It’s a great feeling once you finish a painting which you have long worked on and you are satisfied with the result. But your work does not finish there. There are a number of tasks which I recommend you do once you finish a painting. These tasks may not provide any immediate benefit, but let me assure…
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Your paint brush should feel like an extension of your arm. But all the different kinds of artist brushes which are available can sometimes only add confusion to the painting process, rather than make it easier. In this post I discuss the different kinds of artist paint brushes which are available for you to use.…
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The visual elements of art are the building blocks of an artwork and the principles of art are the framework for how you arrange these elements. Understanding the visual elements of art is of key importance to see like an artist. Rather than looking at an object as what it represents, you will learn to…
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The principles of art (or the principles of design) are essentially a set of criteria which are used to explain how the visual elements are arranged in a work of art. These principles are possibly the closest thing we have to a set of objective criteria for analyzing and judging art. Art is a notoriously…
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Oil paint is inherently slow drying compared to the other painting mediums such as acrylic, watercolor or gouache paints. Because of this, you have much more time to manipulate oil paint on your canvas before it dries. This is one of the reasons why oil paint is so widely used by artists. So how long…
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Claude Monet, Self Portrait In His Atelier, 1884 The most difficult strokes to make in an oil painting are the first and last strokes. The first strokes because you may not know where to start and the last strokes because you may not know when to stop. This post is all about how to start…
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This post will discuss how you can mix your own earth tones. Earth tones are the browns and ochres such as raw umber, burnt sienna and yellow ochre. The purpose of this post is not to show you how to replace earth tones on your palette. Instead, it is merely to demonstrate that earth tones…
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Vivid colors usually get all the attention, so this post is dedicated to the subtle beauty of muted colors. I find that one of the most common problems of beginner painters is that they completely overlook the importance of muted colors in favor of the more flashy vivid reds, blues, oranges, purples, and so on.…
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In this post I will discuss what positive and negative space is and how you can use it to improve your paintings. What is positive and negative space? Positive space refers to areas where the subject is positioned. Negative space is the area surrounding the subject. Or in other words, positive space is the main…
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Green has always been a troublesome color for beginners. Why that is the case, I’m not sure. It may have something to do with a lack of understanding of how to mix color. Or maybe it has something to do with how we actually perceive green. As Pablo Picasso once said: They’ll sell you thousands…
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