Tuesday Art Chat with Kerri

Kerri shares a practical book chat on Austin Kleon’s Keep Going, focusing on how artists can stay creative when time is tight, motivation dips, and life gets noisy.
This episode is especially useful if you want simple, repeatable ways to keep making art without waiting for the perfect mood or perfect schedule.
In this episode, Kerri explores how the book’s ideas apply to real artistic life, from routines and lists to play, gifts, and seasonal creativity. She also reflects on what it means to keep creating for the love of it, not just for output or income.

Kerri Dixon takes listeners back to the 1800s for another Meet the Masters episode, focusing on Mary Cassatt and the practical lessons her work offers modern artists.
The episode is especially useful for pastel artists, but the takeaways apply just as much to composition, mark making, and deciding where detail belongs.
Kerri explores how Cassatt balanced smooth blending with loose, visible strokes, used colored paper as part of the artwork, and made ordinary domestic scenes feel worthy of serious art.
She also connects Cassatt’s approach to wildlife and nature art, showing how historical practice can solve very current creative problems.
You can watch the video chat on Youtube

How to Take Reference Photos With a Painting in Mind
In this episode, Kerri Dixon explains how wildlife artists can move beyond “good photos” and start collecting reference images that actually support a stronger painting. She shares a practical way to see, capture, and design compositions, using her own zoo photography and studio editing process as examples.The focus is on reference photos, composition, and lighting, with a clear message: the camera records the scene, but the artist makes the painting.

Key topics
In this episode, Kerri Dixon introduces the idea of taking reference photos with the final artwork in mind, not just snapping a nice wildlife picture.
She explains why it helps to look beyond the animal and scan the full frame for distractions, background shapes, light, poles, fences, and other elements that affect composition.
Kerri shares a meerkat example from Australia Zoo, where moving slightly to the side removed a boab tree that looked like it was growing out of the animal’s head.
She emphasizes collecting options rather than hunting for one perfect image, including wide shots, close-ups, verticals, horizontals, and different angles.
Kerri talks about photographing details like fur, ears, feet, tail, shadows, grasses, and environmental textures so later studio work has more information to draw from.
She explores how lighting can make or break a reference photo, especially directional light, edge highlights, eye highlights, and strong shadows that reveal form.
She also notes that soft overcast light can be valuable too, depending on whether the goal is mood, form, color, or clarity.
In the studio, Kerri describes using a rule of thirds template in Canva, Photoshop, or Procreate to test different crops and placements before drawing.
She reframes the rule of thirds as a guide rather than a rule, encouraging artists to experiment with centered compositions, negative space, and subject placement.
Kerri closes with a simple three-step mindset: see it, capture it, design it, then use multiple photos to build a stronger artwork and a stronger artistic voice.

KerriDixon talks about what she learned from watching Portrait Artists of the Year Australia and why it challenged her assumptions about how “proper” portrait art is made. The episode is a reminder that tools like photos, grids, iPads, tracing, and mixed media are not shortcuts to avoid real art, but practical parts of the creative process.In this episode, Kerry connects portraiture practices to wildlife art, showing how the same principles apply when your subject moves, changes light, or won’t cooperate. She also shares a simple challenge to try one reference three different ways and see which method supports your best work.
Key topics
Kerri explains why she started watching Portrait Artists of the Year Australia and what surprised her most about the artists’ process
The episode challenges the idea that professional portrait artists must work only from life
Kerri discusses how artists use photos to capture a specific moment, expression, or angle before the subject changes
She connects portrait techniques to wildlife art, where taking your own reference photos is often essential
Kerri explains the difference between simply finding a photo and creating a reference by making artistic decisions first
She describes the use of grids, measuring, loose sketches, tracing, and digital overlays as tools for accurate proportions
The episode reframes grids and transfers as scaffolding, not the artwork itself
Kerri highlights how different artists use the same medium, especially pastels, in very different ways
She encourages experimentation with pastel sticks, pastel pencils, broad marks, layering, and mixed media to discover personal style
The main takeaway is that there is no single “proper” way to make art, only the method that helps you create the artwork you want
Choose one reference photo and draw it freehand, with a grid, and with a squiggle grid
Notice which method feels most accurate, most freeing, or most frustrating
Focus on strengthening your foundations before adding detail
Ask whether a tool helps you make the artwork you want rather than whether it is the “proper” method
Experiment with materials and mark-making to discover what naturally shapes your style

In this episode, Kerri Dixon breaks down muddy colours, why they happen, and why they are not always a problem. She uses practical examples from wildlife and nature art to show how complementary colours, value, and careful observation can make colour mixing feel much simpler. Kerri also gives a clear method for choosing colours without memorizing the whole colour wheel - start with the right colour family, then ask what is wrong with the colour you have and make one small adjustment at a time.

Key topics
Carrie introduces the episode as a response to a student question from Aster about muddy colours and colour mixing
What muddy colour actually means - usually a loss of brightness or intensity, not automatically a bad colour
The difference between a colour becoming muted on purpose and becoming muddy by accident
Why overworking pastels and adding too many colours can fill the tooth of the paper and make colour harder to control
A simple colour wheel refresher covering primary colours, secondary colours, and complementary pairs
Why complementary colours work like a volume control for intensity
How orange and blue, green and red, and purple and yellow can neutralize each other into more natural-looking tones
Why realistic painting depends on observing what is actually there, not what the brain thinks should be there
The importance of value - lightness and darkness - when a colour looks wrong even if the hue seems right
How muted colours help bright focal points stand out in wildlife and nature paintings
Why leaving some colours unblended can create richer texture, especially in fur and feathers
A practical exercise for making deliberate muddy colours and finding those same hues in nature references
Two simple questions to use while painting: what colour family am I in, and what is wrong with the colour I have?