My Favorite Art Magazines

Before discussing favorite magazines, I obviously have to give a shout out to the internet. As a self-directed student of the art, I feel enormously lucky to have the web at my disposal for a seemingly endless supply of researching and learning resources about oil painting. The number of websites, youtube tutorials, blogs, and social media portals such as facebook, twitter, and instagram gives someone like me access to ideas, knowledge and resources that would have been impossible or extremely difficult to access say, twenty years ago.  If you want to take advantage of these resources, they're nothing more than a click away. So click away!

Having giving due credit to online learning, I still love and  deeply appreciate a well published art magazine. I will never tire of leafing through a newly purchased or fresh in the mailbox art journal. I find it difficult to dispose any of them, so my library boasts quite a large collection. I don't understand how anyone serious about their study doesn't purchase a few of the gems available out there at least once in a while. For one thing, a painter gets to see which contemporary artists the power brokers in art world deem worthy for their attention. Not to mention you get to tear out favorite images and stick them in organized folders titled: Portraits, Paintings to Copy (as an exercise!), Urbanscape - and so on.

The following are the magazines I easily find worthy to include in my education budget.

international artistwww.americanartcollector.com/‎
 https://www.internationalartist.com/‎
International Artist offers so much to its readers I could devote an entire blog entry to this magazine alone.The $7.95 price is such a bargain for what you get in each issue. I especially appreciate the step by step breakdown of featured artists (fabulous photos included with the description of each step). Of course there are competitions to enter along with articles exploring technique, inspiration, etc. from the viewpoint of a variety of countries including the USA, Canada, and  the UK.

The Artist's Magazine 
http://subscriptions.theartistsmagazine.com/The-Artists-Magazine/Magazine
Likewise, The Artist's Magazine also offers a lot of helpful feature and columns a painter would appreciate. Articles range from technique to the business end of art along with practical advice regarding framing and so on. Definitely worth the $5.99 price.

AMERICAN art COLLECTOR
www.americanartcollector.com/‎
American Art Collector is aimed at collectors, galleries and painters of "traditional" art. But don't assume traditional in a boring, old fashioned sense. The artists they include are contemporary and anything but staid or irrelevant.  It is full of page after page of amazing art. If I need a little inspiration (otherwise known as What Do I Paint Panic????!), American Art Collector is one of my top resources for inspiration. Its focus is presenting the art itself, rather than a lot of advice on technique, but that's okay. You simply can't get enough inspiring imagery and AAC offers a monthly supply to its readers. Love it. $6.95