On occasion I do use reference photos that we’ve taken on our adventures. We being my husband, myself and our dog. Living in the NW there are days where I just don’t feel like going outdoors to paint due to rain, snow, and wind. Photographs are not as ideal to paint with as actually being on location, but with a bit of artistic license and imagination, you can create a beautiful painting. In the rain and stormy weather, however, acrylics are fun to play with because they stay wet and there is no water required, just let the rain fall on the painting and the palette. I’ve just been trying to master oil painting lately.

When you learn how to see color clearly, and know which color mixes what, you will begin to do that with everything you see around you. This is an exercise that will help you.

Spread out your colors tubes in front of you as though they were piano keys. This should also be the layout order you use on your palette. (What ever order you prefer).
• The colors should be red, blue, violet, yellow, brown and white. (See journal entry about color mixing)
• The first thing you see, mentally mix it and touch the paint as you do so with a brush. For example if you are looking at a clock, what color is it’s hands are they black or gold? Is it brown and blue mixed to make a black? Is it yellow and violet (cool red) and white to make gold tones? Touch all the colors with a brush you would use to create your clock hands. If it is digital, what color are the numbers? Red? What color red? A bit of Cadmium Red Light and Quinacridone Violet? Touch them both.
• Do this exercise for a little while each day. Go to different rooms and whatever you lay your eyes on mentally mix the colors. It will eventually become habitual and you will mentally color mix everything. Thus this exercise results in you memorizing your palette.

How to make a precise mask in acrylics. There is a paper with a low-tack adhesive called Anchor Continental Formula III Signblast Tape. You can get it at DickBlick.com. Many people, thanks to Bob Ross, simply call it contact paper. You can create many types of stencils with this paper by using an X-Acto Knife.
For masking with tape, rubber cement and wax, you need to remove them before the acrylics dry. Basically, after about 15 minutes of completing that area of the picture.
Hope this helps you!

I spent three weeks waiting for an area of my oil painting to dry and got fed up. I tried using linseed oil, stand oil (a joke to work with), bleached linseed oil, turpentine (like huffing gasoline for eight hours), odorless mineral spirits (just as bad as turps), Liquin Original and Liquin Fine Detail. Out of all of them, Liquin Fine Detail worked best.

Liquin Fine Detail is such a useful tool that makes the oil paint more fluid, as well as dry faster. It is created by Winsor & Newton. I worked with Liquin Original before, and it was thick, smelled bad, and it made me nauseous. I know many oil painters who are addicted to the scent of Liquin and turpentine. For some reason, Liquin Fine Detail isn’t as noxious.

Liquin made my paints dry within days, and in most cases, overnight, depending on the thickness of the oil paint. Some of you will like the fact that oil paint takes forever and a day to dry. Those of you who switched from acrylic paints to oil paints, the oil paint drying times can drive you bonkers. Liquin makes oil painting the best of both worlds, the paint dries slow enough to think and blend, yet dries fast enough not to be frustrating.

In order to use Liquin Fine Detail, it is easy, just put it in a sealable dipper cup, and dip the brush before dipping in the oil paint. Yes, it will get dirty, however, the paint settles to the bottom quickly, leaving the top pure Liquin.

The technique of beginning a painting by blending white into the background can pose many problems, however if done correctly, it can produce beautiful effects.
Golden Acrylic Paint Manufacture doesn’t create mixing white. So, if you are a Golden fan, there has to be away around this…. Ah, yes, use some gesso and water, with a touch of glazing medium. This will blend without lightening the colors too much. Much of the time, you are just blending distant trees for landscapes with this technique.
In order to do this technique without complaint, spray the canvas with an atomizer, and load your brush with gesso and a bit of acrylic glazing medium and crisscross the brush across the top of the canvas, gradually getting less and less toward the end of the canvas.
It should stay wet for at least a half hour in more moist areas, like Oregon, and about 15 minutes in dry areas like Southern California.

