Category: HOW TO PAINT
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Advantage of Brown Wooden Palette
The ‘brown’ of the wooden palette and the ‘brown’ of the imprimatura [brown underpainting] go hand in hand in oil painting. Mixing on a wooden palette gives you a good idea how the color will look on the canvas. As for cleaning a wooden palette, you’ve got to do it after each painting session. I’ve […]
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Painting a Sunset Sky with Yellow on the Horizon
From Susan Tschantz To paint a yellowish sky at the horizon with a bluer sky above without getting a green color from mixing the yellow and blue, I first underpaint the sky using yellow ocher, then I let this dry before adding any blue. I start from the top, and using wide horizontal strokes the full […]
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9 Tips on Getting Your Paintings into a Gallery
From Carson C.T.Collins If you’re interested in exhibiting your artwork in commercial galleries, here’s some stuff I have learned over the past 30 years, for whatever it’s worth. Most galleries have a web site. Go there first. This will tell you what their submissions policies are (which, in this era of rapidly changing technology, varies greatly […]
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Safety Tips for Using Art Materials
By Marion Boddy-Evans Most of the safety issues with art materials and in your art studio ought to be common sense, but of course what is sensible to one person is over cautious or careless to another. For me, safety and art materials comes down to one rule: “Art materials weren’t made for eating.” Here are […]
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Photorealism: What’s the Point?
By Marion Boddy-Evans Note: This is an opinion piece, a strongly expressed opinion on the topic of photorealism. In a nutshell: I don’t see the point of photorealism where what’s painted is exactly the same as what you’d see in a photo, where the artist hasn’t done anything to the composition. Too frequently it’s merely a […]
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Painting Cast and Form Shadows
By Marion Boddy-Evans Not all shadows are equal. There are in fact two very different kinds that occur in any subject — cast and form shadows. Identifying these and approaching them differently, rather than just painting a generic ‘shadow’, will enhance any painting. So what is the difference? What is a Cast Shadow? This is what […]
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How to Develop a Personal Painting Style
By Marion Boddy-Evans Part of being an artist is having an identifiable style, that special ‘something’ that enables someone to look at a painting and know that it’s by you, regardless of what the subject of the painting is. A particular painting style is something a gallery will want to see in your work. So how do you […]
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22 Mistakes to Avoid When Painting
From Brian Simons This list of commonly made mistakes in paintings comes from Canadian artist Brian Simons, who works in acrylics. Brian says: “I first began to paint approximately 20 years ago, when we moved from Alberta to Vancouver Island. Prior to that I focused mostly on drawing and sketching. Being a self-taught artist, I have derived […]
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Painting on Hardboard or Wood
By Marion Boddy-Evans Canvas is perceived by many people to be the best support for painting, but hardboard (wood) should not be shunned and in fact some would argue that it’s a superior support as it’s rigid, not flexible like canvas. Many of the paintings that have survived the best from previous centuries are painted on […]
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How to Create a Body of Work and a Distinctive Style as an Artist
From Martha Marshall If you’re looking to get gallery representation, or to sell your art in some other, more innovative way, we have to assume that you already have a body of work that consists of at least 20 or 30 works in a style, medium, colors, and subject matter that distinguish you from every other artist […]
