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​How to Begin Painting (Without Wasting Your Time or Money)

Painting can open up a world of creativity, relaxation, and self-expression; the hardest part is beginning.

Are watercolours harder than acrylics? What if you can’t draw?

Often, the biggest obstacle to success is overcoming the worry you’re wasting your time learning a new medium that doesn’t ‘fit’ your style, or you don’t have the talent to be an artist or, worse, wasting your money buying loads of art materials that you end up not using!

Getting over the Frustration Barrier

“Many things aren’t fun until you’re good at them. Every skill has what I call a frustration barrier, a period of time in which you’re horribly unskilled and you’re painfully aware of that fact.” Josh Kaufman – The First 20 Hours

Even uttering the phrase “I am an artist” can stir feelings of self-doubt. But take heart – every creative feels this impostor syndrome. What matters is moving forward anyway.

(Insights from art psychology books like Art & Fear, The War of Art, and Big Magic prove invaluable companions on the journey.)

The main thing to grasp is that painting is a teachable skill anyone can develop, regardless of innate talent. Some people prefer to take classes with a live instructor, while others prefer to learn independently.

There is a place in the art world for every single artist, and it’s never too late to begin painting.

The main thing to realise is that painting can be learned; it’s a skill that can be developed.

I hope this guide gives you insight into not just materials and mediums, but also a window into the possibilities.

Skill vs Talent (Talent is Overrated)

A Fan Brush used for blending

Can I learn art if I have no talent?

Sure you can.

Can you learn how to bake a cake if you have no talent?

100%.

It’s the same approach. It’s not about natural talent but learning a new skill.

Beginning painting is learning to embrace experiments and find inspiration in your mistakes.

‘Happy Accidents’ can be the beginnings of creative breakthroughs, so be open to when your painting ‘goes wrong’ and try to see what new lessons can be learnt.

Talent is overrated and can be an excuse you can rely on rather than putting in the time on the foundations. The path to success in learning any new skill is focusing more on improving the fundamentals.

“Skill is the ability to do something. Talent is the rate at which you can acquire the ability to do something.¹ If you have a talent for the guitar, that means you will learn to play the guitar faster than someone who doesn’t have a talent for the guitar. If you don’t have a talent for the guitar, that means it will take longer to learn to play the guitar than it would if you did have some talent. For most things* in life, talent doesn’t really matter. The rate at which you can acquire the ability to do something doesn’t really matter. What really matters is the length of time you can do something.” – Billy Oppenheimer 

This quote is so true, “what really matters is the length of time you can do something“.

If you set yourself a goal of creating one painting, you will face problems.

If it goes well, you’ll be worried that the next one won’t be as good, so you’ll procrastinate on continuing.

If it goes badly, you’ll convince yourself you have zero talent; painting isn’t for you, and all those teachers were right.

So what’s the answer?

Start an experiment.

Let’s say you’ll try to paint 100 paintings before you decide if it’s for you.

Does 100 sound too many? It’s estimated that Picasso created 13,500 paintings and around 100,000 prints and engravings.

And don’t get put off if you’re coming to painting later in life. Your unique experiences and perspectives can inform your practice and tell your journey. (Range: Why Generalists Triumph in A Specialized World By David Epstein is a great book on this)

I teach classical painting methods in oils and acrylics that focus on fundamental painting principles.

My philosophy is less is more. A distilled approach to classical painting. A solid foundation for anything you choose to paint, regardless of subject or medium.

I help other aspiring artists not make the same mistakes I did, so if you’ve ever dreamt of picking up a paintbrush and filling a canvas with colour but don’t know where to start, let’s go on a creative journey together to discover how to ‘see’ like an artist.

Students often ask me, ‘What essential materials do I need to begin painting?’

Winsor & Newton Cotman Travel Watercolour Kit

When you are learning anything new, you want to get the best results without investing too much too soon, so before we get into materials, I found it usually helps to begin with the end in mind.

You need to decide on your medium, and each medium has its own charm.

What are you trying to emulate, or what artists are you trying to recreate?

Make a note of paintings you like the style of, what they were painted with and the effect or technique you want to achieve.

You might have tried watercolours and got buckled paper or put off using oils due to the dangers and smell of turpentine (but not realise how far modern oil materials have come.)

You might be much happier with pencils and sketchbooks than painting on canvas.

You’ll get faster results if you can match the correct medium to your personality, aspirations and experience, but knowing which medium will suit you best is impossible until you try.

