Learning to See

Inspiration and practical advice for aspiring realist artists

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Why Understanding Colour Frees You To Paint How You Like

March 9, 2018 By: Paul4 Comments

When I teach colour, I teach it through a combination of modelling factors and showing people how to match the colours they see as closely as they possibly can. This image below shows what I mean by modelling factors, in case you haven’t come across the term before. It’s a way of breaking down form

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Pink and Yellow

February 22, 2018 By: Paul2 Comments

First painting in my new studio. It was a while coming, and a while finishing too! This painting is up for auction here.

Why Limit Your Palette?

February 9, 2018 By: Paul45 Comments

Be careful of bold statements made by apparent experts. So much of art talk is people repeating what they’ve heard or read somewhere else, without bothering to test it for themselves. I’ve taken bad advice a few times, especially when I was starting out. So I decided a long time ago that I would only

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Why is it so hard to finish a painting?

January 19, 2018 By: Paul36 Comments

I’ve been working on this painting for five days now. At the beginning, I was feeling a mixture of excitement and anxiety, as I usually do. Excitement at what the picture could be, and anxiety that I won’t be able to get it there. When I’m working on a painting for more than a day,

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Dream Big, Take Small Steps

January 12, 2018 By: Paul18 Comments

We’re snowed in again and the power has gone. I’m looking out over a landscape made fresh by deep snow. A new year is here. And as always, with it comes the urge to make changes. Usually, we try to make big changes. Often, a few of them at once. Which, you know as well

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Give yourself permission (to take the one big step you need to take)

December 15, 2017 By: Paul33 Comments

I’m profoundly grateful to you. If you’re reading this, I want you to know that. If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know I’ve had a few wobbles in the last couple of years. Now I wake up every day to breathtakingly beautiful countryside and a happy family. And the thing is, I

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Winter in Uley

December 12, 2017 By: Paul21 Comments

At first, I was slightly disappointed that we’d arrived in Uley right at the end of Autumn. It was stunningly beautiful, but it was a transitory beauty that was already changing quickly into winter. The golden leaves were falling and the trees were a little more bare every day. It made me sad because we

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Working on my “Na”

December 8, 2017 By: Paul27 Comments

I was sitting on the floor of a small home in Kolkata, northern India, where I’d be staying for the next three months. I had my tabla ready in front of me. I had no idea what to expect. Jayanta, my new tabla teacher, had just seated himself opposite me. He didn’t speak a word

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Getting Started

November 24, 2017 By: Paul22 Comments

Uley Bury, an iron age hill fort, behind Uley village 8:30 AM. We’re in the car, taking the kids to school. As we drive up the steep, narrow, twisty road out of the Uley valley and on to the edge of the Cotswolds escarpment I catch my breath at the natural splendour of this place,

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A New Day

November 17, 2017 By: Paul40 Comments

We’d been on the motorway for 6 hours, stuck in a traffic Jam. The kids were going crazy. The cat, perched between the kids in the back, was miaowing loudly and clawing at the door of the cat box. Michelle and I had both had about an hour’s sleep the previous night, and we were

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Hi, I’m Paul

I'm a (mostly) self-taught artist. I paint realism in oils, mostly still life. I share my work, my evolving process and what knowledge I've gained on my own learning journey here, in the hope that it might help you on yours.
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