Now that I’m full time at this and painting a lot more, I have more opportunity to try things out and develop my painting process as I go. I’m going to try to post a bit more here about how my process is changing currently, and how I put my paintings together, since it might
How to Choose the Right Pigments
How do you know which tube pigments you need to mix a colour you want? It’s bewildering. There are so many. And none of them are ever quite what you need. Most of them are too dark, too, so then you have to decide what to lighten them with. Quite often I get asked for
Drawing Exercise: Sight Size Block in
Last week, I posted about why I think accuracy training is so useful for realist artists. You can read that post here. One of the comments on that post came from someone who was a little put out that I hadn’t actually added any accuracy training exercises. Well, this site is pretty thick with drawing,
Why Accuracy?
I get asked quite a lot about the emphasis I put on accuracy. Most often, people are curious about whether I think you should always strive for accuracy, or whether it’s something you just do for a while, when you’re learning, and then relax at some point. The questions usually take one of two forms
You have to be so strong to live this life
Just recently, someone emailed me and said they saw me as an example of success. I’m glad, I’d love to inspire people to try to do what they love. But I was also surprised, because I don’t think of myself as having succeeded. So I emailed this person back and I told them how hard
Lemons in Shadow
Bid on this painting here Something I’ve noticed lately about the way a paint is that I have two modes of painting. In the first mode, I’m judging colours and values as accurately as I can. I’m not even thinking about the panting much, I’m mostly laying down a jigsaw puzzle of colours that often
Lemon Water – Oil on Linen Panel
There are times in your painting life when you feel like you’ve made a jump forward. Or maybe just uncovered a new area to explore, and the exploration still has to be done. I think this one might be a bit of both. For a while I’ve been wanting to get something into my work
Financial Fundamentals for Arty Enterprises
This post was written by Alex Blaelock, good friend, moral support and an independent writer. Alex is full of wisdom about how to do the grown-up stuff we have to do to keep ourselves functioning as small business – which is what independent artists really are. I hope you enjoy this post, and take away
Why This Painting is Wrong
“Why just copy a photo?” “That’s not art, it’s just copying.” We’ve all seen comments like this. I’ve had more than a few on this blog I don’t mind telling you. And more by email. There’s one in particular that sticks in my mind, when I posted a photo of a sight-size still life set
How to balance the light between your painting and your subject
This is something I don’t see talked about much, if at all actually, but it can save you untold hours of frustration if you get it right. A basic problem of painting realistically is that we can’t often replicate the full range of values we see in our subject in our paintings. Truth be told,
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