When you’re dealing with any paints, there are a few things to consider:

  • Handling properties
  • Drying times
  • Surface that you want to work on to
  • Implement you want to use to apply the paints
  • Environment or the space you’ve got available to you

Oil Paint

Oil paints can be amazing to work with, from quick Alla-prima oil canvas sketches to photo-realistic oil portraits.

They have a lovely buttery consistency and a slow drying time, enabling you to make changes over a longer period, adjust shapes, or work wet-into-wet with thick impasto marks.

Oil paints stay workable for much longer than acrylics; the paint on the palette stays pliable.

And oils are king when it comes to blending colours.

Because of their slow-drying nature, you can enjoy the luxury of tweaking and softening your work, creating wonderful, subtle paintings. This is especially true for portrait painting when the shading of the face can need constant revisiting.

If you’re a bit wary because of all the solvents associated with traditional oil painting, you could use water-mixable oils (WMO’s) that you can dilute with water. (Watermixable Oils vs Traditional Oils)

Pro Tip: Even though you can use water with water-mixable oils, you still need to introduce a water-mixable thinner and water-mixable oil to get the best result. This will give you better paint flow and handling. Try to think of them as  ‘water-cleanable’ oils.

Bear in mind that oil paint is a bit messy. I find it gets everywhere just because, well… it tends to get everywhere!

If you’ve got a house full of cats or small children running around, oil painting can make a mess; that goes for water-mixable oils, too.

With Oil Paint you can change your medium to alter paint handling qualities

Preparation is key. Due to the oil in oil paints (usually linseed oil), it’s best to work on a prepared canvas or board.

If you have plenty of time set aside for your painting, traditional oils can be fantastic, but if you want to work with thick paint, you need to consider drying times.

Each particular pigment needs a different amount of oil mixed with it, resulting in different drying times. e.g. Earth colours such as Burnt Umber are rapid drying, whereas Ivory Black takes much longer to dry.

Drying time guide for Winsor & Newton Artist Oils

Ensure a well-ventilated space; traditional turpentine and white spirits can be quite strong. I work with odourless mineral spirits or ‘Zest It‘ (a thinner made from citrus ) with very little odour compared to turpentine.

Many new solvent-free products, such as Gamblin’s Solvent-free Gel, are now coming to market, so there are plenty of alternatives. These offer a way of diluting the oil paint without using traditional solvents; you can also clean your brushes with walnut oil (Murphy’s soap in the US gets good reviews).

Acrylic Paint

burnt-sienna-winsor-newton

Professional Artist Acrylics have a higher pigment load than student-grade paints

One of the key things that make acrylics a great medium to start with is you can paint on anything: paper, card, canvas board, whatever you have to hand.

Set up is quick; they are water-soluble, fast-drying and water-resistant when dry. They clean up with water, and there’s no smell!

They can be used in thin layers like watercolours or in thicker, more opaque applications like oil paint.

You can mix clean, bright colours, and the crisp edges that can be achieved with acrylics can be perfect if you want to paint with a more graphic composition. You can quickly mask out areas, work over them, and easily cover a hard shape with thicker paint.

Blending with acrylics can be a bit frustrating due to the speed of the drying time; acrylics dry by evaporation and tend to dry quite quickly.

Artists refer to this as having a short ‘working time’; however, this can vary depending on several different factors; the main ones are:

  • How thick or thin is your application of the paint
  • The absorbency of the surface you’re working on
  • The size of the painting
  • What you dilute the paint with, either water or a specialist medium
  • The heat and humidity of the environment you’re painting in

If you are working on a large scale, it can be practically impossible to work the canvas as a whole to bring together the same finish. But apart from working quicker or on a small scale, you can add a medium to the paint to help keep the working time open for longer. Soft gel gloss, a retarder (slows down drying time) or my preferred choice, glazing liquid gloss, make achieving smooth blends with acrylics easier.

Pro tip: 7 Ways to Stop Acrylic Paint Drying too Fast

Watercolour Painting

Beautiful graded washes, translucent colours, seamless transitions, a quick drying time, and super reasonably priced to get started. You can buy a Cotman travel kit, a pad of watercolour paper, a couple of brushes and get going!

If you want to paint outdoors, watercolours are a great option because your kit is pretty compact. Quick, impromptu watercolour sketches of a little plant next to you or a study of your garden always look pretty good in my experience.

Watercolour is all about washes and contrasts over line work, so you must know your drawing skills.

You can, of course, paint abstractly to produce swirls, blocks and washes, but if you’re trying to create a scene, a landscape or a realistic still life, there will usually be a fair amount of a drawing element to it.

