Counterintuitive Painting – or – The Problem Might Not Be What You Think It Is
About Karin
Karin Wells is an artist of amazing versatility. She graduated with honors from both the New England School of Art and Design, Boston, 1965, and the Butera School of Art, Boston, 1986. Karin has enjoyed a career as an award-winning graphic designer, illustrator and sign painter. She also taught Life Drawing and Painting for many years. She has most recently studied for three years at The New England School of Classical Painting in Greenfield, New Hampshire, under the direction of Numael Pulido.
To expand her craft, Karin has traveled throughout Europe studying the Old Masters. Her art reflects the deep influence of these great works. Karin demonstrates a remarkable facility for likeness and for the use of light.
The artist is a member of The American Society of Portrait Artists, Portrait Society of America, The Portrait Society of Atlanta, and The Copley Society of Boston.
How to Enliven a Painting with Pure Color
About Karin
Karin Wells is an artist of amazing versatility. She graduated with honors from both the New England School of Art and Design, Boston, 1965, and the Butera School of Art, Boston, 1986. Karin has enjoyed a career as an award-winning graphic designer, illustrator and sign painter. She also taught Life Drawing and Painting for many years. She has most recently studied for three years at The New England School of Classical Painting in Greenfield, New Hampshire, under the direction of Numael Pulido.
To expand her craft, Karin has traveled throughout Europe studying the Old Masters. Her art reflects the deep influence of these great works. Karin demonstrates a remarkable facility for likeness and for the use of light.
The artist is a member of The American Society of Portrait Artists, Portrait Society of America, The Portrait Society of Atlanta, and The Copley Society of Boston.
How to Make Blue from Ivory Black & White
About Karin
Karin Wells is an artist of amazing versatility. She graduated with honors from both the New England School of Art and Design, Boston, 1965, and the Butera School of Art, Boston, 1986. Karin has enjoyed a career as an award-winning graphic designer, illustrator and sign painter. She also taught Life Drawing and Painting for many years. She has most recently studied for three years at The New England School of Classical Painting in Greenfield, New Hampshire, under the direction of Numael Pulido.
To expand her craft, Karin has traveled throughout Europe studying the Old Masters. Her art reflects the deep influence of these great works. Karin demonstrates a remarkable facility for likeness and for the use of light.
The artist is a member of The American Society of Portrait Artists, Portrait Society of America, The Portrait Society of Atlanta, and The Copley Society of Boston.
How to Paint Water and Sky in Oils
About Jon Friedman
Jon R. Friedman was born in 1947 in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Princeton University with Bachelor of Arts Degree and received a Master of Fine Arts Degree from Cranbrook Art Academy located in Michigan.
Jon R. Friedman paints landscapes, figure paintings, and commissioned portraits. He also creates assemblages and constructions and site-specific installations. Friedman has studios in both New York City and Cape Cod, Massachusetts. See Jon Friedman’s Resumé for more information.
Follow this link to visit Jon’s Website
Oil Painting Demonstration Portrait by Philip Howe
By Philip Howe
The following oil painting demonstration is courtesy of Philip Howe . When you are finished viewing this demonstration, please take a moment to visit Philip’s site to view more of his artwork and to learn more about him.
You may also be interested in Philip’s New Book:
“Angels – The Artwork of Philip Howe”
This book is 134 full-color pages of the beautiful artwork of Philip Howe. The reproductions are from his spiritual and dream series of oil paintings, with dozens of images, exclusive close-up shots from the originals, and over 40 pages of demonstrations for artists and collectors. It is printed on soft matte paper, the same as our quality prints, so the color is rich and clean, with each spread designed to fit the images.
Follow this link for more details on the book.
Oil Painting Tutorial For Beginners – Paint What You See!
Here is a wonderful 5 part oil painting video tutorial by Artist William Gelvin that teaches how to paint what you see. This is a long video series, but well worth it. You will need about an hour of free time to watch this series.
There are times when a beginner will paint what he thinks he knows about a particular subject and not what is right before his eyes.
Now, this is not to say that you should always paint what you see exactly. Sometimes it is more important to paint what you know, especially if your eyes are not trained to see color and value correctly, as in a portrait for instance.
