Have you ever unwrapped a new canvas to discover that it was a little dented? Or perhaps you have one that's gotten dented because something was leaning against it?

Here's how to fix it:

1. ​The canvas itself is probably stretched a little loosely to begin with. You can use "painter's keys" to tighten it — also a good idea (to be addressed later) — but that won't fix a little dent.
2. Turn the canvas over, and spread a little water on the back of it, in the dented area. You can use a mister bottle if you like, or just pour a little water directly on it and spread it with your hand.
3. As the canvas dries, you'll notice how it tightens up. The dent should tighten up and disappear.
4. If the canvas is still a little dented, repeat (you may need to use a little more water, too).

Remember: never stack anything against a canvas or a painting that will dent, scratch, or pierce it — and then you won't have to worry about repairing it later.

1. Send your inner critic on a vacation (because you know it's working waaaay overtime.)

​​That critical voice can stop you in its tracks every time. It's not helpful, but it means well.... So, thank it kindly for its contribution. 

Then send it on a well-deserved vacation, to a remote location of your choosing. An oasis in the desert? An island in the Pacific? A beautiful spot in the Yukon? You decide. And — be very clear here — it can NOT come back for whatever length of time you specify. How about a month?

If it shows up again, send it packing. Be FIRM. Then enjoy the vacation you are both getting.

2. Creativity needs to be nurtured. Like good soil for farming, sometimes you need to let it rest. Allow time to be fallow.

It's out of the fallow time that the next new ideas come... they just need time to percolate, time to gestate. So give it a break... and do something else.

Clean your studio. Build canvases. Gesso panels. Inventory frames. Do all the routine studio maintenance kind of stuff that you never find time for in the throes of a creative whirlwind. Time for this is a good thing. You can learn to look on fallow time as a blessing.

3. Shake up your routine! Do something new, different, out of the ordinary — something that puts you in a completely different frame of mind and heart.

What is it that you just never think of doing, or never manage to find the time for? You can:

• ride a bike
• visit a museum
• go for a drive in the country
• spend time on a hobby that's always sounded interesting
• take yourself on a photographing trip
• learn to scuba dive
• go see the animals at a county fair
• go for a ride on a zip line
• check out thrift shops in a city at least an hour away
• visit all the tourist destinations in your area that you've never seen
• or... what can you think of?

Sometimes you just need to shift your perspective, and doing something completely out of your ordinary routine can be just what you need.

4. Go for a walk in nature. 

It's amazing what walking in a forest, sitting on a creek or riverbank, looking out across a lake at sunset, or gazing at ocean waves with beach sand between your toes will do for your psyche.

Don't just go there — experience it. You'll feel refreshed and rejuvenated, in heart and mind and soul.

5. Count your blessings.

Literally. Count them up, no matter how small. Every little thing matters. How high can you go?

And then give thanks for each and every one. It's amazing how much we can find to be grateful for, when we look for it, even in the hardest times. It's kind of like stopping to smell the roses.

Have you been feeling stuck? Try these! You'll be amazed at the difference doing them will make.

A week ago last Saturday, a fire — later named the Valley Fire — started in Lake County, on the other side of Mt. St. Helena from where I live. It jumped from 40 acres to 1,000 acres in less than an hour, and continued to spread far faster than anyone could have imagined, sending over 17,000 residents running for their lives, including friends, acquaintances, and current and former students of mine. Like so many others, I searched online, hoping and praying, to hear whether they had made it out safely, whether they had been able to take their pets with them, and whether they had any idea if their homes had been spared.

That first night, the sky glowed red above and behind Mt. St. Helena. It was both beautiful and terrifying. My neighbor suggested we write lists of all the important things you need, so we wouldn't miss anything if we had short notice to pack up the car. But we were lucky; the fire didn't come down our side of the mountain.

On the internet, people had posted terrifying photos and videos of apocalyptic scenes, of driving down roads with fires burning on either side, of tall tongues of flame leaping into the sky as gas or propane tanks exploded, of trees becoming tall, tall torches, and of darkened skies thick with soot and smoke and burning embers.

Then, on Tuesday, I drove to the de Young Museum in San Francisco, to see the Turner show (J.M.W. Turner: Painting Set Free) before it closed. Born in 1775, Joseph Mallord William Turner was one of the greatest English painters of the 19th century. Whether art historians agree with me or not, I think of him as the first abstract painter. Although he painted scenes and events, current, historical, and mythological, the scenes and events often seem simply a reason to paint light and storm and fog and fire....

