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This is your Blog as well. Please feel free to add tips and techniques that you feel are not taught in art classes, but should be. Let's make the art of painting as much fun for others as we know it is for ourselves.
See below.
See below.
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How to pick the medium in which you would like to paint. Below are six different kinds of art: Pastel, digital art, acrylics, watercolor, oils, or collage. Taking up a hobby like art can be expensive. How do you decide which kind of medium suits you best? Investing in almost any art supplies can become expensive. Here are a few thoughts on how to choose your medium.
YouTube it! Type in "How to paint with oils" and dedicate 20 minutes to 1 hour a day watching the videos. Start with short videos, 10 minutes or less so you get to watch a lot of different artists. Most of those artists will have a website as well. Check out their site and take a good look at their own art. Do you like their style, color, feel? If you do, go back to their videos and watch some more. Don't stop there. Go back to YouTube and type in " How to paint with watercolors" and repeat the above. Continue with Acrylics, a medium which is usually less expensive than oils and is VERY is to clean up. Acrylic dries fast enough to put layers of paint on in one day. Oil painting beginners usually must wait days, weeks or months before putting on a second layer of paint. Don't forget to check out pastels, which are vibrant, fun but a bit messy, vs. watercolors which are are easy to travel with, and simple to clean up. Somewhere along the line you are going to decide you prefer one medium over the others. Whatever form of art you find most appealing, go back to YouTube and type in " Supplies for ...FILL IN YOUR FAVORITE MEDIUM " , and up will come more lessons on what supplies to begin with. Watch and take notes. Figure out which supplies are repeated. Those that are mentioned by most are the ones with which you should start. There will be similar size brushes, canvas/paper sizes, cleansers, and colors, etc. Or you can email me at the bottom of this page and I can make some standard suggestions. As far as classes are concerned, most school districts give Adult education courses. You can take classes on the weekends, nights or days, whichever suits your life style. They are often the cheapest classes around. You may also find some local artists who give private, group or semi-private classes in their studios. Call local galleries and ask about artists who teach private classes locally. I can almost guarantee that you will find artists in your area who are willing to give you private lessons. Be careful about the quality of the supplies. You can buy " Student " grade supplies for everything but you are better off with less supplies and better quality. I buy most of my brushes from www.windriverarts.com/Brushes.htm . You can speak directly to the owners of the company for advise on what brushes are best for each purchase. Their prices are fair and the quality of the brushes is good to excellent without breaking the bank. I use www.dickblick.com , www.cheapjoes.com , and www.jerrysartarama.com for almost all the other supplies. All three companies have qualified help on the phone when I call. Sometimes I will ask to speak to someone there who specializes in the medium for which I am purchasing supplies. If you explain you are a beginner they will go out of their way to get you just what you need. Don't get "the best." not yet. But ask what most artists are using and that will get you the standard or better supplies. Of course, Collage or Digital Art uses the least amount of supplies and can be very rewarding as well. No brushes, expensive paper or paints are needed. Do a little research into all types of art if money is playing a strong role in your decision.
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Take your painting outside on a sunny day and lean it vertically against something. Be aware of your own shadow that may end up in the photo. Leave plenty of room for cropping on all sides of the painting. Don't take the picture with only the painting showing. Leave room on all sides for cropping to match the photo paper size as best as possible. Hold your camera with both hands and roll it around slightly until all sides of your art are even. Take lots of photos so you have the best to choose from because most shots will not have even sides to your painting no matter how hard you try. The art of lining it all up properly is in the wrists. I have a Mac, an IPhone and an IPad so Icloud sends the photos, instantly to all devices. I will adjust my photos carefully with my Mac, but that can be done on any tablet or smart phone. I may have to change the contrast, highlights, shadows, even color to make sure the photo looks just like the painting. If all of this seems impossible to do... Click here for a professional photographer that can do the photos for a reasonable price. He is a delight to deal with and your photos will be professionally shot for those copies you want to sell that will make you rich! MAKE SURE YOUR PHOTO HAS ENOUGH PIXELS, AND MEGABITES SO YOUR ART WORK CAN BE REPRODUCED PROPERLY. MOST CAMERAS NOW A DAYS TAKE PHOTOS THAT CAN BE CROPPED A BIT AND CAN STILL BE BLOWN UP TO FAIRLY LARGE CANVASES. Buy a really good photo album that fits large photos, 8 X 10's, 8.5 X 11's as well as 5 X 7's. I don't take photos smaller than that because you want to see your painting cropped properly and large enough to get a good view of it. Make sure you have saved all the photos of your work to a "Cloud". Once they are in a good album and all your paintings are preserved on your device, in some Cloud you In years to come, if your paintings are worth as much as DaVinci's Mona Lisa, which was worth over $780 million dollars in 2015, well your copies should be worth far more than the time you took to take the photo. Topic - Choose a standard size for your art and buy quality supplies Bonnie E. Jacobson Novice oil painters go out and buy a canvas or two and then look for something to paint. Beginning photographers just shoot. New Watercolorists buy an inexpensive watercolor pad without thinking about the quality of the paper or the size of what they plan to paint. How can I be sure of this? Because I made all those mistakes and it took years to understand what I was doing to myself.
Each medium takes different thinking. But two thoughts should be standard. Never buy the cheapest of anything and think in terms of creating art that fits into standard size frames. The more standard the size the easier it will be to find a frame at a reasonable price. Brushes? If it's cheap it is usually garbage. Bad brushes will frustrate you and make you think you were not meant to be an artist. A cheap canvas may not be prepared properly, and will leave marks in the shape of the wood that sits behind the canvas. Cheap watercolor paper will curl, and not "hold" the paint properly. The wrong photography paper and the ink that prints it will fade over time. A bad PRINT PROGRAM in your computer or copying machine will not reproduce the colors you thought should have been in the photograph. Whatever art you are pursing it will be achieved with more success if you purchase better quality products. If you are hoping to sell your art, finding a good frame that's ready-made will help control the price of the picture. If you paint a standard size painting you will probably pay less than half the cost of a frame that must be made to fit the odd sized picture. A ready-made frame will make the art far less expensive to purchase from you. If you give the art as a gift and that person has to pay for an odd sized frame it will annoy the heck out of the person to whom you gave it. Research the Internet. Companies like www.pictureframe.com have ready-mades but also can make any size frame a whole lot cheaper than buying from a professional, local framing store. If you stick to small art, 5 X 7, 8 X 10, 11 X 14, you can often go into those professional framing stores and find a bunch of ready-made frames that look wonderful because the store purchased long pieces of framing wood to make someones' fancy frame and they were left with extra wood. The customer paid for all that wood, and the store gets to keep the leftovers to use on small frames. The store will charge you less than normal because they did not pay for the wood so you benefit at someone else's expense. Those same stores will, for a small fee, (mine does it for just $10.00,) put a backing on it, wire it so that it is ready to hang, and even put their label on it, which makes the customer feel good about the "finished" package. Also research the Internet for the best prices on "good" paper, brushes, pastels, paints, etc. Don't go into Michael's and expect to find a whole lot of choices on great Watercolor paper. What happens if your "first painting" turns out to be pretty good? One of my first Oils hangs in a prized spot in my home 42 years later. |
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