Best Free Online Painting Demonstrations
There are a lot of online painting tutorials. A lot. One could easily spend hours watching them and forget to paint at all. But ever since much of the world is in lock down due to the Corona virus we …
Materials & Technique
How to Paint an Eye in Pastel
So often people ask how to paint this or that. So often you find tutorials about how to paint something specific. You might have noticed (or not) that on my blog there are no ‘how to paint x’ posts at …
Vlog: How to Mix Colour on your Canvas
One thing I have learned from working with pastel for so many years, is how to mix your colours on your painting. So many painters struggle to mix the right colours on their palette. Often this made even more difficult …
Vlog: 6 Tips for Painting Portraits from Photos
Many of us paint portraits from photos. We can’t afford to hire a model, we don’t always have commissions, a model makes us feel awkward, or maybe we just prefer to work from photos. But working from photos has its …
A Review of Rublev Oils
Rublev oils are a unique paint in that they set out to only use historic pigments and provide us with the paints of the old masters. A noble aim perhaps. These paints are professional premium paints and definitely not for …
6 Tips for Getting a Portrait Likeness
Here are some tips and tricks for beginning portrait painters to get a likeness in your portrait work. I hope you will find these 6 tips useful. I’ve added some images from the history of art for inspiration. They include …
Ampersand Gessobord Review
Ampersand Gessobord is a premium rigid oil painting support. It is a wonderful support that I regularly use. In this article I’d like to describe its qualities and explore its uses. Gessoboard comes in a cradled and uncradled version. The cradled …
Slow Down Perfectionist!
So many of us get frustrated while we paint. The painting just doesn’t work, you can’t make it sing, there’s something wrong but you’re not sure what. Sounds familiar? I think we’ve all been there. We plod on and on, …
How to Paint a Background
Should I paint the background first or last? This is a question I hear quite often as an art tutor. It illustrates very well how many beginning portrait and still life painters think about painting. They focus on the subject …
How to Avoid Common Painting Mistakes
We all make mistakes. Imagine what the world would look like if we didn’t. I often explain my painting method as one big process of fixing mistakes. So, there’s nothing wrong with mistakes. It’s all part of the process of …