It’s always exciting to start a painting, but there are a lot of simple painting hacks that can make the process much easier. Below you’ll find 15 helpful painting hacks that I’ve used and some that other artists have shared with me throughout the years.
I learned this amazing trick decades ago, but continue to use it nearly every time I paint. When you look at your painting for too long, something bizarre
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Knowing how to paint white fur may not seem like that big of a challenge until you try it. The trick is to not paint white fur with white paint – at least not at first.
In today’s tutorial, I’ll walk you through step-by-step how I painted this beautiful white German Shepherd named Maiden. I’ll go over some of the challenges I had with the lighting of the fur and how to model it. I’ll also talk about how I decided when to
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When I first started painting in oils, I wasn’t sure if I could paint oil paint over acrylic paint. There seemed to be a lot of rules about layering with oils and mediums and it was a little confusing.
I decided to take an oil painting class to make sure I was doing things the right way. During the class, I told a fellow painter I painted in acrylics for many years. She told me you CAN paint oil paint over acrylic paint, but never acrylic over oil. Why? Because paints with a higher oil to pigment ratio (fat) must always be layered over paint with a lower oil to pigment ratio (lean). After doing more research, I’ve found more useful tips and information when painting oils and acrylics that I think you’ll find beneficial, so keep reading.
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Value may not seem like the most exciting topic to cover when creating art, but it is vital. It is the most fundamental aspect of any work of art. Value can make or break the structure of your work if you don’t get it right. Understanding value can improve your work dramatically.
“Duke” will be featured in an upcoming tutorial.
Value – along with line, color, shape, form, space, and texture – is one of the 7 visual elements of art. It is the range of tone between black and white (light and dark) that underlie color. Value indicates the source of light, the shape of an object and depth in space.
Think of it as taking a color picture on your phone and then changing it to black and white. You’ve desaturated the color out of the photo and are left with
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When I set out to do this impressionist flower painting, I wanted to learn more about how to capture the energy and essence of nature’s beauty. Artists have been painting flowers for centuries and I had painted a flower or two in my youth, but I didn’t remember how hard they were to do.
I decided to do what I thought was a simple still life of a flower. I found a pretty rose, busted out my favorite silver sugar bowl and a piece of canvas for a tablecloth. In my mind, I thought the painting would take me four hours to paint. I have no idea where that delusion came from. My simple still life had some very
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This article on how to paint a corgi has been on my “to do” list for almost a year. I actually had it written and was ready to publish when my website had a catastrophic failure and I lost the entire thing. Life certainly has its ups and downs and this past year has been full of challenges.
Fortunately, things have a way of eventually balancing out and creating art is one of the ways that distracts me from the harder things in life. I’ll tell you more about Penny the corgi and her amazing human at the end of the article. But for now, let’s dive into
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Pet portrait painting a pug – it may not be easy to say three times fast, but I’ll make it easy to go through each step. You’ll learn my approach to painting black fur, creating a focal point, my painting challenges in oil and how I decide when the painting is “done”.
All of the images from this article are screenshots from a video I did while painting this pug. The video should appear on the screen somewhere on this page, but you can always head over to my YouTube channel to see the full video.
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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
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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
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Learn how to paint a cat following along with this painting tutorial on the iPad Pro. Whether you are a traditional or digital artist, this approach will help you develop your skills and get results. As with any tool in the artist’s toolbox, it takes practice and patience to achieve a quality piece of fine art. Artists are visual learners and seeing the process step-by-step can help you understand how to create portraits of your own.
This portrait features a very special cat named Tippy. He was a feral cat (thus the tipped ear) who decided he liked humans and living indoors. I met him at a local pet store where the lovely women of Diva Cat Rescue had him up for adoption. He was such a handsome boy I had to paint his portrait to help get him and the organization
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