If you learn painting by yourself, it's like walking across the United States.

Learning to paint from a good teacher is like flying across the United States.

Let me share how i learned to paint....

You can learn to paint!

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what helped me learn painting?

These are a few basic things I did to learn painting. These simple habits plus learning four basic elements of art made me a painter.

• If I can do you can too!
  

paint regularly

• When you paint on a regular basis, you put your art learning into overdrive!

Paint regularly, no matter whether you paint daily, weekly or monthly - paint regularly.

Many professional artists paint daily.

a great book

share your paintings

• Share with your family and art-oriented people.

Join your local art association. Paint with other artists. Go to classes and art shows. Get feedback from your friends and family.

Sharing and seeing artwork will encourage you and stimulate you with new ideas.

paint familiar things

Paint what you know.

• You do the best job of painting subjects you understand.
  

The best place the start painting is to paint the things you see around you.

"Koi Feeding" was a natural for me to paint.

My parents had a tropical fish business with outdoor ponds. When we fed the fish, they would all swarm around the food.

what makes successful paintings?

Successful paintings contain the elements of line, form, space, shape, texture, value, color, balance, movement, pattern, proportion, etc.

The basic elements create beautiful paintings.

learn painting with the basic art elements

• Shift your art journey into warp speed with these basic art elements.

Use the four most important elements - composition, focal point, values and color.

composition

Easy Composition

Good composition makes the viewers feel comfortable in your paintings.

Composition comes naturally to some people, but it can also be learned.

It's easy to compose good paintings when you know how to use the rule of thirds.

focal point

The egret is the Focal Point.

The focal point is the main subject of your painting.

It is what made you want to paint the subject.

Correctly painted focal points draw the viewer into your paintings.

values

Use Values

Learn to see and use values in your paintings.

Values are the backbone of good paintings. Value is the lightness and darkness of colors.

The dark Bluebird shows up well against the light background.

color is the icing on the cake

Color Wheel

You are probably anxious to start using color.

Color is one of the reasons I'm an artist because I absolutely love color.

Understanding of the color wheel makes it easy to use and manipulate the colors in your paintings.

after you have a grasp of the color wheel, then -

paint often to speed your paint journey

• While you learn painting, you are going to want to do the how-to-paintings.

I snap pictures when I am doing the painting and carefully document all the steps. Each step is fully explained. You can learn painting by following the tutorials.

Then you can use the methods with your subjects and create your own individual paintings.

most importantly - have fun learning to paint!