Understand that Art (in this case painting) for the making of money is like any other business. You need to market your product or have someone else, like an art gallery, market your work. There are thousands, if not millions of very good painters out there trying to sell their work. Those that have the best marketing system will sell the most for the most money. It is as simple as that.

Now if you are interested in just learning from scratch how to get started as a painter, I can do that. I have been painting for about fifteen years without any formal training. Everything I have learned is from “how to” books or trial and error. I started painting in 1994 when, as a Department of Defense employee, my wife and I were stationed in Israel.

Since we were limited by weight of what we could ship as household goods, we did not pack much in the way of wall hangings. The bare walls of the apartment we were assigned soon became annoying so we started to look around for some paintings to hang. Israel is kind of an artsy country and there is a great deal of art available. The wife and I both have fairly good taste so of course anything we could agree on, which wasn’t much, was really expensive.

After some searching and thought, I finally opened my mouth and told the wife that I thought I could do as well as most of the paintings we were viewing. Unfortunately, my wife threw down the challenge to prove it. Now my male ego was at stake and there was no way around my having to live up to what my mouth had said without consulting my brain. There you have the story of how and why I started painting. As the saying goes, that’s my story and I am sticking to it.

I went to an art supply store and bought a starter oil paint set a few brushes, a couple of how to paint books and a canvas. I finally selected as a subject a picture of the apartment building in which we lived. Mistake – it was too complicated for a first time artist. I finally got it finished but it was a mess. I would suggest you start with something more simple and work your way up.

Let’s discuss what you need to start your new hobby. That depends on what kind of painting you want to start with. The choices are: Oil based paints, Acrylics (water based paints), Water colors, or Pastels. All of these have their good and bad points and people chose one or the other for a variety of reasons. People pick the one with which they feel most comfortable and which results, in their opinion, in the best product.

As a starter I would suggest Acrylics. There are no fumes, they are not flammable and they dry very fast. Fast drying can be good or bad, depending on what you are attempting to do on the canvas. With Acrylics you can sprits on a bit of water or use a special additive to delay the drying process. This medium is also great when it comes time to clean the paint off your hands and brushes because you only need soap and water and not a paint thinner.

From an expense perspective Acrylics are a bit less costly. The average cost for small tubes of these paints is about five dollars. A starter set of paint will usually have about six to eight colors so you are looking at about thirty or so dollars. There are a lot of different brands but not to worry. Pick the cheapest or the ones on sale. All the brands will mix together.

Next buy a set of cheap brushes. You should be able to get five to ten in a package for about five bucks. Buy a couple of one and two inch brushes also. If they are expensive at the art supply store go to a hardware store. You will also need a canvas or canvas board to paint on. The canvas boards are less costly and can usually be purchased in two or three to a pack. The draw back to the boards is that they must be framed for hanging. Canvas cost will vary widely based on size and quality. Buy the cheapest you can for the size painting you want. If you start selling your paintings for large sums of money then you can concern yourself with high quality supplies.

You will need a place to work and something to prop your painting up while you work. An easel is the obvious choice with a large floor standup costing about fifty to one hundred dollars. A table easel will run from about twenty to fifty dollars. If you don’t want to put that much into your hobby at this point, all you really need is a place to work, a table and a wall, books or some other way to prop up the canvas to work.

All you need now is a subject and some self confidence. I find photographs to be the best means of providing your chosen subject matter. I would recommend that you chose a simple landscape photo, preferably with a tree or a small patch of trees. If you chose a picture of buildings or other structures it will be necessary, at least to begin with, to draw a grid on the picture and the canvas. After that you will need to do a rough sketch of the subject matter on the canvas to insure you have a close approximation of where parts of the structures belongs in the painting as compared to the photo. In other words if you have a church steeple in the upper middle of the picture you want to sketch it in the upper middle grid of the canvas. This will save you a great deal of time having to correct a misplaced item about half way through the painting. If you start out with a portrait photo of a person, good luck. I have never been able to do portraits to the degree I would actually show it to another human.

Alright, you have your supplies, equipment, place to work and subject. You are ready to paint. There you sit or stand staring at the blank canvas confidence wavering and wondering where to start. The easiest thing to do is just take some paint on your hand or a large brush and smear it on to the canvas. It doesn’t really matter what color but I usually use the prominent background color of the subject matter/photo I am working from. If I am going to do a landscape painting I will usually just smear a thick layer of blue across the top half of the canvas and a light brown across the bottom. Once you splash the first color onto the canvas you have become a painter. I have seen pieces in museums that don’t look any better than what you just did.

