Posted on Saturday, January 14, 2023

How To Paint A Pet Portrait – Limited Palette, Unlimited Possibilities

Pet portraits can be a big challenge for artists. In this article, I’ll take you through my step-by-step process for painting a realistic pet portrait using only four colors. Using a limited palette helps to eliminate some of the headaches while painting. This pet portrait is in oil, but I’ve used the same approach in acrylics and even while painting digitally.

I’ll begin with a quick overview highlighting the main steps. I’ve expanded the section on detail (step 10), giving extra tips.

Posted on Thursday, May 7, 2020

How To Paint A Realistic Portrait – Avoid These 11 Mistakes!

Realistic portrait painting has always been my favorite thing to do. However, getting a likeness can be a huge challenge due to simple mistakes. I’ll share with you a couple of the mistakes I made painting this portrait. I will also go over other common mistakes and helpful tips. This will help you to avoid some of the pain of painting portraits.

I’ve drawn and painted portraits of people and pets for as long as I can remember. Fortunately, I’ve been able to capture a likeness with most of my subjects.

The only time I have trouble with a likeness is when I make some basic mistakes. With this realistic portrait of Dr. Claude Pressnell, I started out the painting with an inaccurate drawing. That was my first mistake. I also had

Posted on Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Painting Wrinkles And Grey Hair – 12 Tips & Tricks

Painting wrinkles and grey hair have their own unique challenges. I’ve loved drawing and painting wrinkles ever since I was a kid. The more wrinkles, the better as far as I was concerned. Wrinkles add a lot of interest and character to a portrait.

In my portrait painting tips article, I gave a basic 3 step process for painting wrinkles. In this article, I’ll go over 12 tips for painting wrinkles and grey hair including how to think about wrinkles in a different way. If you are intimidated about painting wrinkles,

Posted on Saturday, March 28, 2020

How To Paint A Digital Portrait – Step-By-Step With Pictures

When I got my iPad, painting a realistic digital portrait was the first thing I wanted to try. As a traditional oil painter, I don’t want my digital portraits to look like digital paintings. I wanted them to look like real oil paintings. In this article, I’ll show you how I do it.

Procreate was the first program I tried, but I didn’t get the results I wanted. After giving ArtRage a try, I found that painting a realistic digital portrait was much easier for me to achieve. It’s a program that just seemed to work for me. I know many artists that use Procreate and other painting programs with great success.

NOTE: If you don’t have a digital program to paint in, you can still follow along using whatever types of paint you have. The basics are still the same.

Posted on Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Is Digital Painting Real Art? Thoughts From An Oil Painter.

Digital painting – is real art or not? I’ve struggled with this question ever since I picked up a tablet and started painting digitally. Through the years, I’ve created art by making real, tangible pieces with paint on canvas that I can hold in my hands. Real art could only be made with real art supplies – not pixels, right?

After having done both traditional and digital painting, I think the answer is that as far as talent and creating a work of art in today’s world, digital painting is “real” art. If you are only measuring digital art based on it taking on a form that is handcrafted with a variety of materials, then no, it doesn’t qualify as “real” art. But is that second sentence true or is it just a perception? To find out, I’ll explore the definition of fine art, the biases in art, art-shaming and

Posted on Thursday, May 2, 2019

Help My Paintings Win An Online Art Contest

Five of my paintings are currently featured in an online art contest for PM360’s Art Attack. You may remember that last month my painting, Silver Cup, was chosen to be on the cover of PM360’s Greatest Creators. The people at PM360 had a lot of art to choose from, so they decided to show ALL of the artwork submitted and let the public decide which one they like best.

Here’s the catch though, you can only vote for one artwork out of hundreds in this online art contest Five of my paintings are included in the contest (above) really need your vote. If you already know which one you’d like to vote for click the button below. There are a lot of paintings to scroll through, so keep scrolling until you find the one you like.

VOTE NOW

If you don’t know which one to vote for in this art contest, I’ll tell you a little bit about each one below including their story and some

Posted on Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Painting A Cat In ArtRage Featuring Rémy The Gargoyle

Here I am once again painting a cat study in ArtRage. AND – once again – it’s a bare naked Sphynx cat. But this is no ordinary hairless kitty. Nope. This is Rémy the Gargoyle who is gaining fame due to his gorgeous eyes, adorable little elf ears and curious view of life on Instagram.

How Painting A Cat In All His Naked Glory Can Make You A Better Artist

My parents hate it when I paint naked cats as they find them to be “ugly”. That’s their opinion. A lot of artists like Jennifer Gennari love painting Sphynx cats because they are so challenging. If you’re an artist and want to improve your skills, these

Posted on Sunday, July 1, 2018

3 Things I Have Learned Copying Master Paintings

Artists have been copying master paintings for centuries and for good reason – there is so much that can be learned! More than 25 years ago, I participated in a “Copycat” show at The Burkholder Project in Lincoln, NE where I shared a studio for awhile with several artists. As a successful working artist, Anne Burkholder has always been an inspiration for me and I loved being a part of her world.

The painting I chose to copy was “Breakfast In Bed” by Mary Stevenson Cassatt, 25″x 29″ oil on canvas painted in 1897. The title card above shows photos I took of the original painting which resides at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA. I loved this painting

Posted on Saturday, June 9, 2018

Painting A Cat In Oil Featuring Prescott, A Gorgeous Maine Coon

Painting a cat in oil can be a lot of fun. Today I will show you my 9-step process for painting this beautiful cat. You may have seen him featured in a previous post on painting cats, but I thought he deserved his own post since I found some of his progress shots.

I do both traditional and digital painting tutorials featuring pets, people and still life so feel free to

Posted on Sunday, May 27, 2018

7 Portrait Painting Tips From The #30faces30days Challenge

I thought I’d share some portrait painting tips since finishing the #30faces30days challenge. The challenge was fast and furious and I didn’t get as many progress pics as I wanted, but I did get a few. Most of what I’ll be reviewing are paintings I did on the iPad, but regardless of whether you paint traditionally or digitally, you will still find these tips helpful.

For the first day of the challenge, I have many more progress shots. As you’ll see, the challenge got very challenging right off the bat. How I thought things would go in my head became vastly different from the reality

Shelley Hanna Fine Art

Oil & digital painting tutorials with a traditional approach

Category Archives: Painting

How To Paint A Pet Portrait – Limited Palette, Unlimited Possibilities

How To Paint A Realistic Portrait – Avoid These 11 Mistakes!

Painting Wrinkles And Grey Hair – 12 Tips & Tricks

How To Paint A Digital Portrait – Step-By-Step With Pictures

Is Digital Painting Real Art? Thoughts From An Oil Painter.

Help My Paintings Win An Online Art Contest

Painting A Cat In ArtRage Featuring Rémy The Gargoyle

How Painting A Cat In All His Naked Glory Can Make You A Better Artist

3 Things I Have Learned Copying Master Paintings

Painting A Cat In Oil Featuring Prescott, A Gorgeous Maine Coon

7 Portrait Painting Tips From The #30faces30days Challenge