling of peace they want to bring into their home.

When you prioritize light and color, you are painting a feeling rather than a thing. That emotional resonance is exactly what makes art sell.

Owning Your Narrative

The key to selling art that leans on the sweet side is to own your narrative with absolute confidence.

Do not apologize for the romance or the sweetness in your work. In your artist statements and social media captions, shift the conversation. Teach your audience how to look at your work the way you do. Talk about how you used gouache to capture the flat, chalky quality of afternoon shadows, or how oil allowed you to blend the perfect, glowing gradient of sunset light.

Frame your nostalgia not as a lack of edge, but as a deliberate, radical choice to highlight beauty and light in a fractured world. The market doesn't need another artist doing what everyone else is doing—it needs your specific, luminous view of the world.

From Sketchpads to Masterpieces:
How Watercolor Became a Fine Art Powerhouse

If you are just picking up a brush, mixing your first washes, or standing in the art supply aisle wondering if watercolor is a "serious" medium—welcome! You are stepping into an art form with an incredible, rebellious history.

For centuries, the traditional art world looked down on watercolor. It was dismissed as a secondary tool, relegated to quick outdoor sketches, amateur hobbyists, and field notes for botanists. Oil painting held a strict monopoly on fine art.

Today, that stigma is entirely gone. Watercolor is celebrated in major global museums and commands millions at auction. If you are starting your watercolor journey, you aren't practicing a "lesser" hobby; you are mastering one of the most respected, dynamic, and unapologetically difficult mediums in the world.

Here is how watercolor broke the rules, the masters who changed everything, and where your new passion fits into art history.

The Dynamic Duo: Homer and Sargent

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, two American giants officially shattered the myth that watercolor was only for amateurs. They proved that water and pigment could match—and even surpass—the power of oils.

• Winslow Homer: Winslow Homer took watercolor into the rugged outdoors. He captured the raw, churning power of the Atlantic Ocean, the intense light of the Bahamas, and the quiet dignity of hunters and fishermen. His work was bold, spontaneous, and packed with a muscular energy that proved watercolor could be visceral and strong.
• John Singer Sargent: Known for his glamorous oil portraits, John Singer Sargent used watercolor as his personal escape. He traveled the world with his paints, capturing brilliant Mediterranean sunlight, Venetian canals, and dappled shadows with breathtaking speed. His loose, confident bravura demonstrated that a few perfect, fluid strokes could hold more life than weeks of meticulously layered oil paint.

The Ultimate Weapon of the Plein Air Movement

If you love the idea of packing up a travel palette and painting outside, you are participating in a grand tradition: Plein Air (painting outdoors in open air).

When the plein air movement exploded in the 19th century alongside Impressionism, artists wanted to capture the fleeting shifts of natural light. Oil paint required heavy easels, messy solvents, and took days to dry. Watercolor, by contrast, was the ultimate tactical weapon.

Because watercolor is highly portable, fast-drying, and reacts instantly to weather conditions, it became the heart and soul of outdoor painting. Painting en plein air forces you to collaborate with nature. The humidity, wind, and ambient temperature change how your washes dry on the paper. Masters and beginners alike love it for this exact reason—it captures the absolute immediacy of a single moment in time.

Today’s Greats: Pushing the Boundaries

The evolution didn't stop with the historical masters. Contemporary artists are continuing to elevate watercolor to mind-boggling new heights, proving it can handle grand architecture and deep, emotional human narratives.

• Tom Schaller: An award-winning artist and former architect, Tom Schaller is a modern master of urban landscapes and atmosphere. His work turns physical structures into poetry, using watercolor to create stunning contrasts of light and deep shadow. Schaller often talks about the medium's unique translucency and its "balance between control and lack of control", treating the unpredictable flow of water as a beautiful metaphor for life itself.
• Dean Mitchell: Widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary artists alive, Dean Mitchell uses watercolor to achieve flawless, breathtaking realism. Mitchell primarily focuses on figurative works, landscapes, and rich psychological portraits rooted in African American culture. His work is acclaimed by critics for its immense emotional depth, proving that watercolor can carry the psychological weight and dignity of any classic oil painting.

