Free eBook available on Facebook

If you’ve followed my blog or gotten my newsletters at all, you know how important I think it is to study the Masters.  In order to make things a little more exciting I’ve written an eBook, containing bio info and videos on several of these Masters, “The Masters I Study and How They Improve My Paintings”.  I hope you’ll download this book and spend some time learning more about these wonderful artists and how they improve my paintings, and how they can improve your paintings too.  Collectors should also get this free eBook.  Learning more about art makes collecting that much more fun.  Anyway, I hope you’ll hop on over to Facebook and download what I hope will be a fun book for you to read and keep as a reference.  The first reviews I’ve gotten have been very enthusiastic.

Click Here to go to my Facebook page where you’ll find the “Free eBook” tab.

5-Day Studio Workshop DVD Set. Click the image for more information

I’m pleased to announce my newest DVD set from StarkeStudio.com.  This 5-Day Studio Workshop focuses on the essential studio skills to produce better paintings and work more creatively and effectively during your time in the studio. Each DVD teaches a different subject, but they all build upon one another to provide solid teaching of essential studio skills.

DVD Lessons included in this Workshop:

1.  “Understanding Values” – 57 min.

2.  “Understanding Brushwork” – 52 min.

3.  “Giving Your Painting Depth” – 50 min.

4.  “Understanding Edges” – 59 min.

5.  “Understanding Your Color Sense” – 56 min.

Bonus:   FREE 6th 44-min. DVD!

“Studying These 5 Elements in the Paintings of Noted Artists” – 44 min.

As a special, free bonus I’ve added a 6th DVD in which I teach from paintings of noted artists and how they used these same principles in their work.  I’ll show you how they produced beautiful paintings using these elements.

Available to order by mail, or by direct download.

Visit StarkeStudio.com for more information.

Frank was born Francis Decker in 1848 in Covington Ohio outside of Cincinnati. He father died when he was young and he took his stepfathers name of Duveneck. Early on he worked as a sign painter and then as an assistant to a church decorator Wilhelm Lamprecht. At the age of 21 he traveled to Munich, Germany to study the decorative crafts. He soon

In 1875 he returned to Europe where he painted and taught with 

When he was in Paris in 1886 he married Elizabith Boott from Boston. Elizabeth died two years later and Duveneck relocated permanently to Cincinnati and resumed teaching there. Frank continued to take painting trips to Europe and

Duveneck was the founder of the Society of Western Artists and received numerous honors including a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. He died four years later at the age of 71.  Learn more about Duveneck’s art here:

Three new 20-minute videos have been added to the “Front Row Seat”.

• “Cottages”
• “San Miguel Street”
• “Street Cafe”

• Chickens
• Herd of Cattle
• Mountains & Lake
• Painting A Head
• Snowy Field
• Sunlit Adobe Building

Stop by and check out the paintings and videos.

In 1906, Julian was offered a salaried position to assist in organizing art exhibitions for the Dallas State Fair, a function that his father had performed for many years. This job brought him back to Texas occasionally, and in 1909 he decided to return to San Antonio permanently.

Upon his return Julian immediately began painting the Texas countryside. He and his father went on sketching jaunts together, and Julian, after so many years in New York, was back in his natural element. He diligentlyapplied the principles he had learned from Chase and painted directly from nature. Revealing his love for the Texas landscape, he wrote:

San Antonio offers an inexhaustible field for the artist. Nowhere else are the atmospheric effects more varied and more beautiful. One never tires of watching them. Nowhere else is there such a wealth of color. In the spring, when the wild flowers are in bloom, it is riotous: every tint, every hue, every shade is present in the most lavish profusion, and even in the dead of summer, when one would imagine that any canvas could only convey the impression of intense heat, the possibilities of the landscape are still beyond comprehension. One has only to see it properly to find that everything glows with a wonderful golden tint which is the delight and the despair of all who have ever tried to paint it.

Julian’s life became a routine of summers in New York assembling shows for the Dallas State Fair and the rest of the year painting in Texas. His work began to sell locally and as his reputation grew he also showed in galleries throughout the state and in other parts of the country.   His last paintings, Dawn in the Hills and Autumn Tapestry, among his finest, were on the way to New York for the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design for 1922 at the time of his death. Although regulations limited the exhibition to the work of living artists, Julian was accorded the unique honor of having his work accepted because of the unusual circumstances of his death as well as for the excellence of his paintings.

Julian’s death, in 1922, was as sudden and unexpected as many of his actions in life. He fell ill in San Antonio and failed to recover from an operation for an intestinal obstruction. His untimely death was doubtless hastened by a cavalier disregard for his own welfare. Since his early demise, Julian Onderdonk has become a legend. His work, represented in many public and private collections, is still avidly sought and has escalated enormously in value. Julian’s legacy lives on in his emotional, mysterious, and beautiful art.  More about Julian can be learned from this book:

terms of value and temperature. The same holds true for our composition, when we see straight horizontal or straight vertical lines we need to suggest what would work better.

Straight lines are static and can cut the composition off where angled or curved lines can lead the viewer into the picture. The first painting by Willard Metcalf  has angled or curved lines that flow through out the painting. It’s impossible to know if these artists painted exactly what they saw or had to modify the lines but the compositions work and have no straight, static lines. To the

left is a painting by Ernest Blumenschein. There isn’t a straight line in the painting. The lines of the river bank draw you into the painting and the angled lines of the mountain and trees keep the painting from being static.

The last painting by Aldro Hibbard also has flowing lines in the river that lead you into the painting. The lines of the houses and mountains flow through the painting nicely. Even the straight trees aren’t straight, they are slightly angled or curved.

During the 1920s Schuster taught at the Otis Art Institute. Her paintings of people, landscapes and still lifes had a wonderful sense of impressionistic color and

brushwork.  After studying with Stanton McDonald Wright later in her career she experimented with Cubism and Abstract impressionism.  Donna was a member