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Painting can be intimidating. Once you’ve spent time drawing, you are faced with the possibility that you could ruin it with color. This is why you need to practice with the paint first to see how it all works. A good start would be to learn the color wheel. You need a basic understanding of how to mix colors, what colors compliment each other, what primary colors are, what they do, and what secondary colors are.

I learned to use color first using pastels. This was helpful because it wasn’t far from drawing. It helped me to see what colors overlapped to create new colors and also that you can get muddy colors that don’t work well. This helps to train your eyes to see the colors in your subjects, like the color of a shadow or the many colors that make up a petal on a white flower. Learning from experience is the best way, and picking up tips from other artists is how you get better.

I found a lot of beginners at my local art society sitting there at the monthly meetings waiting for the artist demos. Their eyes glowing with enthusiasm as they watched the featured artist create a piece of art so effortlessly. I could see them wanting to do the same, perched on the edge of their seats waiting for the words… “any questions?”

Yes, there were a lot of questions! What paper do you use? What brushes do you use for that? What are the names of the paint color? What brand? I was always amazed by these product lists everyone leaves with. Do they think that they are going to produce the same results if they just buy the exact same supplies?

The real questions that should be asked are: Why did you place the subject there on the paper? What do you think makes a good painting? What makes your paintings interesting? What elements do you try to incorporate into your art? (etc…)

These are the questions not to many people ask! For most artists its not how they did it, but what’s going on within. Everyone has a different take on what is going into their paintings; an emotion, a flow guiding the viewer around the painting creating visual stimulants, or capturing elements such as lights and darks.

Each artist has a priority. Mine (I’ve learned) is emotion using color, and a flow like a road map guiding your eye in and around. I try to keep the eye from leaving the painting with the design elements bringing the viewer back into the main focus of my paintings. If something is bothersome I try to soften it. I like my paintings to be easy on the eye but at the same time striking enough to capture the viewer. This is what makes my paintings a reflection of me. I paint things I like to look at and I never get tired of looking at my paintings. I hope that others feel the same. I want my paintings to look like paintings and not photographs. I want to take the subjects I paint and make them my own, using my own colors to make them exciting to me.

I find if you don’t like landscapes then you probably won’t turn out a good landscape painting. So stick with things that you love to paint or take them and make them your own.

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We have all read those lengthy articles about finding your painting style. I personally never got anything from reading them, and still wondered what my style was. We all have a style and basically all we need to do is to look around us to find the clues to finding it.

Everyday we are surrounded by fabrics, colors, textures, and objects that we have chosen ourselves. We choose them because we like them and find them attractive. We pick out the colors for our walls and also the colors in our painting pallets.

It’s time to force yourself to be aware of why you choose the things that you do. Try making lists to see if you have a style emerging. You will start to see a pattern. It takes time, but once you see it, it will be clear.

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So now that you know a little about some supplies that you’ll need, what do we draw? Let’s start with our sketch book, a pencil, and don’t forget your kneaded eraser. The 1st thing we need to do is get our creative juices flowing. If you remember in school; the teacher would give you a project or a subject to think about, and we created our take on it. Sometimes it’s easier if you have that subject to go on, so let’s do that for ourselves. Here’s some ideas to get you started:

1. Let’s write down some things that interest us, not focusing on what we can draw, but just things that we like. Here’s my list:

Now you can go through the list and draw each of them the best you can.

2. Another idea is to go through the alphabet drawing a quick sketch of the first thing that comes to mind for each letter. Here’s a few quick sketches that I did:

3. Take a song or Poem and try to draw the visual image you have of it.

4. Pick a room in your home then try drawing items in that room.

5. Try drawing an emotion; sad and dark, happy and colorful, etc…

6 . Empty a drawer or a purse and try drawing some of the contents.

7. Compile a file of images from which you can pull inspiration or reference.

8. Scrible and then try to make something out of the mess.

9. Think of the four seasons and draw what comes to mind for each season.

10. Try drawing your hand in different positions or use a mirror to draw yourself. Pets or Plants also make great subjects.

These ideas should get you started. Be creative and practice, practice, practice…

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