When you paint with acrylics or oils, although the initial sketch and drawing out are still important, you can build up the painting through the form using an opaque application, whereas, with watercolour, you’re traditionally washing over a line. (Here’s an Ink and Watercolour demo)

Beginning Watercolour Painting

So, what are the essential beginning painting materials I would need?

The Winsor & Newton Artists’ Choice Professional Watercolour Set of 18 half-pan colours would be a great start for new watercolourists. Great pigmentation and these little pans last a really long time.

Most of the time, you would be painting on paper. You can read more about How to Choose Watercolour Paper here.

You could get away with one good brush, but ideally three brushes, and you could probably do 80% of the paintings with these three brushes.

  • a small round
  • a medium round
  • a bigger mop brush

For watercolours or gouache, brushes are usually soft, have a spring and can hold water. Most traditional brushes are made from animal hair, and the quality of the brush’s bounce and feel depends on the quality of the hair used. But you can get really good quality synthetic brushes now, too. You can read about A Quick Way to Understand Brushes here.

Flat & Round Synthetic Acrylic Brushes (Isabey Isacryl, Rosemary & Co Golden Synthetic, Princeton Aspen)

I think a great starter set for acrylic painters would be the Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylic Colour Set of 12 20ml tubes.

Again, a handful of brushes would be a great start.

  • a small round for detail
  • a flat brush
  • a Filbert brush,
  • and a bigger brush 1 1/2 inches for laying down the tonal ground

And Glazing Liquid Gloss as your medium.

Beginning Painting Oil Painting

Michael Harding Introductory Oil Painting Set

And for oil painters, I’d start with the Michael Harding Introductory Kit. The set consists of six tubes of 40ml paint: Titanium White, Yellow Lake, Ultramarine Blue, Yellow Ochre Deep, Burnt Umber and Scarlet Lake.

When it comes to the brushes, it is definitely easier to have more and, ideally, be able to hold a few brushes in your hand at the same time.

For example, if you’ve got a white brush and want to go from white to black with oils, it is really tricky.

It takes loads of washing, impeccable cleaning or a huge load of paint to transfer or change oils from light to dark. It’s very easy to end up with muddy colours on your canvas and messy everything else, so ultra-clean practice of brush handling is key here.

You’ve got to spend more time colour mixing, then make a mark and leave it to keep a clean colour, gently blending out the edges.

The other difference with oils is you need less paint, so you only need to put out a tiny bit of pigment. It will last ages, and a small paint volume will have good coverage.

When it comes to the mediums, you can use an odourless mineral spirit, like Gamsol, to cut through the paint to thin it. An oil medium to add flow and oil. Or one of the many non-toxic mediums as an alternative to using a thinner.

How do I set up a basic painting workspace at home?

Firstly, consider light and ventilation.

Essentially, the easiest thing is to have a table and a slightly angled board or a tabletop easel because then you can sit behind and paint in the right light.

You can sit next to a window, but it will vary depending on what time of day it is or how dark it is.

An LED bulb or an LED panel behind and above you is the best thing to get. Clipped on, looking down onto the easel.

This, again, will depend on if you’re using oils, which are a bit trickier because they often get a glare onto your canvas. So you have to make sure you’ve got the hang just right, or you can adjust the angle.

Have a kitchen roll or rags for cleaning up and a bin, and make sure you have a metal bin for oils because of the fumes and good practice with the rags disposal.

What are some of the fundamental basic techniques I should focus on as a beginner painter?

Detail from: Venice, Light & The Landscape Course

It sounds boring, but working with black and white to work on your tones, value, and contrast is fundamental. Paying attention to the value (lightness and darkness) of colours and learning to create contrast in your paintings is essential for depth and visual interest.

And then, after that, I would work on colour mixing because if you’ve got your tones and colour mixing right, everything else falls into place.

And also not to forget, drawing.

I always say most painting mistakes come from your drawing mistakes.

Brush techniques

Practise blending, scumbling, dry brushing, layering, and impasto (thick paint application).

You need more brush techniques with watercolour. With this medium, mastering brush control is key for achieving textures and effects, such as variated wash, wet into wet, lifting and blooms.

You’ll be thankful for that larger brush that holds more water!

When you’re working in acrylics, my top tip would be use more paint than you think you would need.

And with oils, make sure that you don’t drag or you don’t reapply; it’s so easy to make colours dirty. Ideally, you’d lay a colour down, leave it, and then work over it to blend the edges.

How do I choose a subject to paint?

Begin with simple subjects and compositions, and you can tackle more complex scenes or ideas as you gain confidence.

If you are looking for simple projects, I’d recommend signing up for the email newsletter, if you haven’t already. There are 10 references to work from; just pick one of them and follow it.

