Leopard Painting Demonstration in Pastels
About The Artist
Carol Santora, PSA, has loved animals of all kinds since she was a child, and remembers always wanting to be an artist. She had numerous well-used Jon Gnagy drawing kits and would copy pictures from magazines and sketch things around her home.
Santora (BFA, summa cum laude, Framingham State University) began her formal art training in 1983, while working as a registered nurse. One thing she wanted to learn to paint desperately was her dog, Flossie. After that first successful portrait, Santora realized she had a special talent and passion for animal and wildlife portraiture. Over the next 20 years, Santora would explore oil and watercolor painting before settling on soft pastel as her perfect medium. She painted landscapes and still-lifes, studied human portraiture and the figure, but the animals kept calling to her and appearing in her work.
Santora’s intimate portraits are insightful interpretations that express her passion for animals with excitement and energy by pushing the boundaries of color. She visits farms, rescues and wildlife areas in New England and out West to study and photograph her subjects. She takes hundreds of photographs and spends countless hours watching the animals that inspire her paintings. Her work is grounded in representation, but she is not bound by that. As she works, a completely realistic depiction gives way to a more artistic, contemporary rendering that serves her colorist and expressive purposes….
Learn more about Carol and see more of her work at her Website:
Watercolor Painting Tutorial – Change Colors for a Different Effect
About Steve Fleming
Good art is the result of hard work and dedication. It only happens when the artist finds his or her own story to tell and then learns to do so with his or her own unique language.
I am an artist who works in watercolor and acrylic, and I teach both for The Art League in Alexandria, Virginia, as well as workshops across the country and abroad. My goal as an artist is to be creative; my goal as a teacher is to help my students learn to interpret the world around them, not to promote the belief the goal of art is the perfect rendering of a subject. One of my core messages: art is a creative process and is not just the sum total of the work we sell. In this era of digital cameras, I caution artists to look — really look both inside and outside — for the subject matter that lights our artistic fires. Otherwise, our work will be lacking everything but technique.
Painting Lesson – How To Mix an Endless Amount of Greens
You can learn how to mix an almost endless amount of greens with just a handful of tube colors that you may already have on hand.
You may be asking yourself: “Why would I want or need to mix my own greens when I can just buy tubes of green paint and use those?”
It’s true, there are some very nice tubed greens on the market today. Thalo Green and Thalo Yellow Green for instance, are two of my favorites. I use these two greens if I am outdoors painting and I don’t have the time to mix my own greens from scratch and believe me, they come in very handy sometimes. Apart from those two, I have no other greens on my palette. Everything else I mix from various blues, yellows and other colors.
If you aren’t a landscape painter however, then you can probably get away with using tubed greens, but even tubed greens may have to be modified depending on your particular subject matter. Using colors straight from the tube can be too intense sometimes.
If you do a lot of landscape painting however, then you should really learn how to mix your own greens.
How To Achieve Color Harmony In Your Paintings With a Limited Palette
Achieving a sense of color harmony in painting is something that we all strive for as artists, but some of us just never seem to get there and eventually become frustrated and give up.
It is no surprise that color harmony is so difficult to achieve. For one, there are so many different colors to choose from today, and when you have this many choices, things can become rather confusing. Secondly, it is very difficult to find any clear cut advice on this topic.
Hopefully the following tips will help you get a better grasp on color in your painting and you will finally be on your way toward Mastering Color.
One of the most effective methods that will help you harmonize your paintings is to switch to a limited palette of colors. A limited palette simply means that you are reducing the number of colors on your palette.
Painting Lesson – Learn How To Accurately See Color & Value
In this video lesson Richard Robinson talks about how to more easily recognize color and value. Seeing color and value correctly is one of the most difficult aspects of creating art. In this lesson, Richard discusses how detail in your reference picture can actually distract you from seeing the main values. He recommends to squint your eyes when looking at your reference picture, which blurs the image and makes it easier to recognize value. He goes on to say that while squinting your eyes can help see value, it will not help you to better recognize color.
Recognizing color is a real challenge. One of the main reasons it is so challenging to see color accurately is because of a a particular color’s surrounding environment. A color’s surrounding environment can greatly affect the way we perceive it.
For instance, you can take the same color blue and surround it with two different colors as illustrated in the picture below. Notice how the the blue swatch on the left appears lighter and seems to stand out more than the blue swatch on the right?
Mastering Color – Simple Exercise To Help You Become a Better Painter Overnight
Are you an artist who struggles with color? Do you find yourself unable to achieve color harmony in your artwork? Well you are not alone. Did you know that over 70% of artists admit that color is one of their biggest obstacles? Chances are that you are amongst those 70% or you would not be reading this article right now.
If you take the time to work on the exercise below, you will have a new appreciation and understanding of color, and it won’t take years of practice either. You can become more knowledgeable about color after only one session.
What exactly am I talking about?
Color Mixing Tutorials & Resources For Oil Paints
One of the biggest challenges for artists just starting out with oil painting is mixing colors. Color is a powerful tool. If handled improperly, things can become quite messy. Improperly mixed colors lead to muddy or unbalanced paintings. The good news is, with practice, you will become more skilled at mastering color in your oil paintings. I have collected a number of color mixing tutorials below including links to articles, videos and books. I hope you find these oil painting color mixing resources helpful.
VIDEOS:
How to Mix Colors for Oil Paints
An Introduction to Color Theory for Painters
color theory is to peek your interest and hopefully cause you to study this topic further on your own. Understanding color theory is perhaps one of the most important aspects of becoming a good painter. When you understand the elements of color and how colors interact with one another, you have unlocked one of the biggest puzzles of painting.
WHERE DOES COLOR COME FROM?
Our beautiful world of color is only possible because of the solar spectrum. You can certainly do your best to mimic natural sunlight with today’s technology and they have done a pretty fine job of that with full spectrum lighting. But even full spectrum lighting is not as true as sunlight. One only needs to spend a day painting outdoors to see how your color pops out at you under natural sunlight when compared to indoor lighting.
Oil Painting Lessons – Tips on Color Mixing and Theory
When I first began painting some 10 years ago, I recall how intimidating it all seemed. With all of the various colors, mediums, brushes and other tools available, it was enough to make my head spin.
How do I make a color lighter or darker? What about making realistic shadows or highlights? This article will shed some colorful light on the situation, and with practice, working with color in your oil paintings will become easier and more enjoyable.
Thank God for the beautiful Sun, for without it, we would not see color. Everything would appear dark and colorless.
Art Lesson: Learn About Color Schemes for Your Next Painting
Painting is all about harmony. Harmony in a painting is when the arrangement of colors and objects are pleasing to the viewers eyes. As a painter you can either put too much into a painting or not enough. If your painting is too chaotic you may scare the viewer away. On the other hand, if your painting lacks something, it may be perceived as boring, and your viewer will not be engaged, so it’s important to have balance in your color arrangements.
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