Top 5 Art Blogs

Lachri - If you’ve been reading my blog regularly you'll know I’m constantly writing about Lachri Fine Art. I absolutely admire Lisa who tirelessly draws, paints, teaches, critiques and helps with social media tips. Lisa must be working 24/7 because she has created copious amounts of beautiful artwork while keeping up to date with practically every social media platform... how does she get it all done? Along with her blog, you can subscribe to Lisa’s YouTube channel (Top 5 YouTube Subscriptions) and lets face it, sometimes it's easier to watch a video rather than read.

Carol Marine's Painting a Day is another favourite of mine. As I’ve said before…her book changed my attitude towards drawing and painting. Carol practices what she preaches and almost every day you can view her blog and see another wonderful painting. Her blog is a tremendous inspiration, as is her book ‘Daily Painting’ (Top 5 Art Books) and her 'DailyPaintWorks' website (Top 5 Websites).

Kimberley Santini's blog inspired me to paint dogs for my '3xWeekly' challenge. A painting of a dog painted by Kimberly was featured in Carol’s book ‘Daily Painting’ and it was absolutely gorgeous. When she started, in 2006, her dogs didn’t look as good as they do today. So, if Kimberly could improve...I could too. Thank you Kimberly for the inspiration :)

My Art Journal by Diane Salter is mostly for art journal craft and not painting but I love her beautiful artwork. Her colours are fabulous and imagination boundless. It’s worth reading just for the fun of it; even though she only posts around twice a month, it’s a nice distraction from my own artwork.

Art Biz Blog by Alyson Stanfield is for those interested in blogging and needing some help. Having not read most of the posts, I'm saving this blog for a rainy day. If anyone has any thoughts on Art Biz Blog blog, please let me know.

‘3xWeekly’ More of Moose the Dog

Hadn't started painting and it was Wednesday, but at least I knew my subject… more of Moose. After looking at the cat painting by Hashim Akib in the ‘Vibrant Acrylics’ book, I decided to incorporate those colours in a Moose painting. Well to begin with it didn’t look like it was working but after the second day it was much better.

Moose was proving to be a good subject, hence the next painting. This time I started with purple, my sister-in-law's favourite colour. This one came out pretty good as well. Hey this is going good…so far.

For the last painting this week I went back to my old standby…Lenny. I really miss him, he was a truly fantastic friend and companion. The photo was one of my favourites so I wanted to see if I could recreate the same feeling with acrylics on paper. The results were really good…I don’t want to brag but I’m getting much better at this. Let’s hope I can keep it going.

Vibrant Acrylics Art Book by Hashim Akib

Came across Vibrant Acrylics by Hashim Akib; found the book while watching ‘A Splash of Paint’. They were doing a review of the book and I was intrigued because the artist’s style was fabulous. Reading books completely is not my forte… and to my surprise the author was conscious of people like me. By the third page Hashim recommended an assignment to do if the reader couldn’t wait. The book was written for me...great minds think alike.

What I produced wasn’t fabulous but there were lessons learned. One of the problems, yet again, was I didn’t have the right colour paints or large brushes. There goes more money for art products; but this time it’s o.k. because I’ll be doing all the exercises in this book. The colours also suit me so that’s good too.

Will also try to be patient and read the book from start to finish and do ALL the assignments in order. After my attempt at ‘the Rose’ it’s absolutely necessary! Watch this space...

Top 5 You Tube Video Subscriptions for Aspiring Artists

Lachri Fine Arts has a fantastic YouTube channel. Lisa, the artist behind Lachri, posts videos four times a week. Don’t know how she gets any artwork done, but she manages…BRILLIANTLY. Lisa’s videos are clear, concise and to the point; she doesn’t waste your time with lots of b.s.

Weekly video schedule:
'Art Critiques' on Tuesdays
'Painting & Drawing Tutorials & Demos' on Wednesdays
'Social Media Tips for Artists' on Thursdays(LOVE this)
'Artist Vlogs' on Weekends

Really enjoyed trying Lisa's tutorial on water droplets

The Painting and Drawing Channel is sponsored by the SAA and has lots of great programs including ‘A Splash of Paint’ where episodes are separated into parts and cover five different topics. A fantastic older program is ‘Fraser and Friends’ where Fraser visits different artists and paints with them. You can find these programs listed on the paintinganddrawingchannel.

Will Kemp Art School - if you’ve been reading my blog regularly you will know that I’ve done the cherry painting and I even had a go at creating a YouTube video. That was not easy!!!! To view Will's videos, either go to his website or search in YouTube for his videos.

The Frugal Crafter by Linsay Weirich has watercolour videos of plants and birds along with other craft stuff. Linsay is currently creating a video a day but a lot are more journal related. From a past video I created a really pretty hibiscus;  watercolour paintings that I do on my own never come out as vibrant.

