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God Gifts blog


Mixing colors is fun!

How to mix art paint colors

Artists use the color wheel when we are learning how to mix colors.

Use only three or four colors for a painting and then mix any additional colors. This creates color harmony.

We can mix the greens, darks and tints for our paintings. We don’t buy them.

Continue reading "Mixing colors is fun!"

The Hummingbirds Are Here!

Feeding Hummingbirds The hummingbirds are making their way up into the United States. The scouts arrived in Missouri about 3 weeks ago.

It's time to put their feeders out and feed the hungry hummingbirds.

What is the hummingbirds' natural food? What do we put in their feeders? Where should we hang them? How often do we put fresh food? How to clean the feeders and more.

Continue reading "The Hummingbirds Are Here!"

Creating Good a Compositon in Art

Creating good composition in art. Good compositions in art draw the viewers into our paintings. How do we paint a good composition?

When we are painting, it's important to remember the rule of center lines. We normally do not place the main subject on the center lines. Why is that?

What are good ways to create a composition in art?

Continue reading "Creating Good a Compositon in Art"

How do we create a focal point in art?

How to create a focal point in art.

What exactly is a focal point and how do we make a focal point in our paintings.

A focal point attracts the attention of the viewers and draws them into our paintings.

A painting may or may not have a focal point. It may have more than one focal point.

Artists have multiple tools for creating a focal point.

Continue reading "How do we create a focal point in art?"

It's time to plant bare root roses.

How to plant bare root roses or from containers.

Spring is on the way. The Daffodils have been blooming. It's time to tidy up our rose gardens.

If we are going to plant bare root roses, now is the time. They need time for the roots to get established before warm weather.

Continue reading "It's time to plant bare root roses."

How to Make Skin Colors

Learn how to made skin color

Someone requested how to mix skin colors. It had been forty years since painting a person, but I gave it a whirl.

Skin colors can be mixed from only 3 colors.

Once we have the basics of mixing colors, we can mix the colors for any subject.

Continue reading "How to Make Skin Colors"

Hummingbird Flowers

Learn how to watercolor

Twenty flowers for hummingbirds that will bring the joy of hummingbirds to our yards.

Invite God’s gift of flying jewels to our yards with nectar flowers.

Continue reading "Hummingbird Flowers"

Learning How to Paint Watercolor

Plant flowers for hummingbirds.

Learn how to watercolor with confidence and knowledge. Paint a Rufous Hummingbird with a step-by-step tutorial.

Watercolor is clean easy and good for beginners.

Continue reading "Learning How to Paint Watercolor"

How to Grow Roses

All about rose care

Everything you need to know about how to care for roses, watering, fertilizing, pest control, where and the time to plant a rose, pruning roses, and rose bush types.

Continue reading "How to Grow Roses"

Painting Watercolor Step by Step

Learn how to paint watercolor step by step.

Get started painting watercolor step by step.

What materials do you need? How do you use watercolor? What are the steps and methods of painting watercolor?

Paint a colorful Koi Angelfish while you are learning how to paint watercolor. Follow the easy steps for the beginner and get started painting watercolor.

Learn more about Painting Watercolor Step-by-Step

Phalaenopsis Orchid Care in the home

Phalaenopsis-orchid-care

All about phalaenopsis orchid care, Moth orchids, Phals are the new modern houseplants to grow now-a-days. Our home temperatures and light make them easy to grow.

Continue reading "Phalaenopsis Orchid Care in the home"

Choose Paint Colors for each painting

How-to-choose-paint-colors

Learn how to choose paint colors to create beautiful, harmonious paintings. How do professionals choose and create beautiful paintings with only 3 or 4 colors?

Continue reading "Choose Paint Colors for each painting"

Rule of Thirds makes dynamic compositions

Rule-of-Thirds

Artists use the rule of thirds to create dynamic compositions. It is the shortcut for easy composition. It creates balanced paintings that attract the viewers.

