I often get asked by students about where they should go to get advanced training in using the figure in their work, whether they are painters, sculptors or printmakers. I don't think there is a finer place in the USA than my alma mater, the graduate school of figurative art in New York City. Located down in Tribeca on Franklin Street in Manhatten, its a hive of buzzing creative energy that continues to grow and change.
Visit their website and watch some of their podcasts to get a feel of the place.

There are many sites now that show artists' work but this one strikes me as one of the most tasteful to look at. Started in 2007, they have had over 25 million visitors to their site so far. They allow you to submit your work for consideration and viewers can comment on and rate the works. A link to their submission page is here. Check it out...

If you are interested in having your work available as a printed book, the best company I have found so far is Blurb. It may not be the cheapest but it is certainly the best, Modern printing means that you can print one book at time or in quantity and the quality is very high. You can choose from various sizes and on different papers and the whole process is done online. I printed my 'Holocaust Series' book with Blurb and am very pleased with it. I used Adobe Indesign, for which they have dedicated templates available. For those who are less computer savvy, they also have their own book design program which is simpler to use if you don't know Indesign, plus they have video tutorials to help you.

They have templates to make other things from your own images like notebooks, diaries and calendars.They have also recently added a service that lets you take photos from your Facebook wall direct to a photo book template. Read about it here for more info.

I will do my best to give you their latest promotional offers here, so If you are thinking of trying it, for the moment until 7 January 2013, Blurb is offering 15% off any book order . Click here and enter promo code BOOKS15OFF when prompted.

I have talked often in my classes about the need to use a final varnish on paintings to protect them from the ravishes of future life they may undergo. Final varnishing also helps to bring the tones back up and remove sunken areas. Final varnishing should be done only after a painting has had sufficient time to dry, usually at least 6-12 months after completion. I try and wait at least a year and offer collectors the option of returning the work to me after a year for that purpose if I have sold a work before its dry enough.

The Windsor & Newton site has instructional videos and this one is very simple in its explanation. I like the way the instructor taps his sheet of acrylic, just in case you don't get the point!

As I mentioned to students in my painting and painting media classes, this is the stapler that I recommend strongly and use for stretching my canvases.

Rapid, who manufacture the R23 model are a Swedish company based in Hestra in the Swedish countrside and are well known in the building industry in Europe.

I used to struggle with the spring mechanisms on other staple guns which hurt my hands and required two hands to fire after a short while, leaving me unable to hold the canvas tight at the same time. This staple gun is lightweight and has a soft rubber grip and is perfectly sufficient for holding canvas on stretcher bars. It shoots 4-8mm staples.It is also guaranteed for two years. Mine has been doing fine for at least 10 years.

I am thrilled to have found a non-toxic solution to fixing my charcoal underdrawings on my paintings.I have been worried for a long time about spraying an acrylic layer of fixative (modern ones use acrylic as a medium) between my oil primed canvas and my oil paint. Casein, a natural milk ingredient, has been used for over a millenium as a medium for paint. The Egyptians used it. Degas, Mary Cassat and Vuillard used it with pigment and as a fixative. Now it is being manufactured in a convenient form that you can keep on your shelf and use as you need it without refrigeration.

I have fallen totally in love with Rublev Lead White Oil Ground made by Natural Pigments for priming my canvases.

I use it on top of acrylic ready primed canvas after sanding it lightly. I apply one or two coats of the oil ground which I tint to whatever colour I want using oil paint. I stir the tube paint into a little of the ground then mix it into however much I will finally need. I use an inexpensive 6" Purdy 'White Dove' 3/8" nap roller and disposable plastic roller-tray liner (I get mine from Ace Hardware) both of which I can discard after use with no cleanup necessary.

I get a perfect surface which is tough, gives the painting a solid foundation and helps with drying the upper layers. Its dry enough to paint on within two or three days though its preferable to wait another day or two if possible.

I have been watching the BBC tv series 'The Private Life of a Masterpiece' , directed by Judith Winnan and Lucie Donahue and featuring the british art critic Richard Cork amongst others.

 It is brilliantly made, really interesting and bears re-watching several times without it ever seeming boring. I highly recommend it and its available from Amazon.