I often find beginners want to put their own mark onto a canvas; even when they’re first beginning, they don’t want to copy something. But if you look at any of the Students Success Pages, everyone following the same image with the same colours has their own character and natural style. It’s almost like having your own handwriting but with painting!

So, when you are learning, I recommend copying the basics until you understand the language of paint.

Which of your courses would you recommend?

The Beginners Acrylic Painting Course gives a good overview of different paints, such as high-flow acrylics, heavy-body acrylics and different mediums.

There are three different projects: a still life, a seascape and a landscape.

Alternatively, if you did one of the Morning Painting sessions, like the Modern Still Life, you would just have one subject, five colours, and three brushes.

It’s super simple to get started. There’s a drawing guide that you can follow along and you get to a finished painting quicker because it’s more focused.

Remember, painting should be enjoyable!

Let your creativity flow, and don’t be overly critical of your work; it’s all part of developing your ‘talent.’

Continue Reading​How to Begin Painting (Without Wasting Your Time or Money)

New Coastal Canvas: Impressionistic Seascape Acrylic Painting Course

Morning class,

Welcome to my NEW Acrylic Painting Course, Coastal Canvas!

This impressionistic seascape is all about simplicity.

It has been designed with short 10 -20 minute ‘micro-learning’ lessons, so you’ll build your knowledge, even if you’ve never painted seascapes. The project is so simple that you’ll have a finished painting in a few short sessions.

In this course, we view the coastal path across gentle waters, where sailboats are harboured up or just coming into the dock.

Set in the early evening golden hour light, the foreground has a secluded coastal garden with pink hydrangeas in full bloom; the greens are dark, cool and olive in tone and frame the passage of the sea.

Then, in the far distance, you’ve got a warm headland of pastel yellows and greens glowing from the golden light, creating a contrast of values and tones of greens from the foreground to the background, and then just a glimpse of a white lighthouse in the far distance.

Loosen Up Your Acrylic Painting

Many beginners think that painting the sea is too hard or that getting a convincing perspective is beyond them and that they need special drawing skills. But in reality, all you need are simple shapes, scale and a framing shift when mixing your colours.

This course is designed for beginners, with a simple subject (even if you’re brand new to drawing) and a limited palette of colours.

Learn how you can keep your brushstrokes simple and the subject fresh to create an impression of a scene rather than a photorealistic rendering. (You could also follow along with Watermixable Oils or Traditional Oils.)

I’ll walk you through how to mix colours, analyse pigments and distil your subject into a compelling painting. We’ll cover the preparation of your surface & drawing out, observing the composition with sketching and scale, and keeping the boats in scale to give that sense that they’re in the distance.

Inky Depths to create realism.

Change the intensity of the greens by changing the pigments, lose the fear, and embrace black in landscapes and seascapes. You’ll discover you don’t need to go bright with your greens in order to make them feel realistic. In fact, less is more; the more darker and muted your greens are, the more realistic they will read in a landscape painting.

When capturing coastal light, sea and sky, understanding the undertone and colour bias of the different blues to achieve the glimmering reflected lights.

When it comes to the details of flora and focal points, we keep things gestural and impressionistic, looking for passion, not perfection.

By the end of this course, you’ll have that insight into the hidden under-workings of a painting, teaching you classical painting skills alongside impressionistic brushstrokes.

Gained confidence that you could create a painting from a simple subject, motivating you to tackle different, more challenging views from your own photo library.

Capture the Essence, Not Every Detail.

  • Learn how to paint realistic headland by controlling your colour intensity
  • How to create a ‘vignette’ with your foliage to frame your view
  • How to paint the sea by using colour strings
  • How to control water flow and absorption
  • How to select an image that will translate well to paint
  • How to check if a subject will make a compelling painting subject (by creating a postcard prep study)

There are some intermediate lessons where we expand the colour palette, but each step is described clearly and succinctly.

What’s in the Course?

  • 1hr 45min Self-Paced Downloadable Video Course
  • 1 x Seascape Painting subject from start to finish, working from a reference image.
  • 8-step-by-step video lessons (split into ‘micro-learning’ sections.)
  • DRAWING TEMPLATE – line drawing to follow to help you overcome the blank canvas
  • TOOLS & MATERIALS: Downloadable Materials List PDF
  • REFERENCE IMAGES: Downloadable Line drawings.

Study at your own pace ✔

Over 1hr 45min+ hours of detailed video instruction ✔

Full Lifetime Access to the Lessons ✔

One-time Payment ✔

Who this course is for?

