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We all learn from
each other and the world around us. In the beginning we copy old
masters and depict life as it is from photos not relying on our memory
and imagination as we do not trust them yet.
Then, once we gain more artistic technical skills and
become more proficient, we try to progress further to the advance
copying still having a photo as a reference and adding just brighter
colours to our paintings. These
steps are necessary and very crucial to the learning process. We have to take them and go through to find our personal style, the way we can express ourselves, show
emotions and tell a story by our paintings.
We are watching, learning and looking for a style we can call our own. It's a lifetime journey... |
 Life Balance- NEW! Life Balance is a new series of paintings filled with humor. We all balance in our everyday lives between career and family, family and friends, work and hobby, work and holidays, health and work, fitness and yummy food, etc. What is the right balance and can we really achieve it? Life IS what happens while we're busy planning it
I have been painting with 'White Nights' watercolours for a very long
time. The Protea Flower is one of my many paintings done with 'White Nights' watercolours.
 Recently I have discovered an old box of WN paints that were forgotten for about 20 years. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I can still use them! No wasting! They haven’t dried out except maybe for one of them (Mars Brown). They were so easy to pick up with a brush and haven’t lost their brilliant bright colours. Not a bit! WN full-pan watercolours come in either Sets of 12, 24 or 36 colours in a white durable plastic case or as Individual Pans, that can add even more excitement to the basic WN sets of 12/ 24 colours or to your existing colour palette.
 The colours included in the 24-colour set are: Cadmium Lemon, Cadmium Yellow Medium, Yellow Ochre, Golden Yellow, Titian Red/OrangeLake, Cadmium Red Light, Red Ochre, English Red, Carmine, Madder Lake Red Light, Row Siena, Burnt Umber, Umber, Mars Brown, Yellow Green, Emerald Green, Green, Cobalt Blue, Blue (Bright), Ultramarine, Violet, Indigo, Sepia and Neutral Black. There are also Metallic watercolour pan paints available in a choice of 7 colours that includes 2 Silvers, 3 Golds, Copper and Bronze. |  The very first painting of the new My Sydney series was sold so quickly in the Kurnell Art Gallery and I simply forgot to photograph the My Sydney-1. Then I decided to paint Sydney Harbour with its two icons - The Harbour Bridge and the Opera House - again. So, the My Sydney-2 is a very different painting as I started painting it from scratch without having a look at the first one. Every painting in this series is going to be unique, an original work, not an exact copy and not a print. The My Sydney-1 and My Sydney-2 paintings are so alike on the web site page as they are both... a photo of the My Sydney-2. Portrait - Painting Tips - How to start painting a realistic portrait 1. Start with yourself. You are the best and the most patient model you can ever get. Draw your face from a mirror reflection. Start from a full face view first. Learn the proportions of your face, where your nose, eyes, mouth are, distance between them and their shapes. Draw eye, nose and mouth level lines first. Notice that the distance between your eyes is the width of your eye, so that one more eye can placed in between. One more eye width can be drawn on either side of your eyes that give you the maximum width of your face of 5 eyes on the eye level line... Then try drawing 3/4 view. Notice the difference in proportions and a perspective. Profile portrait: it's all about the shape of the outline and proportions. An ear is situated between an eye line and a mouth line, a bit lower than the nose tip and a bit higher than the edge of the eye. Check it out!  Spare time. Draw any faces with one nose, two eyes and a mouth on a scrap of paper. Add more characters to an average face. Play with it. Draw a long nose and small eyes on a photo of a beauty queen and see what happen. 2. Draw portraits of people that you know from your family if you have already drawn almost every variation of your self-portraits. Use reference photos in the beginning and then ask them to sit for you for a quick sketch for a half an hour. Be aware that a child is a very difficult subject to draw or paint in comparison to adults. Spare time. Practice in your spare time on a scrap paper. Keep drawing simply faces, copy faces from newspapers and magazines, faces of celebrities, people's faces in cafes, any faces from your memory, long and narrow faces, wide and fat faces, smiling faces, faces of pretty girls & women and handsome men, faces of old people with beautiful wrinkles. Try different hair styles. 3. Start painting
from a photo. Draw outlines and face features with a thinly diluted Burnt Sienna paint (traditional oils, water mixable oils, acrylics as oils). Colours: Burnt Sienna, Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Red, Ultramarine Blue and Titanium/Zinc White. Basic mix #1: Burnt Sienna and Titanium/Zinc White for a
basic mix. Mix #2: Add a bit of Cadmium Red to a basic mix for a reddish skin.
Mix #3: Add Cadmium Yellow and a touch of Cadmium Red to a basic mix to get a
yellow-pink mix for a sunny part of the face. Mix #4: Add some Ultramarine to
the basic mix to get a shadow part of the face and men's cheeks. May add a
little of Cadmium Red or Yellow to the mix to get variations of colours. 4. Go to a portrait workshop and paint a portrait from a life model. Check the difficulty level of the workshop with organizers. | Art Books on Amazon.com |