Tim Stotz and Michelle Tully, friends and fellow NY Academy alumni, opened an atelier school in the south of France a few years ago and now have a studio location in Paris as well, where they are offering figure drawing intensives that include cast drawing in the sculpture court at the Louvre. Instead of drawing from plastercasts of the originals, these ARE the originals!

The studio facility in Monmartre was previously the atelier of Toulouse Lautrec and Suzanne Valadon, model and mistress of Renoir, Degas and Puvis de Chavanne and mother of Utrillo. They offer three month intensive figure painting courses in their Argenton-Chateau location as well as occasional visiting artist workshops.

Another one for my anatomy students - Famous historical anatomical illustrations in the collection of the US National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, available to download to your desktop and even zoom in on.
A truly wonderful resource available for free on the web.

Ever wondered why Norman Rockwell's paintings look so photographic? He went to great lengths to get his reference material as close to his original idea as possible. The Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts has an exhibit of his original reference photos and a new book has come out about them - " Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera" by Ron Schick - using images taken from the archive of nearly 20,000 photographs which are housed at the museum.

Robert Doak has a new and much updated website with a complete list of his products and interesting additional information and comments on some of his illustrious clients, though beware his critical eye (see his review of Margaret Boland's work - I sure hope he likes mine!).

You might want to check out this fairly new art information website. Artslant is a quick and easy way to see what is happening in the galleries worldwide (and locally if you are near a big city), plus its another way to show some of your work online. They make it very simple to upload images and resume etc.

Lefranc & Bourgeois are no longer manufacturing Black Oil. I have not been happy with the one made by Wiliamsburg as I find it gets gummy in the bottle after a while. I have found another manufacturer, a small company in Maryland making batches by hand. Mr Groves also makes various other really interesting mediums and I am intending to test them all as time goes by. You can order online on his site or by phoning him at (301) 689-3389

I have been watching Simon Schama's BBC tv series, 'The Power of Art', again for the umpteenth time and I never seem to tire of it, especially the one on Bernini.

If you can get past his smarmy BBC attitude, its a wonderful series and you can still get it on Amazon. Here's a link:

If you are interested in cast drawing or painting, Giust Plaster Casts makes exquisite reproductions and they pride themselves in maintaining the same old world methods used by Pietro Caproni in 1911. They are not cheap but there are a few that are less expensive and still gorgeous. View their casts online and order a catalogue.

This one is for my anatomy students. See how many originations and insertions you can spot! I have embedded it as a Quicktime movie (I hope its showing below!),or you can see it as a .wmv windows file

I just found out about these handy cardboard boxes for carrying wet paintings (I have not tried them myself yet). They come in packs of three in various sizes.
The largest size is 16" X 12", which is about as big as you might want to use in one of my classes. They are available from Judsons, Cheap Joe's and Dick Blick.

"Your site looks great as always!  I'm about to go public with a site of my own.  It is www.portraitsbyshep.com. I really appreciate your critique on my painting "Meredith & Kevin" from our last correspondence.  I corrected the painting and won "Best of Division" and "Best in Class" with it at the Brenham Fine Arts League Show, this year.  It's the oldest art competition in Texas."

As promised to my 'Expressive Drawing' class in Seattle (Congratulations to ALL of you, by the way, what a great class it was!) here is the information on Pinhole glasses plus some eye exercises you can do to improve and maintain vision.

As I have been asked several times for the materials list for the classes, they are now all up to date and on a webpage, with links below the class descriptions for each one on the 'classes' page. Hope it helps.

I have finally put that booklist I promised to you on the site. Only Anatomy books so far but Painting and Drawing recommended books will be coming as soon as i can get to it (if I can just get some time apart from my work!! You have no idea how long this website stuff takes.... ) Anyway, take a quick look:

From Stacy Brown, here's a different way of using anatomy...don't try this on your own at home!

or in French (for those inclined)

"Le Noir Froid
On peut retrouver cette nuances par mélange de :  60% Noir d'Ivoire - 40% Outremer Foncé N°1"

Thanks, Mike, for sending it in.

This is sort of fun to watch though I don't care much for the end drawing. Its a good illustration, though, of how anatomical knowledge can help:

http://fcmx.net/vec/get.swf?i=003702