3 EASY WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR PAINTINGSBy Dan Scott of drawpaintacademy.com

1. Invest More Time In Planning Your Painting

So many people overlook the

planning phase… but then get upset when the painting does not turn out as

they want

Here are my tips:

- The more complex the painting, the more time you put into planning your painting.

- Spend time finding an interesting scene to paint. You want to find a scene which you are excited to paint.

- Make your reference photo (if you are painting from a photo rather than life) into gray scale so you can clearly see the light and dark areas in your scene.

- Use editing software to check the general color harmony of your reference photo so you can get a feel for what colors you will need.

Paint something you will be happy with at the end…

2. Stop blending your beautiful brushwork

Over blending is one of the most

common issues in beginner paintings

You need to try and ignore that urge to make everything look refined and pretty from up

close.

Your viewers do not look at your painting up close, they view it from a distance. So why

would you paint as if your viewers only saw your painting up close?

Tip: Try and complete every painting with as few strokes as possible and make every stroke

count.

When you step back, all your lovely brushwork will blend together in the viewer’s eye, despite your painting looking like a beautiful mess of

color up close.

Let’s take a look at this beautiful painting by Joaquín Sorolla, one of the greatest painters of all time

Joaquín Sorolla, Beach at Valencia, 1908

Notice how you can clearly see all of Sorolla’s strokes up close

In fact, when you look up close at Sorolla’s painting, it does not look like much as all does it. But in whole, it has this quality of realism which is very difficult to achieve.

The overall composition is what is important, not the individual details...

3. Determine what is important in your paintings and simplify the rest

The impressionists were masters at extracting all the important details in what they were painting and simplifying the rest.Julian Onderdonk, Fall Landscape

Notice the simplified detail of the trees in the background.

Camille Pissarro, Snow Landscape in Louveciennes, 1872

Check out this stunning painting, Winter Dream by Peter Bezrukov. Notice how much he simplified the unnecessary details in this painting.

Your eyes are drawn towards the focal point in the boat and away from the background areas which are of less importance.

Effective use of simplification will reduce the influence of unnecessary areas in your painting and in doing that, enhance your focal points.

Simplification it all about focusing your viewer on what is important in your painting.

However, be careful not to simplify areas of importance!

Your judgement of what to simplify will improve with experience.

Thanks for joining me!

If you enjoyed these tips, please let me know by email at dan@drawpaintacademy.com.

If you want to learn more about painting, my Introduction To Painting Online Course will be open for enrolment shortly.

Let me know if you are interested in enrolling by sending me an email and I can give you some more information.

Otherwise, enjoy the website!