An ongoing inability to get into the studio and stay there was starting to worry me, so I committed to an hour-a-day painting challenge. I chose 20 photos from my years in Vermont and pledged to paint one each day. I quickly discovered, however, that the 18 x 24-inch s...

I became dissatisfied with the last small block I cut – the edges of the image are rougher than I'd like, but I wasn’t sure why. Could it have something to do with the fact that the block was more than 10 years old? Or is this material intrinsically grainy and crumbly,...