Felicity Art

Archive for March, 2009

Learning how to become a good oil painter is a difficult undertaking. In fact, it is more than likely one of the most difficult painting mediums to master. Things like color mixing & theory, perspective, techniques and materials can really intimidate a beginner artist.

So how do you get the most out of your oil painting and become a more accomplished artist?

You must make it a point to learn the fundamentals of oil painting, practice often and have an enormous amount of patience.

You must start with the fundamentals of oil painting first. You cannot expect to produce Rembrandt quality paintings in the beginning. In fact, the first paintings you produce will probably be a lot worse than you may have anticipated. Frustration will more than likely come into the picture (pun intended). They key is to learn from your mistakes and do not let them defeat you.

So what are some of the fundamentals of oil painting? What information should you study and learn first?

Below are some topics of interest that you should definitely study further when you have time:

LEARN HOW TO DRAW

You will be amazed at how much learning how to draw will help improve your oil paintings. In fact, years ago art students were not even permitted to pick up an oil painting brush until they learned the fundamentals of drawing. My advice would be to find a few good books on drawing fundamentals and start there. Drawing is an art form all by itself and you should not be expected to master drawing as an art form, unless you want to of course.

Here is an excellent book to help you learn drawing fundamentals:

“The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence” by Betty Edwards

COLOR THEORY

You MUST learn about color theory if you plan on producing quality works of art. If you don’t understand how colors work, then you might as well hang up your brushes now. There is much to learn about colors like temperature, hue and intensity and how colors interact with one another. This is a very important aspect of oil painting and must not be overlooked.

Here is an excellent book on color theory:

“Exploring Color: How to Use and Control Color in Your Painting” by Nita Leland

PERSPECTIVE

Learning about perspective will teach you how to translate a 3-dimensional world onto a 2-dimensional canvas or other support. Learning perspective is a necessary ingredient toward producing convincing oil paintings.

Here is an excellent book on perspective:

“The Art of Perspective: The Ultimate Guide for Artists in Every Medium” by Phil Metzger

MATERIALS

Materials to an oil painter are like what a guitar is to a guitarist. A guitarist cannot play without his instrument nor can he play without understanding how his instrument works. Your painting materials are your instruments. They are what enable you to express yourself, so learning more about them is pretty good idea. Get to know the different kinds of brushes and what they do. Know your paints. Not all colors behave the same. Some are more transparent or opaque than others. Know your supports and the difference between them. The list goes on.

Here is an excellent book for learning more about oil painting materials:

“The Oil Painting Book: Materials and Techniques for Today’s Artist” by Bill Creevy

TECHNIQUES

There are a myriad of oil painting techniques that you can utilize to create your paintings. So much so, that it is beyond the scope of this article. Techniques like wet on wet, glazing, alla prima, knife painting, etc. should all be explored. Working with various techniques will help you develop your own unique style.

Here is a great book on oil painting techniques:

“The Encyclopedia of Oil Painting Techniques: A Unique Step-by-Step Visual Directory of All the Key Oil-Painting Techniques, Plus an Inspirational Gallery Showing How They Can Be Put into Practice” by Jeremy Galton

LEARN FROM THE MASTERS

Masters like Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Rembrandt van Rijn , Johannes Vermeer and many more, were all able to successfully translate our 3-dimensional world onto a 2-dimensional surface in such a way that it grabs the viewers attention and keeps it there. Their paintings engage the viewer and bring them back time and time again to look some more. Why? What is it that these paintings have that make them so popular? Well, one way to find out is to study them. If at all possible, make it a point to visit a museum as often as possible and study the works of the masters. Find paintings that grab your attention and draw you in. Then, when you have time, try to find books and other resources on those artists so that you can learn more about them and their techniques. When you are ready, pick a painting that you are quite fond of and try to reproduce it.

Here is a great book on learning from the masters:

“How to Paint Like the Old Masters ” by Joseph Sheppard

Ralph Serpe is the Webmaster and creator of two very popular websites on art instruction:

Visit Creativespotlite.com for more free art lessons

Visit artinstructionblog.com for more free art lessons

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/visual-art-articles/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-your-oil-painting-824321.html

Promoting visual fine arts online is never easy, especially in these days…

I am a true believer that together the artists can make a difference and help each other without generating any conflicts of interests.

So I decided to launch a community website (based on the wiki technology of WetPaint platform) to give artists the tool to share their knowledge and experience. The idea is the following: each and every page can be updated by all participants in order to achieve excellence.

These are the options:

So far I created the following pages (of course the users will be able to add more):

-Main Page

- Promotion Tools

• Own website
• Blogs
• Artists’ communities
• Forums

The idea of this website is the following:

To bring artists together and to share their knowledge in promoting art online.

The website is based on the Wiki Technology.
According to Wikipedia (noticed the name?) – Awikiis a page or collection of Web pagesdesigned to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites.
So this is about collaboration.

While editing this website, you can do the following:

• Create your own content
• Add information to existing pages
• Share your knowledge and experience with fellow artists
• Create Albums and Publish your own images of your artwork
• Add Links to Your own websites or other references
  

So How It Works for You? Here is what you have to do:

1. Join This Website
2. Contribute – Share your Knowledge

I created a few pages, and each of them is dedicated to a certain category of art promotion online, for example:

• Selling Online
  • eBay
  • Etsy
  • ….
• Community Websites
  • FaceBook
  • TagFoot
  • …
• etc…

Good luck!

Today I stumbled upon a relatively new website – Bloggers Unite. As a regular user and contributor of Blogcatalog, I suddenly realized, that design is similar, and that these two are related.

The idea behind Bloggers Unite is the following: Quote: “Bloggers Unite is an attempt to harness the power of the blogosphere to make the world a better place. By asking bloggers to write about a particular subject on 1 day of the month, a single voice can be joined with thousands to help make a difference; from raising awareness for cancer, to an effort to better education systems or supporting 3rd world countries.”

I personally think that the idea is great!
You can create your own event and let people around the globe know about it. It could be medicine, politics, education, arts, anything!

So I decided to create my own event. Since I wanted to find something related to Arts, I searched Google for ‘Art Day’ and here you go! I found an ‘Art Day’, founded by Becky Mate, the member of Artists for A Better World International.

Looks like fun?

Art Day is the perfect time to celebrate creativity and bring joy to others:
- Draw a picture
- Compose a song
- Write a poem or story
- Paint
- Have a party!

Best regards!