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Use Basic Shapes to be a Better Artist

Basic Shapes Clafiy difficult problems When I was young I had strange misconceptions and ideas of how to draw. I would pick up books and see artist describing things into basic shapes and I would think to myself that’s not how you draw. You just draw. Little did I know how much I was wrong! After years of training and a twenty year professional career in illustration and fine art  I know it is “the key” to drawing and painting regardless of style.…

Thumbnails The Key to Better Drawing and Painting

Art Tip Using Thumbnails for Planning Compositions Thumbnails are small quick sketches. These sketches aren’t to record details, forms or depth they are for planning out the elements of your compositions and designs. Design and composition are terms that people use a lot and they have a lot in common. Design is used to express the overall ideas of you image. Will your image be symmetrical or Asymmetrical. These basics ideas of balancing you objects. To balance something on an see saw or…

Six More Plein Air Painting Tips

More Plein Air Painting Tips Painting outdoors has many benefits as well as many challenges. Below are six tips that will help you be successful as you plein air paint. Practice these as you paint and you will improve your plein air painting. 1. Simplify the Scene – With plein air painting it’s so overwhelming with all the detail of the outdoors. So look for the basic ideas of the scene basic shapes, size relationships and value relationships. Try to simplify the values…

Six Tips for Plein Air Painting

Six Tips for Painting Outdoors in the Landscape AKA Plein Air Painting 1. Take Only What You Need When painting outdoors you want to take only the necessary items. The fewer paints, brushes, paint thinner, and so forth will keep your gear lighter and help you to have a better experience painting outdoors. Remember it’s not just about art supplies you also need to take water, bug repellent, sun screen, food, trash bags, hand clamps (to clamp you paint thinner container to your…

Improve Your Painting by Avoiding these Mistakes

  5 Ways to Improve Your Paintings, Mistakes to Avoid 1. Not Covering the Entire Canvas with Paint before Finishing off Areas You can’t see the value and color relationships in a painting unless all the general color and values already on the canvas. Just as it is hard to tell if a recipe works without all the ingredients combined together. Here are the general steps to a painting. 1. Start by drawing in the basic contours of your subject with either charcoal…

Painting Techniques and Tips: It’s all About the Angle

The Angle of the Brush is Key to Learning to Paint When painting no matter how long you have done it it’s always best to remember the basics. Sometimes this doesn’t happen either because you are just learning and still figuring out exactly what to do or you have experience painting aren’t giving it much thought. It’s the most basic of concepts and yet it has one of the greatest impacts on the look of your painting, it’s the angle you hold your…

Learning to Paint Landscapes

Painting the Landscape Outdoors There is no better way to learn to paint the landscape than to get outside and paint it live and on location. People did this for hundreds of years.  To learn to paint the landscape an artist went out into nature to learn to understand depth, perspective and most importantly color. This was an important part of the training of any artist so they could paint landscapes that felt natural and believable. Entering the 20th century photography became more affordable. Many…

How to Paint Landscapes

How to Paint the Landscape, It’s a Process There are hundreds of books that describe how to paint landscapes. I usually can’t stand most of these so called instructional books because there isn’t enough information on the process used to create a finished landscape. Before I start I will assume the reader has a basic understanding of color, color mixing and working with oil paint. If not you may not get as much out of this article. The good news is I have…

Mixing Colors: Paint and Tinting Strength

Mixing Colors: Tinting Strength of Colors All colors have a different tinting strength. For instance on our palette yellow have the least tinting strength you will need  more yellow(about 2/3 more than red to get an orange mixture .  Now I don’t want to start getting into recipes just note you will generally need more yellow. Blue is higher in tinting strength than red in general. A word of caution our green blue has the highest tinting strength of any color the palette …