The Art Tutor is a new channel to me and so far so good. I watched a video on drawing negative space and have been practicing it…sorry not good enough to post. I’ve had lessons on this topic before, but this video helped me to reconcile the negative with the positive space.

‘3xWeekly’ Even More Dog Portraits

Wow, so glad I didn’t go with ‘a painting a day’; '3xWeekly is hard enough. With family obligations, my two young dogs, house work, part time job, painting, photographing, blogging and last but not least social media… it’s Wednesday and I haven’t started my three paintings yet. Feeling a little overwhelmed, I know it’s my own doing but none the less.

Each week an image must be chosen, then cropped for composition, then printed (that’s always a disaster), then traced (think I’ll hold off on drawing for now), then and only then painted. Let’s hope these new Atelier paints I bought at 'All About Art' do the trick :)).

This week’s first painting is of my dog Lenny and it's proving difficult; getting used to the Atelier paints is not easy. Even though blending with Atelier paints is supposed to be a walk in the park...it's a problem for me. The paints are thinner and the spray bottle seems to leave big droplets that can’t be blended. I used the technique of loading lots of colours on the brush, which I learned from Marylin Allis and the overall painting is o.k.. They eyes could probably be better but I’ll save that for another painting.

Again using the techniques learned from 'All About Art' artist Marylin Allis, I painted a quick picture of my friend's dog Jessie. Although this one is more of a caricature, I really liked the results. My friend liked it as well and asked me to send her the painting. My first commission... well sort of.

My final painting of the week is not the best, but Moose, in my opinion, has difficult colouring. At least I was able to try out different techniques and brushes. I’m going to paint Moose again next week with some regular acrylics. His face is really fantastic, but the reds, browns and oranges are challenging. My original painting was on A4 paper, but I've cropped it square in this photo and it looks better.

Well at least one painting was a success!!!

Joining the Society for All Artists (SAA)

While at ‘All About Art’ I joined the SAA; partly because I’ve been meaning to and partly because they had an extra bag of goodies if you joined on the day.

So what did I get?
4 water colour & 2 acrylic practice sheets of paper
1 picture finder
2 round, 1 flat & 1 filbert brush
1 fold-able water pot
1 of each SAA acrylic, oil & watercolour paint in French Ultramarine

With the standard membership I received:
'How to Paint–Drawing Techniques' by Quentin de la Bedoyere
Paint your own postcards
Membership card
SAA window sticker
SAA Catalogue

I started to read the Drawing book but haven’t tried any of the free product yet.
Some of the membership benefits I like are:
Free Paint magazine every two months.
Free shipping on art materials... once you learn to navigate the SAA website, ordering is easy and products come quickly & well packed, which is pretty nice.
Free entry to competitions... someday, hopefully soon.
Insurance at exhibitions... a standard membership is limited to £500 but only in the UK & Ireland. Can't wait for the day when I will have artwork worthy of an exhibition… fingers crossed.

All in all, not bad for £29.50 with direct debit…there are other art websites that give free shipping with membership but so far this one is my favourite.

6 Products I Need to Paint with Acrylics

Excluding the usual…paint, brushes, canvas there are some things I can’t do without. Well technically I can, but wouldn’t want to.

Hard board - Hobby Craft sells the small size (A3) for only £3.00; or buy a large MDF for £9.99 at B&Q and have pieces cut to size(2 A2 & 1 A3). Boards are great for paper or loose canvas because you can tape them down and not worry about ruining your work. Just don’t leave a painting on a board for too long, otherwise you will need a lot of boards.

Stay wet or disposable pallet - mixed paints will stay wet for about a week in the pallet...if you put it in the refrigerator.  This gives you time to finish a painting and not have to re-mix colours.  I have the small size, don't know if the bigger one would fit in my fridge.  When using colours straight out of the tube or doing a quick painting then the disposable pallet is cheaper. A paper plate also works but the disposable pallet has a nice finish that lets the paint just slide off.

Spray bottle helps to re-wet the paint either on or off the pallet. It keeps the water quantities easier to control and the spray works well on the canvas.   Lisa from Lachri uses an air brush to spray water, it looks good but I was too cheap to buy one.

Wet Wipes (baby wipes) – when you make a real mess or want to wipe paint off the canvas, wet wipes are AWESOME. Paper towels are good but for acrylics I use wet wipes, they also help clean your hands faster.

Hair Dryer – is good to have when you are in a hurry and need to dry the painting faster. You can buy cheap ones at charity shops.

Tracedown paper – this is at number six because you only need this if you are not drawing freehand.  A home made method would be to draw with graphite or charcoal on the back of your reference photo then trace directly from the photo onto your canvas. This is messy, wastes time and smudges a lot... tracedown paper is so much easier.  When using the home made method, put hair spray over your traced image to fix the lines so they won't smudge when applying the paint.