A beginner to acrylics who wants to gain confidence in their painting by following a step-by-step proven plan. An aspiring artist who loves the sea and the coast and has folders of photos they would love to capture in paint but are unsure of the best approach.

Learn More about the course here: Coastal Canvas Impressionistic Seascape Course

Continue ReadingNew Coastal Canvas: Impressionistic Seascape Acrylic Painting Course

The Insecurities of Becoming a Portrait Painter

The act of creating a portrait is an emotional one.

It goes far beyond capturing a mere likeness; it delves deep, exposing their character and yours.

A finished portrait may exude confidence and calm, but the journey of its creation is often a complex maze of doubts, fears, and self-criticism for the artist.

We can overthink the composition or the medium choice. Then we question, maybe we should have studied drawing a little longer. Maybe we should start when we’ve got more time?

These are often (well-constructed) excuses based on two main insecurities.

  1. The fear we won’t do the subject justice
  2. The fear of social ridicule

I’ve just started a portrait of my nephew, and before I began the process, those same butterfly feelings bubbled up.

The first fear is dealt with more logically now, compared to when I was first starting out.

I still question, ‘What painting method will I use?” “Will it look like him?” “Will I overwork it?

But it’s the second fear that seems to hit me the most and as hard.

Will someone else judge your portrait attempts and deem you a ‘bad’ artist?

Probably.

But I’ve learnt this can happen if you’re a professional artist with years of painting experience behind you as easily as if you’re an absolute beginner.

On your first driving lesson, if someone judged you as being a ‘bad driver’, you would have laughed at them and said, ‘I know! It’s the first time I’ve ever tried.’

No blame, no shame. That’s the essence of successfully progressing as a portrait painter.

The Challenges

If you’ve overcome the fear of actually starting, painting a portrait comes with different challenges to other subjects.

First, there is the technical challenge of creating a three-dimensional form on a two-dimensional surface.

Then, the colour mixing challenge of expressing realistic skin tones, hair and features.

And finally, the realism challenge of creating a likeness to the sitter.

So, how can I help?

Here are three solutions that I’ve found can really help overcome insecurities when painting portraits:

1. Build Confidence Through Practice:
One of the most effective ways to combat insecurities is through consistent practice.

Many of my paintings are just for personal use and not intended for public viewing. The more I practice, the more my skills will improve, leading to increased confidence in my abilities.

2. Focus on the Process, Not Just the Outcome:
Insecurities often stem from fixating on the end result.

Focus towards enjoying the creative process itself. Self-expression, exploration, and experimentation. When the process becomes the primary goal, you can find fulfilment in your work regardless of external judgments.

3. Seek progress, not perfection:
Imperfections are a natural part of the creative journey, and learning any new skill will be a series of jumps in progress and self-reflection on how much there still is to learn.

When following a course, the aim is just to follow the steps.

“I can’t see a way through,” said the boy.

Can you see your next step?

Yes.

Just take that said the horse.”

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, Charlie Macksey

I have two portrait courses that can help guide you through.

1: Acrylic Portrait Course (suitable for beginners)

Acrylic Portrait Course

The focus of this course is simple, natural colour mixes to help you create realistic skin tones.

The concern for many beginners is that portraiture feels too challenging and would be above their current skill level. So I’ve designed these portrait courses to be as user (and fear) friendly as possible.

We learn about lighting, colour theory and create colour swatches before even starting the portraits. There are line drawings to work from, and we start slow with just a four-colour painting palette.

(You can see some student results here.)

So, will the course be a challenge?

Yes

Will you feel like a ‘portrait imposter’

You will, but only until you start painting.

If you stick to the lessons and follow the steps, you’ll gain huge confidence in what is achievable.

  • Creating Realistic Skin Tones, learn the secrets behind mixing and applying skin tones that appear natural and lifelike.
  • Gain insights into the nuances of capturing subtle transitions in the skin, from shadows to highlights.
  • Material recommendations.
  • How to master the Zorn Palette, the amazing power of a limited palette.
  • Colour theory, colour strings, and palette choice.
  • Lighting theory to create accurate colour mixes for your portraits.
  • Paint application & brushwork, from scumbling to palette knife.
  • Poster study using a more direct Alla Prima style.
  • Includes over 4 1/2 hours of video instruction, three self-study painting assignments, materials guide PDF, and downloadable reference images to paint from.

2. Oil glazing portrait course (suitable for intermediate or have some drawing experience with portraits)

Oil Portrait Glazing Course

This course is a more advanced portrait course teaching a classical painting approach based on multiple layers of painting (called in-direct painting)

It needs patience and more time commitment.

