Considering it was mid-April in England, we were treated to some truly amazing weather.
We’d travelled down the coast to an area of South East Cornwall called ‘The Forgotten Corner’. Often overlooked due to its remote location but we found some cracking little-secluded coves and practically empty sandy beaches.
Artist’s have always been drawn to Cornwall due to the quality of light and mild climate, but the trip for me was all about getting to the sea.
The ever changing tide, the allure of cliff edges, the great expanse of sky and the unpredictable power of the waves.
We wanted to get to the edge, be battered by the elements and this was the closest we could find.
View from our cottage window – Rame Peninsula, Cornwall
On Painting, Procrastination and What Might Have Been
“For of all sad word of tongue or pen, the saddest are these. “It might have been.” John Greenleaf Whittier
I always feel so sad when I read this quote, “It might have been…”
What a waste.
So many aspiring artists come to me with a real passion for learning how to paint and ask me where they should start?
Not knowing where to begin or muddling along on your own can be really slow progress and eventually the paints can spend more time in your box than on your canvas.
Your dreams of becoming a painter get lost.
But you were so close!
If you came to my studio with the question ‘I have a week to learn how to paint, what do I need to know?’
I’d strip the learning process down to basics, the fewest brushes, a few key colours and an essential introduction to the wide properties of acrylics.
Materials and set up, colour mixing and pigment choice, brush handling and palette knife techniques and gels and mediums.
Then we’d get painting using methods that achieve great results even if you’ve got no artistic training.
Why Acrylics?
Acrylics can be used in thin transparent washes like water colours or in a thicker more opaque form like oil paint.
They dry quickly and can be diluted and cleaned with water making them simple to use, odourless and accessible for the beginner.
So when are you coming round, right?
If you’ve never even picked up a pencil I’d always usually recommend learning how to draw. Which I know sounds a little deflating … you want to learn how to paint!
However, learning to draw sets you so far ahead, so quickly, it really is the most ‘bang for your buck’ for a set of principles that don’t change.
But what if the allure of colour is too much to resist and you want to get straight into painting?
Well, I’ve been working on a new course just for you…
Painting portraits with acrylics can be frustrating.
It can seem that you’re facing an uphill struggle.
After the pleasure of not getting headaches from toxic turpentine and being able to paint with thick impasto marks there seems to be double payback for daring to tackle a portrait with acrylics.
Not only do the colours appear unsophisticated and garish but the paint dries too quickly to blend together successfully, especially when you’re trying to mix subtle skin tones.
You can be left feeling disappointed with your results, admit defeat and crack out the thinners for another go with the Oils.
I’ve been working on a new portrait course, that can help develop your portrait skills and dramatically shorten your learning curve to achieving classical looking portraits with acrylics…
This week, we’re returning to the studio to create the illusion of form with acrylic paint. I wanted to develop our sketch into a finished painting, using the same principles of light logic but having a more contemporary feel through the choice of colours, composition and context.
For Part 3, I’ve created a free video tutorial so you can watch every step and follow along at home…
The new mini-course where I paint a coloured glass and festive oranges is now available! Whoo ho! ho! ho!
It’s the perfect addition to the Masterclass Acrylics Course or a great little introduction to the more complex subject of reflections and glass.
If you have ever tried to paint glass and it looked flat and unconvincing or ended up with super bright white highlights that look stuck on, then you may be interested in discovering how to achieve a lifelike glass effect with acrylics – yet still keeping a painterly feel.
3 Downloadable Video Lessons – 1 Small Glass Study
Over 1 1/2 hours of video instruction, alongside a Quick Start PDF guide and Downloadable images of each stage of the process, which includes your materials lists and tools of the trade.
The lessons are available online to download so you have access to the course forever.
Spent hours, days, even weeks slaving away on a painting, but when we finally apply a varnish…it all goes horribly wrong.
The anxiousness builds.
You’re now sure there are mismatched sheens on the surface, and it was perfect before you started varnishing!
Or maybe you thought it was a good idea to wrap your newly varnished painting with bubble wrap just before the deadline of an exhibition, only to find out at the private view the bubble wrap had left hundreds of tiny circle imprints on the surface of the painting….mmm..surely no one would ever do that!
The anxiety and disappointment that comes with varnishing can sometimes seem too much.
With all the confusion, conflicting advice and frustration in creating the perfect varnish finish, you can’t help wondering, what’s the point of varnishing at all?…
Morning class! The Still Life Masterclass in Acrylics course is now available,whoo hoo!
Have you ever asked yourself “How do I make my paintings look more professional?‘
At some point in every artist’s development, you get to a stage where your paintings are looking pretty good, you can see your improvement from where you first began, but some tricky subjects still elude you.
You’ve got a basic understanding of colour mixing, paint application and your drawing’s sound, but you want to take your work to the next level.
I’ve created this Classical Still Life Masterclass with acrylics to help aspiring artists bring their paintings to a more professional finish.
We deal with the more complex subject of reflective surfaces such as Silver, Ceramic & Mahogany using an extended palette and multi-layered glazing techniques.
Here’s a brief video intro to the course:
My Still Life Masterclass Course and is now available and you can learn more and join the course byjust clicking this link.
In Part 1 we looked at how to master the basic features of your digital camera, so you can emulate how your eyes see things in nature to give you fantastic reference photographs for your still life painting.
In Part 2we saw how small incremental changes in your composition and lighting can instantly create a more dramatic and pleasing image for a painting.
Have you ever got out your digital camera to take a shot of your still life set up and been sorely disappointed with the results?
Your photo looks washed out, or too dark or the flash had popped up and flattened the whole scene.
You’re not alone in the quest for a simple formula to create great reference photographs for your paintings.
You might have tried turning the dial to the ‘manual’ mode, fired off a few shots, got disheartened, only to return to the safe haven of the ‘flower setting’ or ‘Auto’ on the dial.
Understanding the manual functions of your digital camera can be a liberating experience and can greatly improve the framing of your paintings.
Or maybe you’ve never used your camera to help with your paintings but you’d like to learn how…
One of the most common colour questions I get asked on the Art School is “How do I choose the right colour to paint my coloured ground?”
But before I tackle that subject in more detail, I wanted to look at an often overlooked subject, studio wall colour.
To answer the previous question completely, you should be thinking of your studio space as a whole.
The colours that surround you in your studio space influence the perceptions of the colour on your canvas and are often the secret source to effective classical painting.
It isn’t as glamorous as the actual painting, however, getting it wrong can throw your eye out without you even realizing it…
In these tutorials I will be posting a series of videos on my YouTube channel that you can follow along at home. It’s free to subscribe to the website so you can keep updated with the painting progress.
In this series I will be posting a weekly video on my YouTube channel that you can follow along at home. It’s free to subscribe to the website so you can keep updated with the painting progress.
This tutorial takes us through a simple cafe scene, where we follow through the underlying structure of a painting.
We look at an easy way to check your perspective, the importance of ‘negative spaces’ when composing your image and how to mix the perfect consistency of paint…
