THE MOBILE ART STUDIO

During my term teaching life drawing, I came across students who struggled to draw. These were adult students who had plucked the courage to begin drawing after bringing up children or pursuing a career. Others were young adults who had yet to move on from cartoonish drawings that are highly stylized. This is often a disguise for frustration at capturing what is really in front. So why so some intelligent adults who have great skills or talents in other sectors find it hard to draw? Shut Up Left Brain! Hemispheres of the brain The answer lies in how the brain is wired, causing a sort of picture dyslexia. Our brains are split into two hemispheres, the left and the right. The left hemisphere is where the speech centre is located, and therefore is verbal, bossy, labels things and edits the world to make it make sense. The right hemisphere is silent, has great spatial awareness and sees things how they really are. Hemispheres of the Brain and Drawing Ability Skewe...

My students often lament that they cannot mix any color they want from a so-called artist kit of pigments brought from the art shop. It is little wonder when I see the range of colors supplied. More often than not, you will find a ‘red’, ‘yellow’ and a ‘blue’ of some sort. You will also find a brown or a range of browns, a black, a green and (incredibly the same tube size as the other colors of) titanium white. Overrated Pigments in Artist Kits Art Kits with Redundant Pigments It is little wonder that the beginner in oil painting or acrylics cannot mix the colors desired. This is because, for starters, the misconception of what a primary color is. You see, it is believed that any color can be mixed by the inclusion of red, yellow and blue in the kit. But some reds, yellows and blues are not primary colors. Cadmium red is not a primary color because it contains a lot of yellow. Thin this pigment down and you will see a slightly yellowish tinge in the wash. A clean purple c...

Starting out in oil painting? Well you might notice that every art shop will stock traditional oil paints. Tubes bearing the word ‘oils’ or ‘oil paint’ (meaning the same thing) will also bear other labels, such as the brand name, grade and quality. It all seems overwhelming. However, oil paints all have one thing in common. The pigment is simply suspended in oil. This mean the paint cannot be cleaned or thinned with water but artist spirits and special oils. Check my other blog, Oil Painting Medic dedicated only to oil painting. Oil Painting Exercise for Beginners in Art Using Oils for the first time Deposit a little oil paint onto an art board, and you will find a creamy, rich substance rather like butter. What you see is finely ground pigment blended with a little oil. The pigment aspect might be ground organic substance or a synthetic substitute. This provides the color. But the pigment is nothing without a vehicle in which it can travel. With watercolors, it is water;...

Glazing oil paints is one of the chief techniques in oil painting. The aspiring artist might be lead to believe that glazing can only be done like the old masters, requiring many paint layers, linseed oil and hours of work. But anyone can learn about this great oil painting technique with just basic art materials and a couple of hours. Art Tutorial with Oils How to Glaze with Oil Colors Oil Painting Lesson Some oil colors are more translucent than others by their nature. However, pigments with high opacity can be made translucent by the addition of a little linseed oil.  I have therefore chosen oil colors of varying translucency for this art demonstration, which can be found on my art instruction video clip. Art Materials Needed for Oil Glazing Technique All that is needed are: a primed piece of card, measuring approx 10x8in or so. Notice on the left side of the image, I have placed oil colors which are relatively opaque. These are (from the top): cerul...

Drawing is more about how our brains interpret the information in front of us than what the hand is doing with the pencil. Having seen numerous drawings during my time teaching art, came across a common affliction, which appears as though the drawing is sloping to one side. Drawing Cure for Sloping Drawing Crooked Drawing I believe we are all biased towards one side of the world that we perceive. For instance, some people will be more aware of one side than the other. This bias will be reflected within the drawing which will appear to slope to one side or be squashed up on one corner of the page. The only way around this problem is to make the student aware of their crooked drawing problem. I find turning the drawing upside down or viewing it through the mirror effective in making the student aware of this sloping problem. Drawing Class in Fields of Vision A Basic Drawing Lesson The world that we see can be thought of as four divisions: upper left, lower l...

Drawing not only involves what the pencil is doing on paper, but also what is going on in the brain between the mark-making. In fact, drawing begins before the first line is drawn. During my years teaching, I came across students who struggled to draw. I noticed that a common feature of this low drawing ability was the tendency not to look at what is in front but to draw what is believed to be in front. A struggle to draw often comes in tandem with a low visual awareness. Cure for Low Drawing Ability Optical Illusions can Occur in Real Life when Drawing Low visual awareness means taking little notice of how things are arranged around us. This might be difficulty in judging the angle of a contour, the size of an object next to another object. An inability to make visual judgments can manifest itself in many ways, such as the inability to hang a painting perfectly level, or to arrange objects in a balanced still life. How Distorted Perception can Ruin a Drawing ...

This simple shading exercise on Ingres paper was completed as a step by step Youtube clip. Each stage is clearly laid out within the speed art movie, but is explained in depth here. This drawing demo comprises a typical village scene, in this case, a church enclosed by trees. The church is located in the Lake District in the UK. Materials Needed for Shading on Ingres Paper Pastel Pencils for Shading Ingres Paper The drawing equipment used for this sketch was pastel pencils in the following colors: white, light grey, mid grey, sepia and black. A wide pencil sharpener, HB pencil and eraser were used for the preliminary drawing. The Ingres paper used was A5 (8inx6.5in) in size. What is Ingres Paper? Briefly, Ingres paper is simply a toned paper with a canvas-like texture. I used mid grey paper in this exercise, where the texture was like canvas. Ingres paper can be found in an array of tones from duck egg to dark grey. The texture of Ingres paper means that soft pencil ...