Top 5 Art Websites for Art Newbies

Art Discount is a great place to find art supplies at reasonable prices. I bought a fantastic studio easel for only £45 and when you spend over £30 you get free shipping. www.artdiscount.co.uk

Paint My Photo is a free membership site to find great source photographs. You own the rights to your painting and are allowed to sell them; you don’t own the rights to the original photo. This site has just moved to new servers designed to provide faster service…I’m still learning how it works. www.pmp-art.com

Daily Paint Works is a fabulous website run by Carol Marine, the author of ‘Daily Painting’.  The website exhibits works of many daily painters who sell their paintings. Artists have a gallery page and links to their blog, website, facebook and e-mail.  I love browsing this site for inspiration and to see what artists are working on. www.dailypaintworks.com

Rosemary and Co is a great place for quality brushes. Ask most artists in the UK and they will tell you they have these brushes. I like the Ivory and Eclipse range. Delivery is free for orders over £30 and £1 for orders less than £30.  These brushes are not cheap, so if you are looking for less expensive brushes try the Daler & Rowney Graduate range. I mostly use filbert and short flat or bright brushes. www.rosemaryandco.com

Society for All Artists (SAA) is a UK group you can join to get discounts on product and free shipping. When you join they also give you a welcome pack, free exhibition insurance, entry to SAA competitions, a magazine every two months and a few other benefits. I’m a new member and haven't decided if it’s worth it. But you can use the website even if you aren’t a member and find tuition listings by artist and also buy products without the member discount. www.saa.co.uk

'3xWeekly' - Paintings of a Brown Cocker Spaniel

For the longest time I couldn’t decide on a subject or medium for my '3xWeekly'. Because the results of my previously painted acrylic dogs weren’t great, I was discouraged and thought they wouldn’t be a suitable subject. In Carol’s book ‘Daily Painting’ there was a painting of a dog by Kimberley Santini that I absolutely loved. On Kimberley’s blog it was clear that when she started, in 2006, her dogs didn’t look as good as they do today. So, if Kimberly could improve...I could too.

Being eager to begin, I did four paintings of my friend's Brown Cocker Spaniel this week. After the first painting I decided to put the background colour down first, then draw the image, then paint in the eyes, nose and mid-tones. Finally, layer the dark and lights of the hairs. Some people say it’s best to do the eyes last; but the painting looks too scary. I did four of the same image trying different techniques and colours. 

Before ‘3xWeekly’ I would never have just stopped painting and would have obsessed over each painting until I got discouraged and gave up. Knowing that I would paint another day, it was easier not to get bogged down by the results and just enjoy the painting and learning process.

My Experience with Social Media & Lessons Learned

Twitter – is easy to use and most of my news comes from here.  My followers have grown from 28 to 495 in 3 months.

• Lesson 1: Start a new account dedicated to your art/business instead of changing your personal account.
• Lesson 2: Crowdfire is a good way to be able to manage new followers and unfollow people who follow, then unfollow you.
• Lesson 3: *Watch for # (hashtags) pertinent to your interests. Found #artisthour sent two tweets and got many retweets; the next day had the highest number of visitors to my site. 
• Lesson 4: Don’t just tweet about yourself, retweeting and favouriting is a good way to make friends.

Twitter is my favourite social media site; though I’m not convinced it’s the best way to get blog followers. Even though I had the second highest number of visits to my blog from Twitter, Google + was no 1 with only 1/5th the followers.

Google + - changed an old account, which was very difficult to do… not even sure it's done right. Can’t stress this enough, from Lesson 1, have a separate personal account. Google + has all the bells and whistles and even though half of the functions are over my head...I’m managing. With google+….you get results on the Google search engine. Only 118 followers and the largest number of visitors to my blog come from Google.

Pinterest - didn’t change my personal account, just added my blog details and after three months with only 29 followers, had 1 visitor in 3 months. It could be because I’m not that active... probably need to re-think that.

Facebook – can’t get on with it. It’s hard to use my AMS-OnArt page from my personal page. A lot of people use Facebook and I know I should be more active.  Only 17 followers, mostly friends... did manage to get 2 visits to my blog.

Tumblr – is a new addition to my social media network; this time I have a separate AMS-OnArt account. In 1 ½ months managed to get 3 visits to my blog, which is good since there were only 5 followers… this may be a worthwhile social media account!

