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Painting is a lot of fun most of the time but once in a while
when you just know your painting looks awful and you're about to threw it in
the trash can
painting can just as well ruin your mood.
Here are five my top 10 painting tips
to prevent that from happening.
Do you know that feeling as if a painting is painting itself?
Every brush stroke is to the point and effortless.
I wonder what could be the secret...
After comparing a few of my paintings that gave me this feeling
I came to the conclusion they all had one thing in common:
I spent a lot of time on the design.
Of coursegood design is no guarantee for a good painting,
but it makes it a lot easier
A lot of painters use photos in their work,
nothing wrong with that.
But you can't just copy a great picture and think it'll automatically turn into a great painting
A painting often needs a little more than that.
What's the story you want to tell ?
This is a nice enough picture; I like the high viewpoint and the calm ocean,
but it needed some changes before it could be the starting point of a painting.
so I copied the ocean and pasted it
into an empty canvas. Copied the sky from another picture
pasted it above the horizon,
and created a reflection in the bottom part.
Wasn't satisfied with the sky so I tried another much darker one.
There you go...
All these elements combined now tell the story of
the calm before the storm.
When you're planning a big painting it can be useful to make an on sketch first.
Somehow the transition from pixel to paint tells you
if it's a good idea to turn the design into a painting or not.
Plus you can solve some problems in your sketch
that you otherwise would have had to solve in the final work.
For more oil sketches please check my online sales page
at Paintingskies.com.
A fellow painter once said to me failing to plan
is planning to fail. I don't know if this is always true
but if you make realistic landscapes like I do,
planning is pretty important.
For example, I often have to make a choice between leaving the clouds white or
paint them on a dry blue bottom layer later on.
I applied the first method in my How To Paint Clouds video, but
both approaches have their advantages
This is maybe the most important of
my top 10 painting tips. We all hate it when a painting goes wrong, I know I do,
but maybe we could look at it from a different perspective.
Setbacks are crucially the creative process. They force us to find new solutions
and without them we wouldn't get ahead.
When you look at it this way you'd almost willcome a setback,
but that may be too much to ask
I still get grumpy; setbacks force me out of my comfort zone
and who likes that ...So what can you do?
Why don't you try something new, like use a wide brush instead the tiny ones you're
used to,
try a different set of colors, try canvas instead of wood, whatever.
What's the worst that can happen?
Even if your painting ends up in the trash can you will have learned a thing
or two.
And if you keep on learning the results will follow.