In this oil painting lesson for beginners, William uses a subject that he has never painted before: a shiny gold watch.
Shiny metal objects are probably one of the most difficult things for beginners to paint. That is because a beginner is not observing the watch correctly. William teaches you how to observe the watch differently, to break it down into a bunch of small shapes, which makes painting it much easier. Learn more by watching the videos below. Enjoy!
Oil Painting Video Lesson – Alla Prima Oil Painting Technique
Alla Prima Oil Painting Technique – A Video Tutorial by Larry Seiler
Here is a wonderful oil painting video lesson for beginners by artist Larry Seiler that demonstrates the All Prima Oil Painting Technique.
Alla Prima is an Italian word that literally means “At Once”. Its a painting that is completed in one session. This is a direct painting method that produces a fresh and spontaneous look to your work. I love this style of painting because it allows me to get loose and just let go and have fun, which is exactly what Larry does in the following video tutorial.
He begins his Alla Prima painting session by mixing his colors ahead of time on his palette. He says this eliminates a lot of his decisions in advance and allows him to establish a color harmony that will work for his painting. Another advantage of pre-mixing his colors is that his focus is on the subject that he is painting and not on color mixing.
After his colors are prepared, he then creates a basic sketch using some vine charcoal.
Oil Painting Demonstration – Florida Landscape
Below is an excellent step by step oil painting video lesson by the very talented Debra Bryant. I found the following oil painting demonstration on the video sharing site Ustream.tv. This is a very long demo with over 3 hours of footage. So grab your favorite beverage or snack, sit back relax and be prepared to learn something new.
In this oil painting lesson, Debra shares her 
oil painting techniques for creating a beautiful landscape painting from a photo. She begins her painting by first toning her canvas with purple so that this color will show through the final painting in spots.
She demonstrates her techniques for creating a convincing sky and clouds. One key technique that she points out in the video for doing this is to make the sky more green near the horizon. To make realistic looking clouds, she mixes reds and yellows into white. Also, when clouds near the horizon, they become narrower and more gray. These are just some of the awesome techniques you will learn in this video. Enjoy!
Follow this link to visit Debra’s Ustream Profile for more awesome Painting Demonstrations.
Portrait Painting Demonstration in Oils
In this step by step portrait painting demonstration, David R. Darrow, aka “Dave The Painting Guy” talks about how he paints a portrait with oil paint. He talks about how he sets up his canvas, the paints on his palette, special medium that he uses, how he sketches out the portrait and more. I learned a great deal about portrait painting by watching this video. One of the key points that I learned from this video is to keep the cheek and nose area redder than the rest of the face, while keeping the forehead and chin a bit more yellow. Check out the video below to learn more…
David is a really talented artist. I visited his website to check out some of his painting and was quite impressed with his work and I know you will be too. You can visit his site by following this link.
David also hosts live painting session on a site called Ustream. If you have time, you should definitely set aside some time to attend one of his live workshops. Don’t worry if you miss one though. You can watch some of the recorded workshops there as well. Follow this link to visit David’s Ustream Page.
Basic Oil Painting Materials For Beginners and Purchasing Tips
Deciding to practice the art of oil painting was a great one, but now you’re faced with what you need to buy in order to get started. Oil painting materials can be very expensive and a vast majority of materials to choose from. This materials list will carry you long into your early years of painting and is budget conscious.
Choosing a good easel can be difficult. But the most important characteristic is that it is STURDY! When I got started oil painting, I did not have the money to buy the kind of easel I needed. So I went to the local home fix it store and bought an 8 by 4 sheet of ¾ inch plywood for about $15.00. I put it up against a wall in my basement and put some support screws at the top of the board and into the ceiling joist and instant easel! The reason why it works so perfectly is that it’s big, so you can put up any size canvas, and it does not get much sturdier than that!
You also never had to adjust anything, because you put the canvas where you want it. This brings me to the next important note though. I staple gun my canvas to the easel flat and stretch them after the painting is done. That’s another reason why the sheet of plywood worked so well. I have used it for years and years and painted many paintings on it, so I have gotten my $15.00 out of it.
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