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
Can You Make a Living as an Artist Online?
So there I was, attempting to look interested at yet another boring marketing presentation. The head of department was droning through the introduction. My mind was on just about anything apart from the presentation. What I didn’t know was that this one was going to change my life. As the slides detailing the exciting restructure
How to Auction Your Paintings on Your Own Website
Lots of artists are auctioning their work online these days. The simplest way to do it is probably Ebay. Unfortunately, you can’t sell internationally on Ebay until you’ve got a certain amount of positive feedback. I’ve never been an Ebay seller, and most of the people that follow this site are in the US, so
Why Being an Artist Means Learning to Face Your Fears
“Being a professional artist means being continually willing to jump off a cliff” – Kathleen Speranza Kathleen Speranza is a superb painter of flowers. Look at this: Kathleen is a professional artist who has spent plenty of time in the trenches. She’s earned those gorgeous flower paintings. She’s also very wise. She wrote the above
A Short Guide to Sticking to Your New Year’s Resolutions
It’s cold, really cold. So cold the air is hard. The puddles are frozen solid. I’ve just got shorts on, trainers, a t-shirt and a light jacket. It’s 6 in the morning, it’s still dark and I’m running down the high street. I must be mad. There’s one thing I keep telling myself over and
What are your plans for 2017?
(yes, I do write mostly sitting on the bed. Banjo the cat is usually sitting with me. He’s an old fellow now and the bedroom is a safe haven for us both, especially while the kids – 7 and 3 – are off school!) What have you got planned this year? This year, at the
Colour is Easier to Learn Than You Think: Here’s How
There’s a pervasive idea in painting that colour can’t be learned. That you either get colour, or you don’t. If you’d asked me whether that was true a few years ago, I might have been tempted to believe you. I struggled and struggled with colour. I felt that there was some special knowledge that I
Three Simple Steps to Mixing Any Colour You Need
Accurate colour is one of the most important skills you can have as a realist painter. Why? Well, being able to mix accurately gives you: Believable colour – a natural, effortless look to your work Three dimensional form – good colour relationships between light and shadow create form Light and depth – believable space and
Mastering Colour: How to Paint Better Still Life
Last week, I wrote about the five modelling factors of a sphere, and how understanding what they are – and also being able to match the colours for each one – makes painting realistic colour and form much easier. Yesterday, I gave a webinar in which I demonstrated in a bit more detail how to
A Blue Lemon: Why Understanding Colour is the Key to Realism
“Paint what you see, not what you know”. I’m sure you’ve heard that before. And most of the time, it’s pretty good advice. But it’s not the whole picture. Why? Because you can’t always trust what you see. What we see is a result of what our perceptual systems show us, processed through our previous experience
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