painting tutorials, courses, tips & techniques

A student emailed me last week (hey, Vicki!) with a problem I think most painters face.

She was stuck in that difficult space between wanting to paint and overthinking every decision about what to actually paint.

That uncertainty can easily stop your enthusiasm to get back to the easel.

To break the cycle, she decided on a simple idea.

Return to the same object and paint it in different colour ways, using the blue coffee jug from the Still Life E-book as a familiar starting point.

This is actually a brilliant way to learn.

When you remove the anxiety of constantly searching for new subjects, your attention can move onto the real foundations of painting.

If you’re in a similar situation, here are some colour palettes you can use to develop your painting skills without constantly having to find a new subject to paint.

A simple object becomes familiar territory

When you’re painting the same jug over and over again, you can practise ellipses and shadow mapping. You begin to instinctively understand the proportions of the object. Your hand becomes steadier because you are solving the same visual problems repeatedly rather than looking for new ones every session.

Then the colour schemes themselves become the lesson.

Burnt Umber + White

Warm and very traditional, this is an excellent palette for learning form and understanding value relationships.

Similar to the first shadow-mapping exercise in the e-book, adding white to the Burnt Umber gives you a full range of tonal values to work with.

Earth colours have long been used for oil painting underpaintings because they tend to dry relatively quickly compared with many other pigments. That makes this simple monochrome setup an ideal palette for practice studies.

You could also use Winsor & Newton Galeria Pale Umber, which is a mixture of Burnt Umber and White, as a ground colour. Combined with the monochrome palette, it creates a really strong traditional starting point to experiment with.

Pale Umber, in the student Galeria Range

Raw Umber + White

Softer and slightly cooler.

Great for subtle value shifts, especially with yellows. If you think of Raw Umber as a dark yellow, it can be a very effective colour for darkening yellows without causing colour drift. On the ‘How to paint light and shade‘ tutorial, you can see how effective Raw Umber can be as a colour neutraliser. In this tutorial, I use Cadmium Yellow Light, muted with Raw Umber, for the apple’s form.

Ultramarine Blue + White

One of the fastest ways to improve as an artist is to get into the habit of checking your own work as you make it.

That might sound obvious, but it is one of the biggest differences between a beginner and a more experienced painter.

A beginner often keeps painting, hoping the piece will somehow come together. If anything, desperately picking up the pace when things start to go ‘out’.

A more experienced artist stops. Then checks, then adjusts.

That practice changes everything.

Progress in painting is not about learning new techniques. It is about learning to see. The more accurately you can judge your own work, the less dependent you are on guesswork or hoping for the best.

You start to spot small problems before they become big ones. You notice when a drawing is leaning, when a value is too light, when a shape is too wide.

And once you can see the problem, you can usually fix it.

That is why artists have always used simple checking tools to sharpen their eyes. Not because they lacked skill, but because they understood something important:

Your brain gets used to what it is looking at.

After staring at a painting for too long, mistakes can begin to disappear. The wonky ellipse looks normal. The portrait that is slightly ‘off’ starts to feel convincing. The unbalanced landscape composition seems ok, because you’ve looked at it for an hour.

A mirror breaks that familiarity.

It reflects the painting back to you in a way your brain has not yet memorised.

And suddenly, you can see it again.

It’s always a pleasure to visit a gallery that feels so naturally in tune with the kind of paintings you already enjoy, and Pallant House in Chichester feels exactly like that.

The gallery is situated within a Grade I-listed Queen Anne townhouse, with an impressive modern extension. It creates a comfortable mix of the period beauty of a townhouse, built in 1712 for Henry Lisbon Peckham and his wife, Elizabeth Albery, and the contemporary galleries of the new wing.

Morning class,

This week, I’ve been focusing on the simplicity of set-up and essential techniques.

Sometimes you want to get painting quickly, so I’ve propped a blank canvas or board behind my subject on the kitchen countertop, where the light was streaming in.

I used Oil Paper from a pad, just a handful of water-mixable oils, one water-mixable thinner for dilution, and a couple of brushes.

Eucalyptus Leaves

I was looking for the replacement leads for my mechanical pencil.

Just leads.

I knew I had put them somewhere sensible. Somewhere memorable. Somewhere safe. I just had no idea where that somewhere was.

I asked Vanessa.

“Have you seen my 0.5mm Uni leads? Little plastic case. White top?”

Vanessa has an almost supernatural ability to locate the things I misplace. She seems to carry an internal map of my chaos, but even she looked doubtful this time.

I checked the drawers. Lifted sketchbooks. Opened tins.

I briefly wondered whether they had migrated to the kitchen, victims of one of my “I’ll just put this here for a moment” decisions.

Nothing.

Amazon offered hope. £4.19 for 24. One click, and the problem would disappear.

But I didn’t want tomorrow’s leads. I wanted the ones I already owned.

