30 Day Challenge and Ways to Improve your paintings

September 3, 2013

 

Keeping up with the 30 Day Challenge so far...

 

 

 Listed on Daily Paintworks

 

 

My theme lately has been ways to improve so since it is the beginning of a new school year I thought I would get a few of the Art Tutorials at Daily Paintworks call ARTBytes.  There are so many that are FREE, but the one that got my attention recently was by Carol Marine on Loose Brushwork.  It was a whole new way of looking at edges for me and I wish I had looked at it sooner.  Her approach is to start with the lights first and go from "island to ocean", the small areas surrounded with color or background.  

 

The idea of using stripes was one of the Daily Challenges, another offering to artists. 

 The bottom line is that Daily Paintworks offers many resources.  The ARTBytes are reasonable in price and you can save them and look at them over and over. 

 

Thanks you to Carol Marine and her husband for starting this website for artists. 

Here is a link to the page for Tutorials: http://www.dailypaintworks.com/ArtTutorials/ArtByteStore

Studies - another way to improve

August 29, 2013

Painting studies and doing the same thing multiple times is another good way to improve.  When I took a workshop with Maggie Siner she recommended doing between 5-8 small studies to perfect your composition.

This goes along with painting the same subject until you have it right. 

My last blog showed examples of my efforts to improve on my first painting of the donuts with a white paper bag.  My last painting includes a paper bag along with an apple.  My last painting is the one I like the best so practicing on the subtleties of the paper bag was worth the number of practice paintings for studies. 

http://www.dailypaintworks.com/Artists/carol-josefiak-3555