In today’s tutorial, I will go over 10 tips for painting a dog portrait. The images in this post came from screencasts of a painting I started on the iPad with ArtRage and then finished on the desktop with ArtRage 6. I use the same approach to digital painting as traditional painting, so whether you paint on a canvas or a tablet, the steps below will apply.
If you’d like to watch the speed painting I created from the screencasts, click the
Continue Reading »
Have you ever wondered how to paint a tomato? Maybe not, but there is a lot you can learn by painting this simple, delicious subject. In this tutorial, you’ll learn 6 tips for painting this tomato’s portrait.
If you are new to painting, it’s always good to start out with a simple subject. But as I show you how to paint a tomato, you may realize
Continue Reading »
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
Continue Reading »
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
Continue Reading »
Today I will show you how I paint on the iPad, creating a step-by-step portrait in ArtRage. This program is an inexpensive drawing and painting app for the iPad that allows you to create realistic oil paintings that feels intuitive and natural. Plus, it’s a blast to play with.
The final painting was inspired by a photo I found on the Sktchy app. Sktchy is a great resource for artists looking for
Continue Reading »
The portrait challenge paintings are finished! Some of the paintings I love and a couple I don’t like at all. One was a huge experiment with a new medium that became a bit of a nightmare. Overall, I think the challenge was a success and I learned a lot, which was the whole point for me.
Sktchy #30faces30days challenge – Final 10
If you missed my first two posts about the #30faces30days challenge, you can find the first one here and the second one here.
The days will be out-of-order as I split the last twenty paintings into
Continue Reading »
Welcome to the second installment of the Sktchy App #30faces30days challenge – the drawing & oil pastels edition! I wanted to try a variety of techniques during the challenge, which I realized later made the challenge more challenging. Live and learn. If you missed the last post featuring some of the first paintings, you can find that here. The days will be out of sequence because I wanted to keep all of the drawings in this post.
The inspiration image for day two was very appropriate as I began to realize how time intensive this challenge was going to be. I felt like I was already behind with the first day image since I had intended it to be a drawing but
Continue Reading »
You know what it’s like – you want to start oil painting and get your canvas and paints out. The excitement builds and fantasies about how fantastic it’s going to turn out from in your mind. It’s a glorious dream before the actual work begins.
Then reality sets in. The dog throws up. A hangnail needs immediate attention. Ummm, how did this much laundry accumulate? TAXES. It’s one distraction after another. If you’re finding it hard to get started, you may be succumbing to resistance.
Whether you think of yourself as an artist or not, you are a creative being and go through
Continue Reading »
I’m finally learning how to do fine art painting using Procreate and ArtRage with the iPad Pro. I resisted getting an iPad for SO LONG and was one of those traditional snobs who thought “digital art wasn’t real art”. BUT, the world is changing and my mind is changing regarding the subject. Bottom line, I’m coming to realize there is a definitely a place for digital art in today’s world.
To me I thought it was too easy to cheat or difficult to do very “painterly” art digitally based on some of the work I’ve seen out there. However, there are a lot of ways to
Continue Reading »
Life is full of failures. I’ve had small painting failures before, but this one had me starting over. I had primed one of my panels improperly and the painting just wasn’t working. This painting was a commission and had to be done within a specific time frame and a mistake was not part of the plan.
Above you see the progression of the painting I’m talking about. It might look good in the photo, but the first two shots are of the panel that failed.
I started the drawing and captured the likeness, but as I continued to work I noticed I was struggling with the paint on the surface. I had just started painting in oils, so I really didn’t know if this was a normal thing or something going terribly wrong.
All I knew is that the struggle was getting really, really, real!
Sammie step 1 – a disaster waiting to happen
For step 1 on this little painting of Sammie, the cutie-pie Cavalier King Charles, I was feeling pretty good about how the drawing
Continue Reading »
