The Pinoy Artist

I learned a couple of painting techniques today.

Type of Block-ins
1. Value
2. Complementary
3. Color
4. Lights and Shadows
5. Direct

This is from the book "Capturing the Seasons in Oil". It is a pretty good book. Buy it.

Another book that I think is worth buying is "Watercolor Success!: 52 Essential Lessons for Creating Great Paintings"

In this book I learned about painting forms first then add the textures later. Its author also talks about design elements with respect to painting composition.

More on Texturing

Another lesson I learned today, from my thinking, during my long walk this afternoon. I think it is better to learned painting buy studying traditional painters rather than digital painters.

Digital painters use a lot shortcuts like textured brushes or textured layers. This isn't necessarily bad if you know what you are doing.

But if you are just learning, you might use this tools or shortcuts randomly. Just experimenting until you arrive at something that you think is good.

But if you go the traditional route, you will have to think, how did the old traditional painters achieve textures just by using ordinary brushes.

There is no overlay layer in traditional painting. You cannot also load a custom image to use as a brush. So it is evident that they painted this textures manually - using brushwork techniques, a knife, a sponge, or spray.

After learning how they do it manually, you will have a better appreciation of digital textures.

You will also find that you don't really need a lot of texture images.  You will find yourself using just a few to help you achieve the effects you want.