Once you get started and have painted a couple of works do not be afraid to experiment. Buy some “how to paint” books and try different approaches and different mediums. Your first works likely will be categorized as “primitive”. That is not a criticism, just a category of painting. There are many artists that sell their “primitives” for thousands of dollars. Read and learn from books and the internet, where there are many free art clips you can view. Just Google search or go to You Tube and search under art instructions. Look at possibly doing some impressionist and expressionist works when you have built up your self confidence.

If you do something and you don’t like the finished product, you can always paint something else over it. Paint for yourself and do whatever with your paints and brushes makes you happy. Do not worry about what other people think of your work. No matter what you paint some people will love it and some will hate it. You will eventually come to consider any comment, good or bad, on your work as validation that you have produced a work of art that someone looked at with enough interest to comment. It is the people that look at your work and say nothing that are most frustrating.

.     I have about taken you as far as I can in a short article on how to get started. The bottom line is just do it. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. I do not know how many times I have heard people say they would love to learn to paint but they could not even draw a straight line. My response to that is you do not need the ability to draw a straight line to paint. If a straight line is needed that is why someone invented the ruler. They work just as well on a canvas as on a piece of paper. The real reason people do not follow up on a desire to learn to paint is that there is work and the possibility of criticism involved. If you really want to Paint do it now. Do not wait until some time in the future because the future never comes. When it gets here it is no longer the future it becomes the present and quickly becomes the past. Past accomplishments are notable but people are more interested in what you are doing today. Good luck and happy painting.

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As far as easels go whatever you might decide upon make sure that it is definitely sturdy. The folding ones are a superb choice to invest your money in. An easel is not really an essential item, but these can prove very useful if you need to move around. These you can take anywhere to suit your needs.

This gives you the freedom to head out to the countryside, town squares, gardens, parks, homes, etc., wherever you like. It gives you total freedom.

At times I have utilized an old school blackboard stand as a prop for my work. Even this is better than trying to work on a flat surface. Personally I was lucky enough to pick up a second-hand easel, however that is not the best sort that can be purchased in art suppliers now. As a contemporary artist I like an easel that does not wobble!

Perhaps the best that can be acquired on the market today are the ones called “the radial”. These I think will hold a painting up to 52 inches or the equivalent in centimetres high. Most likely this is the best you can purchase for use in your home. One only needs to see one to note that they are equally strong and firm.

Even once you have an easel you will still need something at hand to put your working tools on. At some stage I used to use an old tea trolley which was useful, not only could you move it around to suit your needs, but I found that I could manage to get all my equipment on it. This saved time getting up and down for things. They are easy to pick up at car boot sales, local auctions, tip or antique shops.

A normal palette with a thumb hole is an absolute must have for your kit. Some people tend to use brown wood ones. To my mind I would always use the white trays, as with these they contrast your colours better. In fact, I find myself using glass and enamel plates or china saucers. A friend of mine, who is also a contemporary painter, just uses plain glass with white paper below it.

Surfaces to paint on can differ. Different types seem more suitable according to your various times and wants. Money does not really come in to it. Many people prepare and stretch their own canvasses. Generally you find it is better to have several canvasses at hand. Although really you can use hardboard, canvas, plywood or many other backings for your work. The point to be clarified is, you need a different assortment of sizes and shapes.

If you usually only work on one painting at a time it does not matter, from my own experience I often have about three on the go at any one time. It is very frustrating if you run out of surfaces to paint on when you are currently feeling creative.

This will hopefully give you an idea of what your requirements are. Once you have these you need to add brushes, palette knives, turps and turps substitute, drying and linseed oils plus maybe some other mediums. A household brush normally comes in handy together with the paints themselves and containers. Hope you will enjoy your creations.

This article was written by Anna Meenaghan of http://annameenaghanart.com

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Materials are important to the artist and like most things in life, it is better to obtain the best that you can possibly afford. Painting isn´t always an easy craft—so your tools are very important to you.

For example, if you choose mediocre materials the final result obtained will probably reflect this.

If you go for quality it should certainly obtain improved results.

As a contemporary artist I can tell you that you require a firm support to paint on, together with a mixed selection of colours and certainly high quality brushes. Brushes are important! You need one that is both clean, a naturally good shape, but that is also flexible. With a good brush you can draw freely and not simply make a certain size brushmarks.

If you use short, bristled brushes they do not usually seem to give a particularly good finish.

If, for instance, you want to draw a persons head you require an amount of flexibility and a precise touch. To achieve this you need to be drawing with the paint continually and in small accurate strokes.

As brushes go I find that it is good to have a few sables that are pointed, as well as a few hog hair brushes. If you use a flat brush you can get delicacy by lying it on its side.

