Pastels Paintings

Pastel consist of pure powdered pigment combined with an inert binder. The exact composition and characteristics of an individual pastel stick depends on the type of pastel and the type and amount of binder used. It also varies by individual manufacturer. Dry pastels have historically used binders such as gum arabic, gum tragacanth. Methyl cellulose […]

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The color of the background in oil painting

Many times we observe works of art with very pleasant colors and the first thing that we think is why we cannot get those colors in our paintings, possibly it is the oil brand that we use or we must apply thicker oil paint, and this has something of true but the most important factor is the contrast […]

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THE APPROPRIATE BRUSHES

This is for the absolute beginner, if this is your first time you are going to paint, it is necessary you pay attention to the materials especially brushes, you will need two types, bristle and sable, because like any other job if you do not have the rights tool it is going to be so […]

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How to control the strength of your brushstrokes

Have you seen the kids when they draw or paint? they used to pressure really hard on the piece of paper or canvas, they looks like pretty secure about what they are doing. In adults is different, some have really hard brushstrokes other very soft like they were very scare of the canvas, the point […]

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When my teacher took the black and white colors away from me

I remember my first year at school of arts, I was painting my second still life, the volume was ok, the structure drawing was ok, but my colors were milky and my shadows really heavy and dirty, my Teacher as he was walkig seening all my friend’s paintings stop at my spot and told me […]

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why I cannot define the volume and shape of an object.

This is the most common problem of all painting students, the volume represents the three-dimensionality of objects, this is why they seem real to our eyes, and if we can not  achieve the volume is because our sight is not yet fully trained. Our training is visual, we spend hours seeing mixtures of colors, observing objects, […]

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HOW TO PAINT SHADOWS

Most of the art students do not stop to think how to paint a shadow, they only add black to any color to darken it and obviously it is the logical way of thinking and it could not be said that it is wrong, but as a result many will see their works begin to become […]

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CONTRAST, COLOR AND VISUAL PERSPECTIVE

When we speak about perspective, we also need to talk about color and contrast. When an object is closer to the viewer it has more contrast, being close we can clearly see the shadows, halftones, lights and brightness of the object as it moves away from us these characteristics get smother, and if these objects are totally […]

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Why should I start painting in black and white?

When we look around everything is full of color, shadows, lights and shines, the painter intends to capture reality and translate it into a flat and opaque surface I mean it hasn’t have light, which is our canvas and on which we want to recreate a reality with Colored pigments. There are three important factors that […]

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Should I do a sketch before painting ?

I saw so many painters just start to paint right on the canvas without even make a sketch, but they do a skecth with oil, but it is necessary to have a lot of practice to do that. If you are starting to paint i advice you to do always a sketch it is going […]

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THE FIRST LAYER IN PAINTING

It should be noted that this technique is the most used, but it is not the only one, it is used to work on white canvases. The most important thing to keep in mind at this stage is that we will cover the canvas with color, approaching the color of the objects but not trying […]

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Oil Painting Supports

An oil painting support is any surface that oil paint can be applied to. There are a variety of different surfaces that artists use to paint on. Everything from certain woods, canvas, can serve as supports for oil paint. LINEN Linen is made from the fibers of the flax plant. The plants are harvested and […]

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Introduction to Color Theory

The color wheel The wheel’s construction is actually quite simple. You have 6 basic colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Then, depending on which wheel you’re looking at, you have extra, “in-between” colors that are mixes of the basic colors. There are names for all of these colors, which are important to know. […]

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HOW TO LIGHT AND DARK COLORS

First of all I will say what not to do, and it is just what I saw in a television program where they gave a course of crafts and there was a demonstration of painting, the advice of the craftsman to darken and clarify the colors was simply to use white and Black, and that […]

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THE STRUCTURE OF THE TONES IN THE CHIAROSCURO

To speak of a structure of tones is to understand that a painting must have a reading, a harmonious order, just as there must be a harmony of colors in the same way the tonal values must respond to an order. First of all, our reading is from left to right, just as we read […]

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WHAT TO LOOK AT BEFORE STARTING TO PAINT

I remember when I was an art student, very young and thinking that paint it was just apply oil paint onto the canvas, that is it, I learned to paint, but no to planned, it took me more time to learn to observe, not just a superficial look but learn to see carefully and planned […]

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CONSIDERATIONS IN THE STRUCTURE OF A PORTRAIT

When we draw a portrait one of the main problems is to maintain the axis of the eyes with the nose and mouth, that is to say that many people draw one eye higher than the other or the nose deviated, we can solve this problem easily if we take as Reference an imaginary cross that passes […]

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How to dark colors

When we start to learn to paint, we just do what is the more logical way to dark a color and this is just by adding black to any color, but the problem is that the black color is too strong and if you are not a profesional painter with so many years of experience […]

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Warm and cool colors

Try to remember a day at the beach, it is about the sunset, remember the colors, the sun is almost hidding and its light is very yellowish and orangish and the sand is turned to violet or purple, it is very beautiful, just to write about this bring memories to me, ok, going back to the […]

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