Instagram – is also new and so far no blog visitors. I have only been able to use this site from my iPad, which is not ideal.  Not sure it's worth the trouble but will keep trying…for now.

You Tube - added two very novice videos on Youtube and found other members to be very positive and friendly. The problem is, I’m camera shy and it’s a lot of work making a video. I think this might be the best platform; if you are willing to spend time with videos… but for now I’ll give it a miss.

My social media ranking to attract blog site visitors are: Google +, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, & Instagram. My top user friendly sites are Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest(although a little slow at times). YouTube(linked with Google) is probably the best social media site…if you can make videos. 

The most important advice and final lesson is; if you’re not active you won’t get results.

Carol Marine ‘Daily Painting’ Book & Blog Review

‘Daily Painting’ by Carol Marine revolutionized the way I think. Each time I failed with a particular painting style in the past I felt defeated and just tried something new. It was easy to move on because there are so many mediums and subjects. Daily painting hast taught me if you want to get good at something practice, practice, practice.

The book is fantastic with lots of tips, tricks and great ideas. Carol paints mostly in oils, so if you are an oil painter it will be more informational. But even though I mainly paint in acrylic, I loved reading this book and would highly recommend it to anyone.

Carol Marine not only has written this book but also hosts a Daily Paints Works website that sells her paintings and paintings of others who are doing the same thing. The website is very motivating and someday I aspire to sell my paintings there. The artists also have a place to list their links to individual e-mails, gallery, blogs, websites and facebook.

I’ve had this book for a while, but didn’t want to blog about it until I had time to do a painting a day. So, I’ve decided to apply the theory but alter it a little to suit my needs. I’m going to try and commit to at least three paintings a week; dubbed by me… ‘3x Weekly’. I will be blogging about my experiences along with pics of the paintings once a week. It’s not daily but I have too many other things to do; some may call it a cop out... but I call it realistic.

Art Class w/ Wendy - Pen & Coloured Pencil vs. Watercolour Pencil & Pastel

In this class we worked with colour pencils but most of my time was spent drawing the butterfly...should have traced it. Indelible ink pen was used for the dark bits and the colour pencils for the rest. I couldn't get the colours dark enough so this was one of my least favourite assignments... but it did give me ideas.

At home, I had a play with A2 watercolour paper, my watercolour pencils and a few oil pastels. Watercolour pencils, for me are nicer than colour pencils. With watercolour pencils you can wet the drawing and get all kinds of cool effects. Pastels were used to add more layers to the drawings; it was nice because those marks weren't affected when wet. I liked the overall effect much better and probably won’t be using colour pencils in the near future.

The watercolour pencils and oil pastels are a lot of fun and I’m going to try and use them more.

Art Class w/ Wendy – Still Life Acrylic Painting

In Wendy's class we had a sample of flowers to paint and we could do either a real or abstract painting. I decided to paint an abstract because a real life painting, even though small, would take me forever. We learned about painting backgrounds and then letting it show through. You were not supposed to leave the under painting showing, but I did and bright pink was the result.

At home I played in photo shop to see if any improvement to the painting could be made.

The only adjustments I decided to make were to fix the flower petals, brighten the yellow and add more layers to the background. On the background another layer of magenta was glazed over, then neon red was added to darken it some more. Not sure if these changes made much difference, but I had no further inspiration. Thought about adding butterflies; but didn't have the energy to work on this painting anymore. Will file it away and possibly work on it another day.

Painting & Drawing Class - Multiple Acrylic Techniques w/ Joel

We created four A4 tree paintings on heavy paper. There were two tree photos to choose from; mine was of the taller thinner tree so I turned my paper to the portrait orientation.  Other people in class did the larger tree using landscape orientation.

Firstly we did watery washes in blue; my washes were landscape (before I knew I was doing the smaller tree). The washes look a little strange but anyway.

The first tree was with a stippling brush, which I didn’t have, so I used a round brush and only lightly tapped the paper. The second tree was with a sponge, while doing the painting it felt too uncontrollable but in hindsight it was my favourite.

The third tree was with a pallet knife and the fourth with a large brush. The last one was done at home because I was slow in class, as usual. On this one I was able to change the direction of the wash. Doing these different techniques with the same subject and colours was a great exercise and I want to try it again someday soon. :))