If you wish to draw well and put down patches of colour, you need brushes that have fairly long hair, filbert, round or flat, so they are flexible.

When you purchase good quality brushes then they should stay in shape well, but it is a requirement that they are washed at the end of each painting session. It is pretty clear they will not be good for long unless you treat them well.

What will help you? Well, being a contemporary painter, I often keep an old jam jar filled with turps substitute at my side. This you can use for cleaning out the brushes whilst you are painting and of course when you finish your work for the day. It is recommended that you should clean them sufficiently in this, preferably dry them on an old piece of rag and then finally it is usual to give them a wash with some soap and water.

It is useful to hold the soap in one hand and rub the brushes across it, then clean them gently in your hand with your fingers. The second step is to rinse in water and then start to reshape the bristles with your fingers.

This sounds a lot to do, but really should never take long to do, but it is important.

Sometimes if you are tired you may forget to do this and then find you will be mad with yourself the following day.

Actually most people seem to collect quite a large collection of brushes but end up using only six or seven at a time. As with everything else you have your favourites and really you do not necessarily have to acquire a large stock. You find that you still use your very old ones. These are very nice on wide areas of painting as they are well worn and this saves on your newer brushes as it tends to wear them down.

This article was written by Anna Meenaghan of http://annameenaghanart.com

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Posing your model surrounded by a few props can add much interest, dimension, and appeal to a portrait and goes a long way to describing your subject. A prop can add appreciably to the composition of the portrait. Sketching a portrait with a prop, such as a hat or even ear muffs, obliges you to above all pay attention to the complete arabesque.

Quite often the starting artist will be tempted to approach a prop as a separate entity or an afterthought so that rather than complimenting and blending in a supporting role with the subject’s face, it looks artificial and overwhelms the model or is incorrectly proportioned or sketched.

In this expose you will learn the expert approach to drawing a prop entity that frames the center of interest even with a supporting entity that is bigger than the face.

First, the presence of a prop does not change the approach to drawing the pencil portrait. As with sketching any other portrait, you should use all your usual basic skills and apply them throughout the normal processes of your rendering effort.

So as always, you start with the arabesque which in the case where the head and the prop item overlap will be a “construct” which is a complete arabesque that encompasses not only the shape and proportions of the skull but also of the outline of the supporting entity where it overlaps with the skull.

In the context of the presence of a prop entity that overlaps with the skull, the construct becomes of crucial importance. It helps a lot with the maintenance of harmony. If you do not draw from the reference of a construct, the skull and the prop will appear as separate structures.

While you work through the subsequent stages of your portrait drawing (proportions, landmarks, blocking-in, stumping, etc.) you should constantly be aware of the fact that your supporting item should not overwhelm the face of your model.

The face of your subject should remain the primary focus. Your sketch should not turn into a still life of your supporting item that also happens to show a person’s face in the background.

One trick that can help you with understating of the supporting entity is to only draw the merest of details inside the supporting element. Another one is to soften the values of the supporting element but only if it this appropriate in the context of the overall intent of your sketch.

Again, we cannot stress enough the importance of maintaining the cohesion between your subject and the prop element. That is why it is significant that you render from the construct which already links the model and your prop item as one overall object. Of course, this also implies that you do the toning in a similar spirit and not overdo the lines and values that separate the model and the supporting entity.

So, in conclusion, the principal considerations when including supporting elements in your drawing are to make sure that the arabesque covers the entire contour of the head and the supporting elements.

In addition, be sure that at all times you keep in mind that the supporting elements should never become the focus of your sketch. If you stick to these guidelines, the utilize of props entities should never become a problem for you.

Do you want to learn the secrets of pencil portrait drawing? Download my brand new free pencil portrait drawing course here: portrait drawing tutorial.

Remi Engels is a pencil portrait artist and oil painter and practiced sketching teacher. See his work at graphite pencil portraits.

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Once you have hatched the primary value masses of your portrait it is time to blend and “remove” the lights with a kneaded eraser.

A stump is a cylindrical tool tapered at the ends and generally made of rolled paper. Stumping then is to smear or blend your hatchings with a stump. The point of blending is to produce gradations and halftones and to give certain tone regions a softer look.

Blending can be done in different ways. You can utilize tissue paper or even your fingers or both. When utilizing your fingers be sure to wipe off any oily deposits with a tissue.

Stumping must be done in a painterly manner. You should literally cut out the form while keeping in mind both the structural anatomy and the changes of the planes. As you sketch name each anatomical element. This is particularly advisable when you work on complex structures such as the nose and the eyes.

