6 Ways To Improve Your Painting Skills

By Joanne Perkins

1. Practice

If you want to be a good painter, you should be prepared to invest a lot of time and effort into it. By practicing regularly, you'll build up your skills and learn new things along the way. Do some painting every single day, even if it's just half an hour here and there. The more you practice, the more mistakes you'll make; the more mistakes you make, the more opportunities you have to learn something new.

2. Learn About Painting

When you pick up a paintbrush for the first time, you're more than likely not going to be able to create intricate and enchanting pieces of work. Creating a beautiful painting is something that requires a lot of thought and a lot of knowledge about how paintings are created. You may very well be adept at picking up a paintbrush and creating a painting right then and there, but the more you learn about painting, the more your skills are going to improve.

3. Get Better Supplies

When it comes to art supplies, it can definitely be worth investing in more expensive supplies. Not only do they last a lot longer, they're also of a higher quality. Take colours, for example. If you buy student grade colours, which are the cheaper ones, there isn't as much variety as there is with artist grade colours, which are the more expensive of the two. Spending a bit extra on supplies can open up a lot more opportunities for how you approach your paintings; it can also give you more freedom to explore your ideas.

4. Use All Of Your Supplies To Their Full Potential

You've probably got lots of supplies lying about that never get used. You never know, they may well come in handy, so see if you can use them. A ruler, for example, can help you create a grid that can help you place everything in your painting more accurately. Do some research on how different supplies can help with painting and you'll be surprised to learn how many different items artists use to help them.

5. Get Critiques From Others

It always helps to get a second opinion. In fact, the more opinions you can get, the better. Even if you try to critique your own work, you're not completely unbiased because it's your own work. Get outside opinions: people will tell you what you could be doing better and they will encourage you to keep trying. It's best to get critiques from artists who are more experienced than you; the opinions they have may seem overly critical, but all criticism helps because it alerts you to things you could be doing better.

6. Plan Ahead

Doing paintings spontaneously is great, but a great way to improve your painting skills is to plan ahead. By doing this, you're giving yourself a chance to think about how you're going to approach your painting. You can work out what styles and techniques you're going to use to create the effects you want. You can even do rough sketches to give yourself an idea of how to scale everything. Planning ahead gives you the advantage of time: with more time to work on a painting, you can afford to consider and explore more ideas.

Joanne Perkins is a Berkshire-based artist with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art. She specialises in painting Berkshire landscapes and loves capturing the natural beauty of her local countryside. She is happy to accept all queries and questions. For more information about Joanne, her work and her current projects visit: http://joannesberkshirescenes.com/default.aspx Joanne can be found on Facebook


 See also:
5 Things To Know About Underpainting
5 Easy Ways To Expand Your Knowledge Of Art
4 Ways To Decide What To Paint

Article Source: EzineArticles.com