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!

Artists are experimenters. Customers, investors and gallery owners like to see consistency. This is a conundrum. You as an artist hear all the time that you should choose a style and stick with it to make it in the art world. To say that an artist should stick with just to one style is the equivalent of telling a chef to make only recipes that resemble one dish! When I got into that kick, I painted astronomy art for years…. I recently thought to myself “how boring is that? I want to experiment, have fun, paint whatever I feel like!” Now I have many styles, but I still have my voice. Just like a writer who wrote a fantasy book then turns around and writes a murder mystery, a painter can have the same freedom. To satisfy the art world’s homogenized belief system in art, create a series of 8-20 paintings for each style. This practice will also help develop your new style.

The problem with this conundrum is that there is so much to learn in painting. As you evolve, so does your art. Painting is a discipline. And as in life, you have to put your own personality into it. When you paint to please only yourself, that is how you develop your own style. A good idea is to at least once per week lock yourself in your ’studio’ (a kitchen table work just fine too) and create whatever meets your fancy. You know you’ve developed your personal signature when hours have flown by and you are still happy. So many artists paint what they don’t want to in order to make a buck. Yes, I’ve fallen into that trap many times. It is detrimental to your health as well as your art because it causes stress, anxiety and that reduces your quality of your life and art.
Many artists also fall into the trap of ‘you need to go to art school, college, etc.’ in order to become a great artist. Not really. I’m pretty accomplished as an artist. I took a drawing class in college, the rest of my education has been through the public library system of books. It’s a constant learning process and self discovery. You cannot put yourself through a cookie cutter college and expect to know everything about art. Classes and colleges show you everything you need to know in like a few weeks, which took the great masters their entire lifetimes to develop painting day and night. If you can absorb all that in such a short time, kudos.
I do not claim to know everything about art or painting. But I know you can tell the difference between my commercial paintings as opposed to my self-guided personal paintings. There’s a certain rhythm that flows, creative juices if you will, that comes when one is perfectly content while painting. It feels very much like a meditation. At the end of the meditation, you feel either fully rested or extremely exhausted. Either or, you should feel happy and content. That’s when you know you’ve found what you are looking for. Follow that rhythm and you will have great paintings. You can see the artist’s state of mind when looking at a painting.

When you play around with your paints long enough to get to know them like the back of your hand, make sure that you don’t learn so much that you get bored with the experience. Basically do something that you haven’t done before. You’ll get frustrated and challenged to say the least, but you’ll learn something from it, and have some fun, hopefully.
That was happening to me until my latest painting. A completely, at this time, absurd looking picture. I’m trying to make Nut, Goddess of the Night Sky of Egyptian mythology, thus, I’m starting out all black, sorta like turning on the invert on a portrait. THAT’S HARD! LOL. Two new things I’m doing with this picture. One, I’m using a picture of a model (my best artsy friend, Sara, who is graciously wearing a very bad wig for me, cha). Two, I’m changing the colors to the negative of what I’m seeing.
So far, I admit, it’s looking as bad as an average high school painting. But I can honestly say, I’m interested to see how it’ll develop and how I’ll get out of this predicament. So far, I went through about two ounces of artist’s white-out (Titanium White) and Mars Black. I know, I usually lecture on how you don’t need to draw first and just sketch while you are painting…. I’m considering rethinking that lecture for this type of painting, cha. I wasted a batch of paint that could have been saved had I not had a cold shoulder towards pencils.
Charcoal by the way, shows through in acrylics, and it muddies the paints. Light color pencils and pastels do a better job. So, that’s where I’m at now. Usually, I can get a painting done within a day, this one I’m starting the second eight-hour day… and I’m still on the preliminary sketch, ugh!

The spark is part of the artwork that gives it life. If you go into an atelier and look at a bunch of students work whom all painted the same still life, each and every artwork will be different. There is one that will stand out from the rest, that is the spark. The spark is their own personality into the painting. And their personality comes through loud and clear. Type in Apple Painting into Google images. Look at the people’s artwork, you will see the ones with spark and the ones without. Every artist no matter what, has a voice, but some artists scream louder. The quality of the art is confident, bold and unique in its own right.

The spark comes from within the artist’s soul. It is the confidence of knowing and accepting oneself. The artist quiets their conscious chatter, and lets their inner voice guide them without judgment or anxiety.