Continue reading "Rule of Thirds makes dynamic compositions"

Painting a Lion tutorial

Painting-a-Lion

A tutorial of painting a lion with oils. Follow three easy steps and create your lion painting. First underpaint the colors, then paint, last detail and finish.

Continue reading "Painting a Lion tutorial"

Prophetic Art Paintings

Prophetic-Art-Freedom

Paintings of Christian prophetic art will touch your heart, mind, and spirit with peace and joy. The spirit in prophetic paintings will draw you closer to God.

Continue reading "Prophetic Art Paintings"

How to Paint Good Art

How-to-Paint-Good-Art

Beginning artists can learn how to paint good art. Good art attracts people. It evokes emotion in the viewers. It displays the heart and intent of the artist.

Continue reading "How to Paint Good Art"

Principles of Art

Priciples-of-Art

Use the principles of art to create successful paintings. Artists create pleasing compositions by using the art elements according to the principles of painting.

Continue reading "Principles of Art"

Best Painting Medium

Painting-medium-pastel

What is the best painting medium for the artist? What mediums are good for beginners while they are learning? What are the popular painting mediums for today?

Continue reading "Best Painting Medium"

Home Art Studio

What every artist need to know: setting up our home art studio. What to include in our own private art painting space, so the creative juices are free to flow.

Continue reading "Home Art Studio"

How to Paint a Landscape

How-to-Paint-a-Landscape

Every artist needs to know how to paint a landscape. Use aerial perspective, values, colors, texture and detail to create an appealing mountain lake painting.

Continue reading "How to Paint a Landscape"

Glossary of Art Terms for Painting Artists

Art-Terms-Honeymoon-Cottage

Do you wonder about what a painting artist said? The art glossary of art terms explains what they said about techniques, color, painting, supplies and more.

Continue reading "Glossary of Art Terms for Painting Artists"

Painting Daylilies with Watercolor

Painting-Daylilies

Start painting daylilies with a step-by-step watercolor tutorial by artist Carol May. Watercolor is easy to use and the perfect medium for painting pink flowers.

Continue reading "Painting Daylilies with Watercolor"

Learn How to Paint

C-Koi-Feeding

You can learn how to paint! Millions of people are painting and you can paint too! Let me share five easy things that will jump start your painting journey.

Continue reading "Learn How to Paint"

How to Paint a Waterfall

Learn how to paint a waterfall

Paint a waterfall in a colorful fall landscape.

You can add a lovely waterfall to any of your oil paintings with only three steps.

It’s fun and easy! Get the full instructions.

Continue reading "How to Paint a Waterfall"

The Secret to Painting

Why do we paint, image of a pelican painter

Why do we paint?

The real secret to painting is we paint to express ourselves, what we see around us.

Painting makes us healthy, helps us relax and relieve stress.

Continue reading "The Secret to Painting"

Get some answers before you Begin Painting

Begin painting with answers to your frequently asked questions.

You want to get started painting, but you have some questions.

Begin Painting with answers to frequently asked questions. Find the answers about selecting paints, colors, supplies, drawing, what to paint plus more questions.

Go to Begin Painting

Different Types of Butterflies

Types of butterflies seen in the United States

Painting butterflies is one of my passions and so is growing flowers. The two go together beautifully.

When I lived in Florida there was such an abundance of butterflies. They like warm weather just like people.

So I started planting more flowers just for the butterflies. My favorite butterfly flower is Lantana. They come in a variety of colors. And some colors will over-winter, even in northern Florida.

Then I started learning how to identify the different types of butterflies. It's fun to learn the butterfly types, so you know what you are painting.

Go to Types of Butterflies

Painting Daily Will Make You a Better Artist

Paint small and do daily paintings to learn how to paint.

Painting small and painting daily is a great way to learn painting.

What do you need for daily painting?

First, it helps to have a dedicated place for painting. If you can leave your supplies out, you'll be ready for the next day's painting session.