Why You Should Keep Painting

Watercolor is no longer seen as a stepping stone to a "better" paint. Its unique ability to layer translucent color, capture luminous light, and flow spontaneously has secured its rightful place on museum walls.

When you sit down with your paper, remember that you are working with a medium that requires absolute bravery. Because it is transparent and unforgiving, every stroke you make is an honest record of your creative energy. Embrace the bleeds, enjoy the unpredictable washes, and know that you are in excellent historical company.

Why "Mud" Gets a Bad Rap in Watercolor (And How to Use It to Make Bold Colors Pop)

If you have spent any time painting with watercolor, you have undoubtedly stumbled across the golden rule whispered in every beginner tutorial: Avoid mud at all costs.

We are taught to fear those murky, neutral, desaturated browns, grays, and sludges that appear when colors get a little too mixed up. The standard advice is to keep your washes pure, your layers transparent, and your palette perfectly clean to ensure every painting sings with vibrant color.

But here is a counter-intuitive truth that master artists have known for centuries: mud gets a terrible rap. Far from ruining a painting, muddy or neutralized colors are actually the secret weapon you need to make your bold colors truly pop.

The Science of Contrast: You Can’t Have Light Without Dark

To understand why mud is so valuable, we have to look at how our eyes perceive color. Color vibrancy is entirely relative. If you paint a bright cadmium red poppy on a stark white background, it looks bright. But if you surround that same red poppy with a field of muted, grayish-green sludge, that red will suddenly look explosive. It practically leaps off the paper.

When every single color in your painting is high-intensity and straight from the tube, nothing stands out. The colors fight each other for the viewer’s attention, resulting in a painting that feels chaotic and visually exhausting.

Mud provides the quiet rest stop that your viewer's eyes need. By intentionally using desaturated, earthy neutrals, you create a foil. The dullness of the "mud" is the exact mechanism that elevates your pure pigments from ordinary to extraordinary.

Beautiful Mud vs. Actual Sludge

Of course, there is a caveat. There is a major difference between a harmonious neutral and an accidental, chalky mess.

Bad mud usually happens for two reasons:

• Overworking the paper: Scrubbing your brush back and forth lifts underlying layers, damages the paper fibers, and creates a cloudy, bruised texture.
• Mixing too many opaque pigments: Combining three or four heavily opaque paints will quickly result in a lifeless paste that blocks the white of the paper.

In this sample the red flowers really sing when surrounded by muted desaturated colors

Beautiful mud, on the other hand, is transparent and full of life. It is created by intentionally mixing complementary colors (like blue and orange, or red and green) or by letting vibrant colors mingle gently on the wet paper. This creates a rich, complex gray or brown that still lets the paper breathe.

How to Use Neutrals to Boost Your Vibrancy

If you want to start embracing the power of muted tones in your work, try these three strategies:

• The 80/20 Rule: Dedicate 80% of your painting’s surface area to muted, neutralized tones, and save the remaining 20% for your highest-intensity focal points. Watch how a tiny splash of pure turquoise or vivid pink instantly commands the entire room.
• Mix Complementary Neutrals: Instead of reaching for a convenience gray or black, mix your own neutrals using the complements of your star colors. If your main subject is a brilliant orange sunset, use a muted, muddy blue-gray for the surrounding clouds. Because they share a color relationship, the mud will feel harmonious rather than accidental.
• Embrace Granulation: Use granulating pigments (like Ultramarine Blue mixed with Burnt Sienna) to create your darks and neutrals. The heavy pigment particles will settle into the valleys of the paper, creating a beautiful, textured "mud" that adds incredible depth and sophistication next to smooth, vibrant glazes.

Change Your Mindset, Save Your Palette

It is time to stop viewing muddy colors as a mistake and start viewing them as a design choice. The next time a wash turns out a little more gray or brown than you intended, don't reach for the sponge. Instead, look at it as a stage wrapper, waiting to shine the spotlight on your next bold stroke.

After all, a painting full of nothing but bright lights is just blinding. It is the shadows, the grays, and the beautiful mud that give the light its meaning.

In the sample below the figure and here yellow sweater jump off the page when surrounded by cool desaturated blue gray tones.