In a analogous fashion you can utilize your kneaded eraser to “take out” graphite to lighten particularareas. Again, go about it in a sculpturally way. Make use of the kneaded eraser as if it is a brush.

Now and again you may want to use the concept of “closure”. Your mind has a predispostion to fill in the holes in your observations. That is, the mind has a need for “closure”. You can make judicious use of this tendency and leave particular parts of your portrait unfinished. It adds interest to your sketch as the viewer’s mind will involuntarily complete the portrait for you.

After you have done lots of blending and taking out graphite with your kneaded eraser it is time to further articulate the forms and planes by cross-hatching with a harder pencil (e.g., a 2H pencil). But, there are a number of things to look out for at this time.

Care must be taken not to make the light side of the skull too darkly or it will look like a contusion. The smile-line is also difficult. If you over-stress it you will end up with a scoff. It is best to under-stress it and let the viewer’s sense of closure finalize it for you.

An important consideration must be made when drawing from a photograph. A photo should only be reference material. That means aesthetic decisions must be made. For example:

- What type of emotional reaction are you after? When people see your portrait what manner of initial gut response do you want them to have to your drawing. Good technique is absolutely necessary. But it will count for very little if it is frosty cold and dry.

- Make choices. You should not draw every tiny facet but only the essential ones. Use your artistic judgement to make these choices.

A hard 4H pencil can be used to make the already dark areas even darker with cross-hatching.

Careful consideration must be given to the edges of the shapes in your sketch. For example, as a form turns away from the light source its tone gradually gets darker and takes on a soft edge.

A cast shadow has a hard edge. The form of a cast shadow is determined by the shape of the object throwing the shadow and the form upon which it is being thrown.

Finish the sketch by paying attention to the essential details. You also want to further tweak and balance the constructed values. Your sketch must always read as a cohesive whole even though you decide not to bring it to a complete finish.

These few easy guidelines will set you on the accurate path. Apply them correctly and soon your pencil portraits will show much improvement.

Do you want to learn the secrets of pencil portrait sketching? Download my brand new free pencil portrait drawing course here: pencil portrait tutorial.

Remi Engels is a pencil portrait artist and oil painter and practiced sketching teacher. See his work at graphite pencil portraits by Remi.

At Sally Beauty Supply, for example, I found makeup applicators that are perfect for applying chalks, glue, gels, etc. Much better than cotton swabs, they are firm and precise, with no stray fibers, and one end comes to a fine point.

For $1.99 you get several dozen in a clear, reusable round plastic box.

That’s why, as I mentioned in Cheap, Fun Watercolors, I was surprised to find that the brush that came with Coloriffic watercolors was quite good. That set was the exception to the rule.

Serious watercolor brushes can be quite expensive—and fragile. Nowadays there are some really good synthetic brushes that are cheaper and better than some natural hair brushes. But they can be somewhat expensive, too.

Waterbrushes

One answer is to use the plastic waterbrushes made by Niji, Royal Langnickel, and others. They are popular because you can fill the barrel with water, put the brush in your purse, briefcase or backpack and be prepared to paint anywhere. They use very little water, and they never leak!

Waterbrushes by Niji (top) and Royal Langnickel with caps on.

Waterbrushes make it possible to paint anytime. At about $6 to $10 for a Niji brush, they are cheap compared to good-quality traditional brushes. They are also really nice to paint with, easier to control and easier to clean. Niji even makes a flat brush that is about 5/8 inch wide for washes.

I generally use waterbrushes at home so that I don’t need a big container of water beside me to rinse brushes in. I don’t have to keep replacing the rinse water, and I don’t have to worry about accidentally spilling it. (If you have children or pets, that can be a big concern.)

I had heard bad things about cheaper waterbrushes, but I got a set of three Royal Langnickel waterbrushes on sale for about $8 and I love them! To me the quality is quite good. I especially love the largest and smallest Langnickel brushes.

My only complaint is that the caps are not as tight as the caps of the Niji waterbrushes. I have lost one Langnickle brush cap. Without the cap, I can still use the brush at my desk (and I do), but I can’t carry it in my purse anymore. I have never had a Niji waterbrush cap come off in my purse, and I have carried one constantly for two or three years.

Bargains on Natural Hair Brushes

Another option is to watch for sales or bargains on good quality natural-hair brushes. I’ve found sable brushes for $5 to $7 at beauty supply stores.

Look in the manicure section of any beauty supply store. I’ve even found them for as little as $2 on the clearance table.

What Kind of Brushes Do YOU Use?

What kind of brushes do you use with fun watercolors? Do you carry them with you constantly to use in your sketchbook?

Do you use waterbrushes? What brand? How do you like them?