Too many artists and teachers say you should only paint for yourself. Their reasons for this all differ. I don’t agree with most of their reasons. I think it is extremely selfish. I believe you should paint for the world beyond yourself, to affect others in a positive way. When you paint for other people, you are in affect painting for yourself too. To paint for others doesn’t mean painting pretty pictures to please others, especially images you don’t like. I mean paint for others in the only way you know how. Doing this IS good enough, regardless of where your skills are in the art of painting, and people will take notice of your work, and will appreciate you for it. If you are giving your all to your painting, and you feel that it will affect people positively, that is what I mean by painting for the world beyond yourself. Paint for the world, because your paintings touch other people, and your paintings may outlive you.

The technique of beginning a painting by blending white into the background can pose many problems, however if done correctly, it can produce beautiful effects.
Golden Acrylic Paint Manufacture doesn’t create mixing white. So, if you are a Golden fan, there has to be away around this…. Ah, yes, use some gesso and water, with a touch of glazing medium. This will blend without lightening the colors too much. Much of the time, you are just blending distant trees for landscapes with this technique.
In order to do this technique without complaint, spray the canvas with an atomizer, and load your brush with gesso and a bit of acrylic glazing medium and crisscross the brush across the top of the canvas, gradually getting less and less toward the end of the canvas.
It should stay wet for at least a half hour in more moist areas, like Oregon, and about 15 minutes in dry areas like Southern California.

I began this online journal for online reference for me, and to benefit my friends who are also artists. I also did it for my <a href=”http://www.learnacrylics.com”>Learn Acrylics In Five Days</a>, which is a free online workshop for acrylic painters. There are so many different beginning “how to” paint in acrylics out there, but very much lacking in the department afterwards. I still feel strongly about this. If you do not see very much “how to paint a cheese grater”, that’s why. I’m here to talk about the more advanced painting, such as color mixing, Notan, composition, design, emotional content, and how to put it all together using acrylic paint. You can read many books on advanced oil and watercolor paints, but how many have you read about acrylics? Chances are, maybe a pitiful one. Acrylics cannot be applied like oils or watercolors. I struggled for years trying to figure it all out by reading oil painting books. It was impossible, and teachers were pathetic. This medium has been around since the 1920s, and has been considered an art since the 1950s. There needs to be better information out here by now…. <a href=”http://www.learnacrylics.com”>Learn Acrylics</a>!!!
Cheers!

Looking past the first splats of paint can be difficult if you are new to painting. You look at the picture right in front of you and see chicken scratches, or dabs of nonsensical colors. The object of the game is to have a sense of what it should look like at the end of the game. Keep that vision in mind. This is the most important thing.
So, how do you concentrate on an image in your head for hours upon hours, and staring at something that looks completely different? Welcome to art. I would like to say there is a formula, but there really isn’t because everybody is different. However, there are exercises you can do in order to hold the image a bit longer in your head. One is to make thumbnail sketches to reference. This gives you an idea of what you first intended, and usually recaptures the “ah ha, that’s it” factor. Then there is staring at something for a few minutes, then doing practice sketches without looking at the object. See how closely you can get the object correct.
The beauty of art, is that every artist does it differently. Have you ever watched another artist paint, and kept saying to yourself “no! that’s not it, don’t do that! It’s wrong, EEEEK NOT THAT COLOR!!” This is an awesome thing, it gives you taste and uniqueness as an artist.

Ordinarily, I do not use naughty words, but in this situation, it works very well.
Many artists do not realize that when painting, true feelings and insecurities show in the work like a sore thumb. It is a fact. I was visiting a fellow artist yesterday and was looking through her art work. She had many paintings and most were very good. She was having mental complexes and I was there to help her work through them.
There was one painting that caught my eye like a beacon. The painting was incomplete, but the best I’ve seen her do. I asked her if she said “f” it when she was painting that piece. She said yes, at the time she felt relaxed and didn’t care about the outcome of that painting. I showed her how her lines of this particular piece was absolutely perfect compared to her other works and how the colors harmonized. I then showed her several of her prized pieces where I could see major anxiety in her attempt at perfectionism. The lines of those pieces were jagged, there were feeling of constriction, and her colors were unharmonious. When she saw this she was amazed.
When you approach your own work, you too should have an “f” it mentality, because it puts you into a state of relaxation, and this will enable you to produce better paintings. I saw this in my own work, which is why it was easy for me to see it in her art as well. Most of my strive-for-perfection paintings I threw away because they were not high quality as my own “f” it paintings.