And there, in the first gallery past the entrance, was a wall of paintings of fire. 

Turner didn't have a camera or an iPhone to record the terrifying fires of his time; he had only his watercolor paints and paper. The description of these three watercolor sketches said that the fire, which began October 30, 1841, burned for several days, and that most likely Turner sketched these on the other side of the moat, standing in the enormous crowds that had gathered.

Just down the wall a bit from Turner's watercolors of that fire was an oil painting of another fire, that of the Houses of Lords and Commons in 1834. Here, the flames rise high into the night, with an intensity of light and thick clouds of smoke. Crowds gather on the near shore, unable to stop it, able only to witness the fury of the inferno.

Turner's colors have faded considerably since he painted these, so I saturated the image above to see something of what they might have originally looked like. It reminds me of the apocalyptic videos I watched online, and the photos of the raging flames.

Like the crowds gathered in Turner's painting, we too stood and watched. I don't know how many others thought of those horrific images from the Valley Fire as they looked at these paintings. I did, and I thought of the ghastly power and ferocious speed and damage of the blaze. Just like the witnesses Turner painted, we witnessed the devastation he recorded in the painting, and we witnessed the devastation of this week's fire in photographs and videos. 

But some people saw it firsthand as they ran to their cars and drove to safety; or as they warned residents to leave, saving those residents' lives, and as they fought the fire so valiantly. 

I've been learning, as each day goes by, who among my friends has a home to return to, and who does not. 

I brought donations on the first Sunday morning for the evacuees, and though it was little in the scale of things, every little thing adds up. Our friends and neighbors have been devastated, and need our prayers, our thoughtfulness, our kindness, our generosity, and our help. There but for fortune, it could have been any of us.

To donate items to the evacuees who are now returning to Lake County, you can follow this link to find where to take donations:  http://www.lakecountylac.com/donation-centers.html

To give a gift of money, there are a number of organizations you can contact, including Redwood Credit Union, who will ensure that 100% of donations will make it directly to victims of the Lake County fires. https://www.redwoodcu.org/about-rcu/news-announcements-specials/rockyfire

My thanks to Santa Cruz artist Linda Huffman, who took photographs of the exhibit and shared them with me for this blog post.

Far more often than I'd like to see, new students bring in images of photographs (or paintings) they've found on the internet that they want to copy. Or they tell me about teachers they know who teach students to copy other people's paintings.  And then we have the talk about why they should NOT copy someone else's artwork.

So, why not just copy?

First, there are legal reasons. All visual artists, including photographers, own the copyrights to their own work. They have the choice to license the work for a fee or give permission for their work to be reproduced, if they like. 

Taking their work is intellectual property theft. And that's not okay.

Just because you see it on the internet doesn't mean you can use it without their permission. Artists make a living by selling their work, and copying what they do isn't a compliment — it's taking bread out of their mouths.

Apart from the legal issues, there are ethical issues. It's not ethical to copy someone's work and call it yours. 

If you really, really want to, you can always ask permission. If you're granted permission, ALWAYS credit your original source, and share the results with them.

If you want to work from the painting of a long-dead old master, take it in a new direction, but include the artist in the title. You can call it "Homage to Rembrandt" — or whomever. Acknowledge your inspiration.

Having had to deal with a violation of my own copyrights, I can tell you from experience it doesn't feel good to find someone has copied your work. It just feels like you've been ripped off.

But, finally, there is the basic question about why you want to paint to begin with. What is your reason for painting? Is it to get in touch with your own creativity? To find joy in the act of creation?

If that is why you paint — as it is for most people who want to make art— you cannot be truly creative if you are just copying someone else's work.

There are so many things to inspire your work, and to provide you with images to draw and paint. You can, for instance:

• Look around your town for interesting buildings
  
• Sketch people at your neighborhood coffee shop
  
• Stop on the side of the road to take photographs of roadside landscapes, or bring your easel along and paint a roadside scene
  
• Draw or paint a self-portrait
  
• Look at the little, simple things around you, and create simple still life images
  

Beauty and inspiration are everywhere — you need never be at a loss for something to paint or draw.