It’s a method that seems counterintuitive. Paint your portrait first in black and white and then apply colour on top.

The art of combining the classical technique of grisaille (black and white) with the mesmerizing effects of colour glazing creates stunningly lifelike and captivating portraits.

  • Mastering Grisaille Technique: Learn the foundation of grisaille painting, using monochromatic tones to create a strong value structure and achieve realistic shading.
  • Creating your own painting medium (traditional and modern materials)
  • Completing a value study painting using the planes of the face.
  • Discover the art of colour glazing, layering translucent colours over your grisaille underpainting to achieve luminosity and rich tonal variations.
  • Explore the magic of transparent and semi-transparent glazes to enhance the vibrancy & learn about glazing mediums.
  • Completing two head portrait paintings.
  • Includes over 6 hours of video instruction, two self-study paintings, materials guide PDF, and downloadable reference images to paint from.

P.S. – If you have done either of the portrait courses and have any encouraging words or testimonials for other artists who might be at the point where you were before starting the course, drop me a comment below!

Continue ReadingThe Insecurities of Becoming a Portrait Painter

7 Step Guide: Achieving Realistic Reflections with Acrylic Paints

Morning Class,

This week, I’ve been working on a Spritz cocktail painting inspired by one I enjoyed in St Mawes.

This subject offers an excellent opportunity to practice capturing reflections in water and exploring how coloured liquids can challenge our visual perception.

While painting the background and the surface around the glass might be relatively straightforward, the real challenge arises when we start painting the cocktail itself. Your mind will naturally begin to second-guess what you’re seeing. Thoughts like, “That’s too dark for a lemon,” or “The straw should be white, not grey,” might pop up.

You’ll be craving a cocktail yourself after tackling all these tricky reflections!

Part One: How to Paint a Spritz

Part Two: How to Paint a Spritz

You can see a Student Success page from the lesson here: Aperol Spritz Student Success

Continue Reading7 Step Guide: Achieving Realistic Reflections with Acrylic Paints

Drawing the Doors of St Mawes

Exploring the narrow cobbled streets of St Mawes, every turn uncovers a charming cottage or an absolutely stunning view. This small historic fishing village is nestled at the end of the Roseland peninsula on the south coast of Cornwall and is magical.

Natural stone, slate, and white lime-washed simplicity, so with pen in hand, I set about capturing some of St. Mawes architectural coastal doorways.

Continue ReadingDrawing the Doors of St Mawes

New Still Life Sunlight & Shadows Acrylic Painting Course

Morning class,

Get your pencil case ready and sharpen your brushes, as I’ve been busy in the studio adding the finishing touches to a NEW Acrylic Still Life Painting Course.

In Sunlight & Shadows, we focus on a couple of sunlit terracotta plant pots against a lovely pink wall. Vibrant hues and the mesmerising play of colourful shadows can add so much more variety and intrigue to a composition; imagine capturing the essence of these elements and bringing them to life on your canvas.

Shadows can totally transform a scene. We sometimes think of them as dark, but they don’t have to be dull.


I’ve developed this painting course to teach you the skills and techniques to create a stunning painting. We’ll cover the preparation of your surface, drawing out, exploring colour groupings and blocking-in.

Discover the secrets of a split primary palette, enabling you to achieve the widest range of hues and expand your colour knowledge.

Create an illusion of reality, turning a form following the light fall and experiment with slow-drying acrylic mediums to manipulate and blend colours with ease, enhancing the realism of your painting.

You’ll learn about underpainting, using warm and cool colours to evoke a sense of natural light. When painting the greenery, we mix colour strings and observe value and colour shifts, most importantly, looking at the concept of how the shadows are key, actually as important as our main subject.

Working through this acrylic still-life course, you’ll learn to capture depth, richness, and texture while learning classical painting techniques.

And in the bonus Lesson, The Palette Knife Edition, we start to simplify it even more, learning how to expertly wield a palette knife, adding texture, expression and freedom to your artwork!

New Still Life Sunlight & Shadows Acrylic Painting Course

What’s in the Course?

  • 1 x Terracotta Pot Still Life subject from start to finish, based in the studio working from a reference image.
  • 1 x BONUS palette knife edition.
  • 6 LESSON COURSE, study at your own pace (with lifetime access to these recordings)
  • Step-by-step instructional videos so that you can follow along at your own pace.
  • Each stage is a detailed yet easy-to-follow process.
  • DRAWING TEMPLATE – line drawing to follow to help you overcome the blank page
  • LIFETIME ACCESS to video lessons, download on separate devices, keep forever.
  • Downloadable Tools and Materials List
  • Downloadable jpeg reference images and reference line drawings.
  • Printable Class materials list, over 3+ hrs of detailed video instruction.
Continue ReadingNew Still Life Sunlight & Shadows Acrylic Painting Course

7 Tools & Techniques Every Artist Can Use to Check Their Own Work

Painting is all about perspective.

