This week I’ve been featured in the U.K’s best selling artist magazine, ‘Artist & Illustrators‘.
The article was on understanding ‘How light sources can add impact to your portraits’.
It looked at three professional portrait painters and how they approach portrait lighting set ups of their subjects.
Below is the conversation I had with Martha Alexander from the magazine…
Ever come across a painting tutorial and been stumped by new terms and phrases?
What is an Interference colour? Or a Tar Gel?
Inspired by one of the art school’s readers (cheers Carl!) I’ve compiled a guide to the most commonly used terms in acrylic painting.
Glossaries for oil painting, colour mixing, styles and movements are coming soon (sign up for free email updates so you don’t miss out)
Lets get going!..
Imagine the scene.
You’re halfway through your painting, it’s going really well.
This could be your breakthrough piece, a personal Mona Lisa.
A quick look on your palette and you spot the perfect mix to finish the piece, you dip the brush in with vigour, and guess what?
Its dried on the palette.
You then try to mix more of that exact colour,
2 minutes goes by, then 5 minutes, when we hit 10 minutes and review our mixes, the initial colour has become a distant memory.
Emergency tea break with chocolate is needed.
So what’s a painter to do?..
Ever looked at your drawing composition and something feels wrong?
You just can’t put your finger on it, 90% of the piece looks great but somethings not quite right.
You could have fallen prey to an easy slip-up, you might have drawn a ‘tangent’ by mistake.
A few simple changes can transform your drawings for the better…
I am posting a weekly video on my YouTube channel in this Impressionistic landscape series that you can follow along at home.
It’s free to subscribe to the blog to receive updates so you can keep up with the acrylic painting progress…
In this Impressionistic landscape series, I am posting a weekly video on my YouTube channel that you can follow along at home.
It’s free to subscribe to the blog to receive updates so you can keep up with the acrylic painting progress…
In this painterly, impressionistic landscape series, I am posting a weekly video on my YouTube channel so that you can follow along at home.
It’s free to subscribe to the blog to receive updates so you can keep up with the painting progress…
How do you achieve a more painterly impressionistic approach with acrylics?
In this series, I will be posting a weekly video lesson that you can follow along at home. It’s free to subscribe to the blog to receive updates so you can keep up with the painting progress.
The first technique in mastering an impressionist style of painting is in the actual name itself, ‘Impressionism‘.
We are trying to achieve an ‘impression’ of the subject, rather than a detailed copy, so squinting your eyes at the subject, to blur the details is one of the first tricks to adopt.
This tutorial is ideal to leave some of your fears at the door, have fun and loosen up a bit, ready to get started?…
With so many paint colours available and new ranges being released every week, which colours should you buy when you first start painting?
The overwhelming feeling that descends when trying to buy paint colours either online or in your local art store can often lead to the safe bet…
The pre-boxed starter set.
The paint companies have designed them to help you, right? The best paints for your needs when you are just beginning…or so you would think.
But are they a good choice?
Are you getting the best value for money or are they sending you down the wrong path? I’ve devised a simple technique to help you decide which starter palette is right for you.
Ready for a little paint history lesson to understand what you should be thinking about on your next trip to the art store?…
The Art of Painting (detail), Johannes Vermeer, 1666
You might think you need more time, or the perfect paint brand or a new brush.
When the weekend comes and you’ve finally managed to find some ‘you’ time, the blank canvas stares back at you and the finished portrait, you so desperately wanted to achieve, seems a world away.
Your motivation is high, your drawing’s good but the jump from pencil to paint has hit a wall.
Flicking through an art magazine or shopping for a new paint colour suddenly seems like an attractive idea.
You’ll start next week when you’ve got the exact colour you need.
But what if these actions are holding you back?
What if you forced yourself to try and achieve more with less, give yourself some constraints and your portrait painting could make giant leaps forward?…
This is the final post in this limited palette painting series using acrylics, I have been posting a weekly video on my YouTube channel so that you can follow along at home. It’s free to subscribe to the channel so you can keep updated with the painting progress…
In this limited palette painting series using acrylics, I am posting a weekly video on my YouTube channel that you can follow along at home. It’s free to subscribe to the channel so you can keep updated with the painting progress…
You know the scenario,
You decide to paint a simple study of a lemon; the painting starts out okay until you get to the fun bit, the yellow of the lemon.
As you begin to stare at the yellow to try and judge it’s the intensity you ask yourself – how yellow can you go?
The more you look, the more you convince yourself that this is most probably the most yellow yellow the world has ever seen, so only the strongest, brightest lemon yellow will do, straight from the tube.
You paint it on with enthusiasm, only to reflect on your handiwork and find the results are a bit disappointing, it looks too fake, dare you to say it, too lemon.
So what can you do?..
This is a time-lapse video of a classical approach to a black & white grisaille portrait painting.
It accompanies a free series of 5 step by step, portrait tutorials.
Click here to read How to paint a portrait in Oil : Part 1
Sometimes you can’t figure it out.
It seems no matter how hard you try, how intensely you look at a subject, your drawings look wrong.
You’ve read how to draw books, maybe gone to a few art classes, but the art of drawing still seems to elude you.
And you begin to question yourself – What if it’s me? What if I don’t have enough talent?
What if I’m never going to improve?
You are not alone.
Understanding drawing can be the key to your artistic success and a new, razor-sharp creative mind, but it can seem like an uphill struggle.
But what if there was a simple solution? Pieces to the puzzle that you didn’t know existed,
3 secrets that could instantly improve your drawing and painting?
Wouldn’t you give it a try?..