You will be inspired by the work of other artists, of course! Learn from what you see! When you see work you love, ask yourself, "What is it that I truly love about what I see?" 

Is it the color palette? The handling of the paint? The subject matter? A particular way of framing the composition? Identify it, whatever it is — and try it out in your OWN work.

There is only one YOU in all the world. There is no one else who can say what you have to say, in the way that you can say it. 

As you develop your skills, you will — and should — try many things. Learn from everything you see! 

Explore! Practice! Fail (it's okay; it's a necessary part of the process)! Discover! Grow!

As you grow, you will find your own visual voice, your style, your spirit, your genius. You will discover who you are as a painter.

If you work from photographs, working from your own photographs is part of the creative process. Trust me; many of my best paintings have come from amazingly bad or mediocre photographs. It's all about what you DO with it.

Someone else's great photograph is already art. What more can you say about it visually that it hasn't already said?

So here's my advice to my students: 

Take your own photographs.
Make your own still life setups.
Find your own models.
Learn how to make a great composition.
Then paint, paint, paint, and draw, draw, draw.

You will find your OWN voice. Allow yourself to be influenced by artwork you love. But your own artwork? Make it truly your own work. And THEN you will be an artist.

Trust me: the journey is worth it.

Has this ever happened to you? The paint beads up and won't stick to the canvas? (We're talking acrylics here.) When it happens, it's easier to see when you've got more water in your paint. So, what the heck is going wrong, and how do you fix it?

The problem isn't with your paints, it's with that sweet little canvas that you got at such a good deal.... Every ready-made canvas you buy comes pre-primed with gesso (pronounced JESS-oh). Gesso is different from plain white paint, in that it has gluey properties. It covers the surface you're going to paint on, and its gluey properties help the paint stick to the surface. (In years and centuries past, gesso was actually made with glue from rabbit skins.) Most often you'll find white pigment in it (though you can also find black and clear gesso for acrylics).

In order to cut costs and keep the price low on those value canvases, sometimes manufacturers will thin the gesso down to the point where it just doesn't stick all that much. So although the label may say double-primed or triple-primed, the gesso that was sprayed on the canvas was thinned so much that it just doesn't do what you thought it would. 

So, the solution? Prime your canvas with a nice coat of gesso. Some people like to apply multiple coats, let each coat dry thoroughly, and then sand it before applying the next coat. Sanding is a nice way of taking out the brush marks left by the gesso when it's thick — if that is important to you.

Then, when it's dry, you can get back to painting. Have fun!

One way to start off a mixed media painting (or any painting, if you want) is to create an interesting underpainting. In this case, I used four successive layers of the same color. Each layer deepens the color and obscures the white of the canvas more. You can try layering over different colors, too, including layering over a solid color underpainting on the surface.

Depending on the effect you want under your painting, you can stop at any point. Any of these surfaces would have worked as a good underpainting — it's all a matter of your individual choice.

One of the many wonderful features of acrylics is their quick drying time, which allows for layering like this, both to create an interesting underpainting and to create an interesting surface of the developing and finished paintings.

The last few weeks have been Mixed Media Weeks for me. This really is how I play with paint. When I have a nice stretch of time for this kind of creative work, everything goes into mixed media mode. My living room becomes my mixed media studio, with my painting set-up and drying table in one corner. I set up another table for collage work. And it's lovely to sit on the sofa and comb through my papers and photo images and old magazines and quotation files to find the things I want to incorporate into my paintings.

These two paintings include two of my favorite quotations by Nikos Kazantzakis, the author most well known for writing Zorba the Greek. Long ago, I studied Zakzantzakis's work with Thanasis Maskaleris at San Francisco State, and was able to meet his wife, Eleni Kazantzakis, so I feel a double connection to them (I love what they mean, too, obviously). I've been long wanting them on my walls, and decided that finally this was the time for it.

This kind of work is a layering process. You just keep adding things until it feels right — and the layers make the work more and more interesting. I like to think of it as reverse archeology — the discovery process happens as you add layers, rather than as you dig down through them. Because you can't predict how things will look, you learn to go with the flow in a way that is harder for many people when they try to paint realistically. That's why I love teaching this kind of painting — it helps people tap into their deepest creative selves without critical interference. And, after all, that is when you really feel the joy of creativity.