The shifting nature of our perception can be a huge obstacle when learning how to paint.

Have you ever seen your artwork as a masterpiece one moment, only to label it a disaster the next? I know I have!

The first step to advancing your critical judgment skills is to realise that there probably won’t be a moment you see your work with 100% clarity.

We can all be swayed by various cognitive biases of creation.

A cognitive bias is a tendency to make decisions or take action directed by emotions rather than by careful thought. They can subtly skew our judgment and we can become influenced by our own personal preferences, beliefs, or feelings caused by our values and experiences. When viewing our paintings we tend to place excessive value on pieces we have crafted ourselves or have sentimental attachments to certain scenes or memories.

Or you may just been standing at the easel all afternoon, trying to mix the exact colour for too long and you can’t see it anymore!

The importance of self-checking your own work as an artist.

Do you find it easier to notice flaws in other people’s artwork compared to your own?

When you’re so concentrated on your own painting, it can be challenging to assess your work and identify areas that need improvement. This is because you are seeing others’ work from a fresh perspective every time. You’ve no idea of the time it took them to paint it, the struggles they faced with the materials or the entire backstory behind the image. You just have a single image to look at. That’s why having an art tutor or going to a class with live feedback can be so helpful.

So if the success of our paintings is based on the way we can critically view them, what can we do to be more objective?

I’ve put together a list of 7 small but helpful tools and techniques that I use in my painting practice to help me and hopefully, they will help you too.

Painting is repainting.

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Vermeer in Amsterdam: Exhibition Review

Vermeer - Girl With Pearl Earring - Amsterdam

Back in the summer of 2021, I read the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, were planning the biggest-ever single collection of Vermeer’s paintings for a Spring 2023 retrospective.

Johannes Vermeer (1632 -1675) is one of the great 17th-century Dutch masters, best known for his tranquil, contemplative scenes depicting everyday life.

February saw the opening of the exhibition, and last week we were lucky enough to experience the show!

What I love about Vermeer’s paintings is how he captures the sense of light fall; it feels like there’s a natural volume. He uses different paint handling to express a different quality.

From subtle gradations in the shadows as light streams through a window and drops away. To sunlight falling onto an object so convincingly, if you put your hand in the painting, it would be warm.

Not only did he capture the light, he told a story.

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Amsterdam, Vermeer & The Little Street

This week I’m lucky enough to be in Amsterdam to experience the largest ever Vermeer Exhibition!

28 of Johannes Vermeer’s known 37 works, have been brought together from museums and private collections across the world for this unique opportunity at the Rijksmuseum.

It’s currently a sell out show with over 450,000 tickets sold! but they are releasing new tickets so it’s worth checking the site. (Rijksmuseum Vermeer Tickets)

On display is one of my favourites, ‘The Little Street’ and we do a master copy of the painting in the Beginners Water Mixable Oil Course.

When I get back to the studio I’ll put together a exhibition review but for now I’m off to grab a coffee and a Stroopwafel.

The 5hr+ course is best suited if you’ve been working with acrylics and want to learn about the pros and cons of water-mixable oils. We go through lots of materials and options to give you an overview of what’s available with water-mixable oils.

Speak soon,

Cheers,
Will

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How to Paint a Moonlit Harbour: Step-by-Step Painting Tutorial


Morning class, this week we’re going to look at how to paint this beautiful moonlit harbour scene using acrylics in this two-part painting study. It’s of Smeaton’s Pier in St Ives, Cornwall, and the reference is a photo taken on a full strawberry moon.

This tutorial is all about colour perception.

Painting landscapes in low light, dusk or evening, makes judging colours tricky. The value range is much more compressed, and we have to overcome our perceived ‘memory’ of an object which can be very strong.

Instead of painting the sand ‘yellow’, we have to paint it a dull purple. And what we know as a bright white sail is now a mid-dusky blue in the evening light. It’s a bit more challenging to focus on what the colours actually are, rather than what you think they should be. It can result in paintings that are too light, too contrasting and not subdued enough.

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New Still Life Peaches Acrylic Painting Course

Morning class, “Market Day Peaches”, my NEW Acrylic Still Life Painting Course, is now available.

This is the third project in my series of short courses inspired by morning paintings. All are easy to follow and completed in just a few 1hr painting sessions.

