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 …
Thumbnails, The Key to Better Painting and Drawing Read More »
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 …
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 …
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 …
Why is Buying Oil Paints So Confusing If you have ever had a to buy oil paints, gone to the art store and found yourself staring at the paints wondering why so few have the same names for their paint colors. It’s a problem that has plagued the art world since they began manufacturing oil …
Direct Painting and All Prima Painting Insights 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 and aren’t giving it much thought. It’s the …
Painting Techniques and Tips: It’s all About the Angle Read More »
Sometimes More Is More Painting with a Larger Palette As many of you who have read my blog or taken my classes know I normally encourage students to use a limited palette of colors. As you become a more advanced painter it’s good to learn to use a more extensive collection of colors. Here …
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 …
How to Use Black and White in Oil Painting One thing that happens with mixing paint is people reach for white or black too quickly when they are mixing colors. The biggest thing to remember is white or black will desaturate your color mixtures very quickly. When mixing your colors mix your …
