Posts by Dave Kaminski

A few weeks ago I drove a thousand miles into Baja Mexico alone. Late at night, deep in the desert with no cell signal, I asked AI one simple question on impulse. A question that every person has an answer to. Especially artists. And it couldn’t answer it. What I realized in that moment on…

Have you ever lain awake in the middle of the night wondering if you’re really qualified to call yourself an artist? You’re not alone. In this post I share a conversation I had recently with a group of advanced artists, where one of them asked something so vulnerable it stopped the entire room. What followed…

Color matching is one of the most frustrating parts of painting. You see the color you want, you try to mix it, and somehow you end up further away than when you started. In this post I share the VHS method, a three-step approach to matching any color faster and more accurately than most artists…

I’ve been making art for a long time. And I only just figured out how to store my paintbrushes properly. In this post I walk through the exact container sizes that work for every brush length, the DIY solution hiding in plain sight in most studios, and a free PDF with all the specs so…

One of the biggest reasons making art feels hard has nothing to do with talent, inspiration, or technique. It has everything to do with what happens before you even pick up a brush. In this post, I walk through my complete journal practice studio setup, every tool on my table and why it’s there, including…

Creating your own custom paint colors isn’t as complicated as it sounds. In this post, I walk through my behind-the-scenes process for mixing and measuring a large batch of Baja Orange, a dusty, earthy, sun-warmed orange that appears throughout my work. The real lesson here goes beyond one color. It’s about building a personal palette…