Walking through The Art Institute of Chicago last year for the first time, I repeated in my head a description for Monet’s work: “painter of light.” It couldn’t have been a better description. It wasn’t the first time I had seen his work in person, but it was the first time that it really impacted me. When I rounded the corner into the impressionist’s collection, the room seemed to glow; the art seemed to sparkle. I had to stop for a moment and take it all in.

The paintings of hay bails in different light by Monet caught my eye especially. I loved seeing the warms and cools reflect against each other, and I loved his confidence apparent throughout the entire piece. So often I feel that “messy” or “careless” is mistaken for “confidence” in art, but it was unmistakable in Monet’s work that every stroke of color was placed thoughtfully.

Fast forward to around a month ago. I was working with a student on a landscape when it hit me that her strokes, to me, were reminiscent of Monet’s. I told her this, and we decide to study Monet for the next few lessons and recreate his painting of blossoming trees.

We dove head first into learning more and more about Monet’s approach so we could accurately move around his paintings and analyze his technique. One thing in particular that we did was mimic his color palette, almost exactly. Monet said: "I use flake white, cadmium yellow, vermilion, deep madder, cobalt blue, emerald green, and that's all.”

We used permanent rose and/or alizarin crimson in place of vermillion, and titanium white in place of flake white, and it didn’t effect our output greatly. Additionally, upon further research, I learned of a few other colors Monet would’ve used such as cobalt violet; I chose to use king’s blue in place of cobalt violet because, although it isn’t extremely similar, I always have king’s blue on hand in my studio and felt that it would be a good purple-ish substitute.

Essentially, we created a palette full of color inspired by what Monet used. "His" palette quickly became very exciting to work with; it is a simple palette, and the colors work together with ease beautifully. With his palette it is easy to use the basic techniques of color mixing and achieve gorgeous results. I love the range of pastel-like colors to saturated, vibrant colors. Although not many reds are seen in Monet's work, I found that I mixed in reds more than I expected to mute greens (green and red are complementary colors, and when complements are mixed together, they create muted color in many shades).

Color aside, I chose to lengthen my strokes more than Monet maybe would’ve, but I’ve already fallen in love with the idea of furthering true impressionism in my work like you see in the piece above. All in all, I am enjoying this palette immensely, and I think it's here to stay!

Below you will find a list of my Monet-Inspired Palette colors with corresponding links. If you paint with this palette, or your own slightly-modified version of it, please share an image of your painting and tag me in the post–I'd love to see your work!

I remember thumbing through my clothes in my closet as a little girl, counting the number of t-shirts and jeans that had remnants of oil paint on them. (It was exciting and saddening at the same time.) I don't remember exactly how many there were, but I'd guess more than half had paint on them. Those were in addition to my box of "painting clothes" specifically reserved for painting; those reserved painting clothes were covered in so much paint they could be works of art themselves. To be honest, my clothes weren't the only thing in my house I left my paint tracks on. The floor, chairs, rugs, my cat (he jumped on my palette occasionally,) my sister's clothes, random things in the kitchen . . . there was sure to be paint on them somewhere. The more I think about it the more grateful I am to my parents for letting me paint so young.

I'm not alone in my oil painting messes; other artists and friends wanting to paint will say to me, "I used to paint with oil, but I switched to something a little less messy," or "I would love to oil paint, but I'm just worried about the mess." It's a wild and crazy medium, but I just think it is too beautiful to not work with. After painting for a number of years, ruining too many clothes and things, and having some fabulous teachers be great examples of cleanly painting and well kept workspaces, I have discovered some helpful ways to paint with cleanliness. Often times, I now paint in my nice, day-to-day clothes with confidence that I will walk away paint free. Here are ten tips to help avoid a mess:


1. Paint in the right area. A tidy studio or painting area is a huge factor in staying clean when you paint. I rarely paint over carpet or near furniture that I don't want ruined. No matter how much I trust myself, accidents happen. If there isn't that perfect place to paint however, like my tiny, shared dorm room my freshmen year of college, I make sure to have a wipeable surface completely clear of anything but my painting supplies, and put an old sheet or drop cloth below me.

2. Keep a paper towel in your non-dominate hand at all times. I keep a paper towel in my left hand while I paint (I hold the brush with my right,) or at least sitting between my palette and painting. This helps me to not only wipe my brushes between colors, to keep the color on my painting fresh and clean, but to keep thick wet paint from getting somewhere I don't want after I am done using that brush for a moment. An old phone book with the cover torn off is another great "brush wipe area" to have right next to you. The paper is absorbent, and they you can just tear the pages off as they get too filled with paint.*

The Portrait Project has really taken off! I am so grateful for everyone who has supported it in any way. Thank you! Since day one, I’ve been getting many inquiries about how to be involved in this project, so I’ve created this guide to help us all out! Afterall, I can’t paint portraits if I don’t have people to paint! And I want to paint you!