Each one follows the same approach.

  • A single painting from start to finish.
  • A limited colour palette.
  • A handful of brushes.
  • A small canvas.
  • A simple subject.
  • 4 x short lessons (under 45-minutes each)

Simple Impressionistic Brushstrokes

I recently came home from the local market with these amazing-tasting peaches and just dropped them in a bowl on the kitchen table, and they looked good enough to paint. The placement felt more casual, like a snapshot of everyday life, which inspired this painting.

In this third short course, I’ve taken all the principles of a traditional still life but kept the composition informal.

This subject has expanded from the first simple modern still-life painting course of a jug and three pears; we’re now introducing folded fabric, adding glass, a vase of flowers and a bowl.

We’ll cover the preparation of your surface & drawing out, mixing colour strings and blocking in.

So although we are expanding our horizons a little bit, the course has been designed with simple learning blocks—clear step-by-step instructions to keep you on track.

We’ll only use six colours, including white, and if you’ve been following some of my other courses, you will already have most, if not all, of the colours.

The focus of this piece is those beautiful colourful peaches, but I’ve designed the lessons so you approach them last.

We start with just two colours, looking at the subtle shifts between the cools and warms, building up the shadows and shapes so that when we get to the peaches, and you extend your palette, all of a sudden they’ll come together so real because you’ve spent the time doing all the supporting work up to that stage. (The counterintuitive approach for this painting is to spend more time with the first stages to balance our form and tones.)

So find a comfy seat, grab a brew and a biscuit and let’s get painting!

What’s in the Course?

  • 1 x Market Day Peaches Still Life from start to finish, based in the studio working from a reference image.
  • 4 x downloadable video lessons, split into separate chapters that follow sequentially. Step-by-step instructional videos so that you can follow along at your own pace.
  • Each stage is a detailed yet easy-to-follow process.
  • You have lifetime access, downloadable on separate devices.
  • One-time payment
  • Downloadable jpeg reference images & reference line drawings.
  • Printable Class materials list
  • Over 2.5+ hrs of detailed video instruction.

(You will need a printer or print shop for the reference image) 

Learn more about the course here: Market Day Peaches Acrylic Still Life Course

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Studio Notes // 005: Lucien Freud

…Death of An Artist and New Course coming soon!

Every few weeks, I share my top art inspirations I’ve read, experimented with or listened to. Here’s this week’s edition of things I’ve enjoyed, hoping they might inspire your own work too…

New exhibition

EXHIBITION: Lucian Freud: New Perspectives National Gallery, London, until 22 January

There is a new Lucian Freud exhibition at the National Gallery, London. This video gives a great insight into some of the iconic pieces at the show.

And if you can’t make it to a live exhibition, no worries; this research shows how 3-minutes of online art viewing can significantly increase your well-being!

I’ve been listening too…

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7 Ways to Sign Your Paintings

…Without Ruining All Your Hard Work

After all the concentration and effort it takes to create a work, you’d have thought the final signature would come easy; we sign our names all the time, right?

But there can be so many choices, full name or first name? Initials or motifs? Month or Year? Paint or Pen? Filled with hesitation, we’re left wondering if our final mark on the canvas will ruin the piece.

Here’s a guide to help you decide, practice and sign your work confidently.

Blame it on the Renaissance

Craftspeople have been signing their artworks for thousands of years. In Italy, the most dramatic shift in the use of signatures for painters was during the Renaissance; previously, they had worked within a group guild system.

Guilds (Arti)
In most of Europe, crafts and professions had been governed by guilds for centuries, ever since the expansion of towns and cities in the early Middle Ages. These sworn associations controlled trade, limited outside competition, established standards of quality, and set rules for the training of apprentices. Membership was usually compulsory—only guild members could practice their trades within a city and its territory.
Italian Renasissance Resources 

Artists wanted to be known for their creations, so the signature began to be used more frequently.

It allowed Patrons and collectors to show ‘who’ painted the piece, a chance for work to be seen and admired. The signature became as important as the artwork itself, and in Italy, this change began to elevate painters from craftspeople to artists. So much so, Dürer commented on how he was perceived whilst travelling there.

“Here I am a gentleman, at home a sponger [dauber – a crude or inartistic painter].”
Albrecht Dürer 

1. Signing your work, overcoming the tipping point

When you’re first learning to paint, there can be apprehension about whether to sign your early pieces or not. If you’re not super proud of your painting, it can feel a little presumptuous to sign ‘like an artist’.

The first decision is a balance between embarrassment and pride. I feel it’s on a sliding scale…

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