TODAY'S FEATURED POST

Feeling Gray Today

Howard Lyon

-By Howard Lyon   Color is a fascinating and challenging part of painting.  It can be defined as hue, saturation and value. Today, I am going to focus a little more on saturation. Saturation being how intense or gray a color is. Before I get going though, I think I need to add a disclaimer to this post. Painting from life is the best way to understand color. Also, photographs of paintings are by no…

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EVERYDAY ORIGINAL

Horns of the high desert (Original Watercolor)

YESTERDAY’S POST

Image

Research Images Like a Pro

Lauren Panepinto

June 12, 2025 - I just did a spurt of portfolio reviews (it's fresh graduates season!) and a topic seemed to come up more than a few times, and that usually means it's worth a Muddy Colors article. So here we go. I don't want to make this sound like a "the kids don't know X" or "back when I was in school we knew how to Y" kind of thing, but I think some old(er) school knowledge might help a growing problem. A growing problem of using search engines for image research. Since I've been reviewing portfolios and commissioning illustrators (for 20ish years now) I have occasionally had to have a conversation with artists about their image research. Sometimes amusingly referred to as "Google-Fu". The most glaring issue was most often reminding an artist — usually one fresh…

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