As much as it surprises me, even within realist art I notice a tendency for people to see painting loosely as something desirable and painting “tight” as somehow restrictive and undesirable, limiting in some way. Even the word “tight” seems to have pejorative connotations in connection with painting. Why paint loose? I do think there
The Problem with Warm and Cool
When I was a beginner, I spent a lot of time doing warm and cool studies. I thought warm and cool was a thing, and it had to be understood. But I really struggled with it. The studies I produced didn’t look very realistic. I had an incredibly difficult time judging whether colours I saw
When to Take Off your Training Wheels
There was an interesting comment on this blog post on the colour of shadows recently that really gave me pause for thought. Here’s the comment: Do you think of matching colour this way as a sort of training wheels that you get to take off at some point? It seems quite labor intensive to paint
How The Secret to Chess can Help You Mix Colour
John Healy is an ex-alcoholic, ex-boxer and for 15 years lived homeless on the streets of London. He’s also a chess master and a prize-winning author. His best known book, the autobiographical “The Grass Arena”, is a penguin modern classic. When he was a vagrant in London, he begged to survive. At the time, begging
Threads: Art, Suffering and the Meaning of Life
There are times when things just seem to be stacked against you. No matter what you do, no matter how you try to hold yourself up and keep going, life just keeps pushing you back down. I’m sure everyone will find themselves in a time like this, at some point in their lives. I’m sure
Why Do Artists Find it Hard to Sell?
I felt like a complete fool. The year was 1989, or thereabouts, and I was sitting in the rather swanky office of an interior design firm. I’d just given them my quote for a large mural in a night club that would take me weeks to complete, if I managed it at all. I was
The Colour of Shadows (Part Two)
Yesterday was the first live webinar I’ve given since coming out of hospital, and also the first time I’ve had a brush in my hands since then too. I’m not sure it was a good idea to do my first painting for a while live, but actually the webinar went pretty well. This one was
Artificial Lights for Painting
An interesting side-effect of turning pro is that I can’t always choose when I paint, mostly because I need to paint more. I still need to be producing even when there isn’t enough light to paint by. As well as painting, I do my free webinars late in the evening, UK time. That’s because the
Meditations on a well-used pencil
Let me just get this out of the way first: Two weeks ago, I had a heart attack. Sorry, I know that sounds a bit melodramatic. But I didn’t even know it at the time. For the rest of the following week, I thought I had a chest infection and just needed to take it
The Colour of Shadows
Getting your shadows right contributes immensely to being able to create a feeling of form, light and depth in your work. Shadows do seem to be particularly vexing for a lot of realist artists. But they really don’t have to be. If you put into practice what I’m going to show you in this blog
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