This year I was asked to demonstrate mixed media painting again at the Napa County Fair, on the Fourth of July. To make the experience a little different from last year, I thought I'd have fairgoers contribute to collaborative paintings — a touch of paint here, a bit of paint there — using a little collage, and a little in the way of stencils, but mostly just acrylic paint with various options as to how you apply it.

Most, though not all, of my participants turned out to be under thirteen — and a lot of them were six and under. I'd ask them, "What's your favorite color?" and then give them the color, or colors they needed to create their favorite. Then I asked, "Would you like to use a brush, or would you like to do texture?" It was especially fun to see their eyes light up as they tried painting with bubble wrap or plastic wrap or styrofoam, or something else they never would have thought of using.

The paintings began as mostly-blank canvases, but progressed throughout the day. Each person contributed a little or a lot, as they chose. The youngest children seemed to enjoy the tactile experience of moving the paint around the most, and experimented with applying it in different ways to the greatest extent. Older children and adults (with the exception of a professional artist who also came by and added her touches) mostly wanted to paint something identifiable — a picture, a word, or a pattern of some kind.

It was an opportunity for everyone to just play with the paint, and have fun. At one point, a grandfather brought his little granddaughter over to paint. She couldn't have been much more than two, and had quiet, unflappable concentration as she painted, even though her grandfather tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to get her to smile at his camera as he took photos of her.

Later in the evening, they came by as I was cleaning up, and he thanked me. Then, as they walked away, she turned back to me, and in a loud, clear, chipper voice, with a big smile on her face, said,"That was FUN!" 

That's what doing this is all about.

The methods people tried out on these paintings are some of what we'll be doing in my August 8th workshop, Adventures in Mixed Media: Paint, Paper, Stencils, Collage, and Relief Printing. My favorite thing about doing this kind of artwork is that it allows adults to step back in time and get into that child-like creative space — the state of mind that gets into the process, enjoys the experience, and says, "That was FUN!"

As we get older, and our critical mind gets stronger, we sometimes forget to play. Or we approach a creative project with expectations — which is the death knell for true creativity. This kind of painting helps get us back in that state of discovery, of beginner's mind. You have no idea how something will evolve and change. But look what comes out of it... and it's FUN.

I may add a little more to these paintings, in their evolved state — including quotations I'd originally attached to each one. Or not. We'll see. But the finished pieces will be up for auction at the Calistoga Art Center's big fundraiser, The Soup-er Bowl, this autumn. Stay tuned!

Every now and then, I get ideas for new workshops... new approaches to painting, new media, revisiting techniques for media I've taught before, new approaches to the material I've taught before and new ways of understanding it. If I'm in a busy time, as I have been the last few months — with shows, workshops already scheduled, and private workshops — all an absolute pleasure for me, the ideas have to wait. They kind of pile up like schoolchildren at a door waiting for recess. They're ready... they're just waiting for the door to open....

And when that door opens, oh the joy! That's what things feel like right now. I've had a whole lot of ideas percolating, and this week and next are my time to test the new ideas out, create samples, and work out the bugs. The November workshop I've scheduled, Create Your Own Mixed Media Holiday Cards, is one of the ideas bursting out to play. I can hardly wait to begin sharing the images that come out of this time... it is my work, but it's recess, too, and time to play!

My thanks to my students who came for this last weekend's Acrylic Painting 101 workshop at the Calistoga Art Center! They were delightful. And it is my idea of fun to spend a weekend sharing the joys of painting with acrylics, to start with. 

I didn't get any photos taken during the workshop, but you might get a little idea of some of what we did, from working with colors and color mixing, to trying all kinds of ways of applying paint to a surface, to abstract painting, to the painting of a simple still life.

Here's the demonstration painting I did during the workshop, from a little apple. We had such lovely and cooperative models! (Apples and pears.) We wound up only spending a little time on creating watercolor-like effects with acrylics, since everyone wanted to spend more time on their still life paintings (on which, by the way, they did a great job). 

That was a good lesson for me... I always want to pack a lot into the time, maybe more than there is really time to take in. I knew that a second day would allow people to process what they'd been learning more thoroughly, and apply it, and it worked well. The next time I teach this, I'll keep the final watercolor-like technique as an option. I learned that it may not be an option my students need or want to take.