Organizing your paint colors

As time passes, you will most likely have more and more paint

colors. This is how I easily find them. I have taken various

containers and labeled them with their basic color names.

(These are all oil paints.)

You will also see that I have a small set of colors which I have

left in the box below these containers. In a few cases, I

decided to keep the same brand of paint together.

These are suggestions that might make it easier for you to

find your colors more quickly, if you have quite a lot of it.

But the other thing it does is that you can easily see when

you are low on colors and can restock before you run out!

Prevent Liquin from drying up

I went through a lot of bottles of Liquin

before I figured this out. They would dry

out and I would have to throw them away

without getting my money's worth.

So now I turn the larger bottle upside

down and then there is no air there

to dry out this very useful medium! The

smaller jar that you see is where I put a

small amount to work from. If you look

carefully, you will see that the glass part of

that little jar is lighter in color than the big

bottle. That is stuff that is all dried up

on the sides of the jar. I just pour about

a half inch of Liquin in that jar and with

all these clever tricks, I now get my money's

worth!

I hope you find this helpful.

Make closeups

This is a helping tool for when you are painting something that

has a lot of detail that you may not be seeing too clearly, even

though it is right there in front of you. Take a photograph,

a close-up of the detail and study that.

I did this recently for a student who was having trouble seeing

the way the lines of the pattern curved around. With the

photograph that you see above, it became much easier to see

what was actually happening. And she drew it correctly!

Have company in your studio

The possibilities are almost endless as to what could be written upon seeing this photograph.

This is Lucy, studio mascot.

She is sunbathing, or at least being in the spotlight at which she is very accomplished.

Having a cat in one's studio while doing one's solitary work is really great.

She is a very social gal and keeps me company, as well as my students.

And she knows she is the star!

Teeny tiny brush is very useful

First you see the dry brush and how few hairs it has!

Next you see its size next to a Sharpie pen.

Then you see it on my palette and that is what I'm going to

tell you about.

To properly use this brush, you have to spread out a smear

of slightly thinned paint (the longest smear on my palette

in this photo). Flatten the smear with your palette knife so

that it is easy to pick up on the brush. Then hold the brush

so that it is practically parallel with the palette surface and

twirl it so as to get it all evenly covered with paint.

I use this brush for jobs such as painting whiskers on my

cat paintings!

Try it out without committing!

The top image is the original painting (acrylic).

It is the work of a student of mine.

If you are nearing the end of a painting and need

to try out additional elements then here is a way

to do it without putting on paint that you may have

to take off and also wreck affects that are underneath

that you like and want to preserve.

Take colored paper and cut out shapes and lay them

on the painting til you like what you have. I have

done this in two arrangements. Of course I could

have cut different shapes in different sizes, but I

think this communicates the general idea.

Nothing is too small!

This sweet statue is actually only two inches tall.

A student brought it to class so I could see it after

she had done a drawing of it.

But it was so small, it was hard to see the details.

So I told her to take a photograph of it and enlarge

it so she could see the details well enough to draw

it.

I took this photo with my studio camera to show

her what a difference it makes to really see all the

details! I put it on a plain background that enhanced

the figurine and then lit it with my desk lamp to

create what you see here!