A small stick of lost graphite was the moment it caught up with me. The moment I had to admit that my art materials storage “system” was not a system at all. It was more like a leaning tower of creative good intentions, a stack of brushes and a precariously balanced tear-off palette.

It’s hard to be creative when you can’t find a pencil.

One of the most common questions students ask me is: “How can I paint looser?” Many students want to know how to loosen up their painting, especially if they tend to get stuck in careful details.

But loose painting is rarely the starting point.

In my experience, what often looks loose on the surface is actually controlled simplification underneath. Learning to paint with control first makes a far stronger  ‘loose’ painting later on.

Messy and loose can look similar at a glance.

Structurally, they are completely different.

Loose painting is confident editing.
Messy painting is an undecided execution.

That difference in how they are constructed changes everything.

The hidden structure

If you look at painters like Sargent or Sorolla, their work, on the surface, feels fresh and spontaneous. The brushstrokes seem almost casual.

But slow it down.

The drawing is solid.
The values are clear.
The edges are intentional.

And also, let’s not forget the scale. When you’re first starting out and most probably painting small, 20 x 25cm, or in sketchbooks, you can flick through images online and think, ” Wow, how do those paintings look so luscious and painterly, yet still hold that accuracy?”

But the scale of the painting can really help.

Left: The Jester Don John of Austria, Diego Velázquez. 1632–1633.
Right: Buffoon Don Juan of Austria, John Singer Sargent. 1879.

You’re six months into painting, with a couple of decent Monet studies under your belt, and you’re starting to experiment with Van Gogh’s impasto brush strokes.

A friend walks by your easel: “Oh, you’re copying again?”

That word, copying, lands like an accusation.

It doesn’t feel like “real painting,” does it? Real painters have an original vision. Real painters have their own unique style. Real painters don’t spend Tuesday afternoons recreating someone else’s portrait from 1885.

Except they do. They did. They all did.

Last week, I sat down to write new goals for the year ahead.

Eating healthier, moving more (that came up a lot!), and I noticed myself saying something I’ve said many times before. “This year I’m going to paint more plein air.”

It sounds reasonable. But I’ve learnt that with painting and drawing, more isn’t the thing that moves you forward. Focus is.

Alignment over Inspiration

If you want to reach your art goals in 2026, you need better art alignment.

Last week, we talked about how any mark you make is progress. That still stands.

But when you have a specific goal, it helps to be specific with your practice too.

If portraits are your goal, you don’t need to “earn” your way there by painting still lives first. Even a small, focused study, like an ear, can move you closer to where you want to be.

I made the mistake of telling my sister about my resolutions, and she phoned yesterday to check up on me! I made a fumbled excuse about it being too cold to go outside to paint (I know some readers will laugh who are in -25 degrees, so appreciate my excuse is unfounded!)

So today I’ve propped an easel in the kitchen warmth, looking out the window. Heating on and tea by my side.

It’s a small move towards plein air.

Reading an article, watching a video, or reading a book counts as research, but it isn’t the same as actually practising drawing or painting.

Time under Tension

Instead of asking whether you’ll paint more portraits this year, try planning the kind of day that, repeated often enough, would make improvement inevitable.

It’s usually not a matter of finding the time, but of doing the thing you said you wanted to do in the time you set aside for it, without letting yourself drift into something else.

As the year unfolds, check for alignment. Treat new methods as learning, not success or failure. Create in ways that energise you. And be kinder to your artistic self.

Like drawing a portrait, a slight adjustment in direction can change everything.

Wishing you a calm, creative New Year ahead.

Will

Winter Walk, December 2025

As the pace softens and the new year comes into view, there’s often a quiet sense of possibility in the air.

It’s like a mirror has been held up to what you’d promise yourself you’d do – if only you had the time.

This is when expectations and comparison creeps in.

Goals grow too big too fast, and before you know it, the idea of making this your “best art year ever” quietly freezes you in place.

So what do you do next?

Experiment without expectation.

Painting a wall is better than waiting for your next masterpiece. One colour on the page is better than agonising over the perfect nineteenth-century palette.

Doodle, draw, paint, make. If you are putting a mark to a page, you are creating.

Confidence does not arrive first. It follows the work.

Small, regular creative acts keep the wheels turning. Most breakthroughs happen while you are simply showing up, not forcing results.

A rough value study counts.

A colour swatch counts.

An unfinished sketch counts.

Four words that help

“I’ll try it anyway.”

I can’t draw an accurate portrait. “I’ll try it anyway.”
I don’t have all the colours for the lesson. “I’ll try it anyway.”
I feel uneasy sketching outside. “I’ll try it anyway.”

The tries become marks, and the marks become evidence.

Every sketch, every mix, every imperfect attempt quietly proves you are becoming the artist you want to be.

Picture yourself a year from now with a thousand small pieces of ‘artistic evidence’ behind you. Growth becomes unavoidable.

So step into that uneasy space before the new year. This is where artistic confidence is made.

Wishing you a fantastic, creative new year ahead,

Will