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Art Tips Tutorials
These tips for artists are compiled here for your convenience — take with you for use anywhere, on your laptop, lunch break, vacation, Internet Cafe, wherever! No Internet connection neccesary. Make art wherever you are, with inspiration and guidance from artist/author/teacher Cathy Johnson, contributing editor for The Artist’s Magazine and Watercolor Magic, author of The Sierra Club Guides to Sketching and Painting in Nature, and 7 North Light books for artists. Downloadable versions for your convenience: The First 25 Art Tips!$9.99 The Second 25 Art Tips!$9.99 The Third 25 Art Tips!$9.99 The Fourth 25 Art Tips!$9.99
Tip #136 – Meaning-full Journaling
Do you ever get tired of all the tips, challenges, images, classes that use a straight how-to approach? Like “Use this brush, dip it in that pigment, make this mark…”? Or maybe a too-limiting “challenge” that really isn’t much of…
Tip #135 – Drawing Expressive Mouths
An All-New Feature-Feature So often when we draw the human face, we choose a safer option, a face in repose. But it’s fun and challenging to spice it up a bit, focus on emotion or expression. Have you ever considered…
Tip #134 – Using Your Imagination
It’s wonderful to celebrate what we see, and to try to capture it – or the mood, or our response to it. But it’s also a delight to let your imagination out to play, like a kid! You can do…
Tip #133 – Testing Your Paints
Whether you’re a newcomer to watercolor an old hand trying new things (or overwhelmed by all the NEW offerings), testing our paints is a great exercise. Put them through their paces! See what they’re capable of, how they work on…
Tip #132 – Using Thumbnail Sketches – Part Two
As promised, a wee bit more on using thumbnail sketches! Of course they are useful (and quick, and paper-saving), when you’re planning just what you want to do. Whether you’re working in your journal, planning a more formal painting, or…
Tip #131 – Using Thumbnail Sketches – Part One
Most artists have heard of thumbnail sketches but weren’t sure just what they were or if it was worth it to take the extra time to make them. Of course a lot depends on what you’re doing in the first…
Tip #130 – Using Opaque White
In many places (and a lot of shows you may want to enter), ONLY pure, transparent watercolor is considered acceptable. But as I wrote in my very first art tip here (and many since!), gouache can be a handy, creative…
Tip #129 – STOP — Quit While You’re Ahead!
Everybody, but EVERYBODY, manages to go just a little too far sometimes. You lose the creative spark, you muddy a wash, you add just one thing (or color, or texture, or value, or medium) too many and make your composition…