Basic Still Life Painting Lessons

Still life is an art form depicting non-living objects such as fruits, flowers, ornaments, household objects, among others. Still life can reveal the artist behind the artwork. Most of the works also tell a story, a medium that the artists use to express themselves, or to just simply capture what's in front of them.

Starting Out

Begin by thinking what you would want to paint. Fruits? Flowers? Landscape? Wineglasses? Table setting? Once you have decided on what to do, set up the props, or if you want to bond with Mother Nature, look for a place where you can capture her grandeur the way you want it to be.

Start your still life painting with line drawing. The line drawing becomes the "skeleton" of the artwork. This will help you position your objects thoroughly. This way you can balance your objects on the canvas.

Make sure that your sketches are light to make it easier to erase and clean it up once you have proportioned and shaped your image.

Detailing

Be aware of the composition of each object you are sketching: shadow length, reflections, and the color tones. Shading or the establishing of dark tones now comes in place. Deepen the tones and increase the contras. Remember that there are two tones that need to be established in detailing: the dark and the light tones.

Once you are done with the dark tones, start doing the light ones. Balance the areas of dark and light to achieve the unity of tone and form.

Tips On How To Make Amazing Oil Paintings

Oil painting was in existence as early as the 5th century, but it did not gain wind until the 15th, as its practice migrated from China, India and the Middle East to Europe, in what was then the Middle Ages. Eventually, it became the principal medium used in artworks. And by Renaissance period, different techniques in oil painting began to emerge, giving way to a myriad of movements, from impressionist to realists, to surrealist. Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Monet and Renoir are just some of the artists made famous by their masterful oil paintings.

Traditional oil painting processes often start with a sketch. The artist is set to draw his subject matter onto the canvas using charcoal. After which, he is to start mixing the colors with linseed oil and solvents. And then, these mixtures were applied over the drawing appropriately and each layer brushed was mandated to have thicker oil coating than the last to promote faster drying, which might take about two weeks. After six months, the finished product is varnished to give it additional protection. And subsequently, it is framed for display.

When making oil paintings, it is highly recommended that you lay out your choice of colors on your palette before you start, in the order you intend to use them so you could progress instinctively and avoid making mistakes. If you want to test how certain mixtures will pan out, try out different combinations first using a sheet and label them appropriately. In addition, try not to use ivory black for your sketching, in case you do not have charcoal, as it tends to dry slower than other oil paints. If you are using charcoal, draw lightly so it does not affect the colors you utilize after. Be mindful of the ingredients of your oil paints as well, and see to it that you have those containing lead, cobalt and manganese; not the generic alternatives. And in mixing linseed oil, avoid using too much as it promote wrinkling.

How To Oil Paint And Sell Your Paintings

The self taught artist and my oil paintings sell. I learned how by looking at kinkade art and would try to do his works and doing this I became a very good self taught artist.

The more you practice and copy others works the more you learn techniques as well. Practice doing portraits of famous people the more you do the better you become and your art will look like it took a lot of time to do. I even came up with a technique to do almost perfect portraits or any picture you may want to do.

Its simple just buy a projector; this works perfect for portraits and you can blow the picture up as big as you want. The drawing will be almost perfect then just use your skills and be creative on a back ground and sky. The projector is a valuable tool and saves time.

You just trace the picture you plan to oil paint. And your art work will be original and your portraits will come out beautiful if you use your skills. I'm self taught and it took me over 5 years to become a great to the point that people will buy my art work its so good. Train yourself to oil paint fast as well and do oil paintings in hours that look beautiful.

Also practice other things like scenes, landscapes, abstract from your head, weird art works, tractors, cars, portraits, pictures of homes etc. Anyone can sell originals for big money. After I became so good that people like all my art work. It is time to start selling them for big money so I took my works to store front owners and drop them off and my art hangs on the walls for sale and eventually someone comes in and buys it.