You need to have your supplies in stock, so you don't run out in the middle of a painting. Figure out what size paintings you want and keep them in stock.

Paint things you have around the house or from a file of photos. If you are lucky you can go out and paint on location.

Don't expect every painting to be perfect. The dedication of painting is what counts.

Set yourself some guidelines of when and how long you will paint. Stick to your guidelines and your painting skills will go into warp speed.

Go to Painting Daily

New Butterfly Painting!

watercolor painting of a White Peacock Butterfly on blue delphinium flowers

This butterfly flew in to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

A watercolor painting of a White Peacock Butterfly on blue Delphinium flowers.

Go to Butterfly Paintings

Prophetic Painting of Celebrating Victory

Painting of balloons

Recently the Lord showed me a vision of a bunch of balloons rising up in the air. I asked him what it meant and he said, "Celebrating Victory".

Sometimes we just need to celebrate a victory before it happens. We start celebrating and then it comes to pass.

God is so good!

Go to Prophetic Paintings

Awesome Mixed Media Painting

Oil flower painting by Carol May

It's fun painting mixed media artwork. You can get some awesome paintings!

Jazz up your watercolor paintings with mixed media. There is an excitement and anticipation in the painting process because you never know the exact outcome. That's what makes it exciting.

Find out how to create your own awesome paintings. It's easy and fun!

Go to Painting Mixed Media

Enjoy the Paintings of Flowers

Oil flower painting by Carol May

You can enjoy the flowers all year long with oil paintings of flowers.

Paintings of roses, daisies and more by Carol May, flower paintings are both fun and challenging!

Go to Paintings of Flowers

Continue reading "Enjoy the Paintings of Flowers"

Learning How to Paint

Learn the basics of how to paint with Carol May

It's a joy to share the easy tips that taught me how to paint.

How do we get started learning how to paint? What supplies should we get? What colors do we need? What is the best subject to paint? Can we learn to paint on our vacation or do we need to paint more often? What is the foundation of successful paintings?

Go to the learning to paint page for these answers and more.

Go to Learning to Paint

New Hummingbird Painting

Watercolor Hibiscus flowers painting with a green hummingbird

Ladies like pink flowers. But here is a male green hummingbird hunting for flowers and he found some lovely Hibiscus flowers to feed from.

New watercolor hummingbird painting, "Hibiscus Hunter"

Continue reading "New Hummingbird Painting"

How to Paint a Horse with Watercolor

Watercolor horse painting

Paint a prancing, white horse with watercolor paints.

Have fun painting the colorful dark background that shows off the white horse.

Follow the steps and do your own stunning horse painting.

Continue reading "How to Paint a Horse with Watercolor"

Landscape Paintings

Country Barns oil painting

Landscape paintings are a good place to start painting. We are all familiar with the things around us, so we do a better job of painting them because we understand them.

My mother got me started painting and we started with landscapes. Once you learn the basics of how to paint one thing, then you can apply the same painting principles to any subject.

So I started painting with landscapes, but now some of my favorite things to paint are birds, butterflies and other critters.

You can bring the peace and beauty of the outdoors into your home with landscape paintings of barns, swamp, seascapes, forest, prairie, mountains and more by Carol May

Continue reading "Landscape Paintings"

Paint an Ocean Step-by-Step

Learn how to paint ocean step-by-step

Follow the easy steps and do your own ocean painting.
First, put a line sketch on the canvas.
Block-in the colors of the sky, water and rocks.
Then paint the shadow colors.
Paint the sunlight colors.
Detail and finish your ocean painting.

It's easy, you can do it!

Continue reading "Paint an Ocean Step-by-Step"

Paint a Watercolor Hummingbird

How to paint a watercolor hummingbird

Learn how to paint watercolor.

Paint a Rufous Hummingbird visiting a big yellow daisy flower.

Follow the easy steps, learn about watercolor and create your own hummingbird painting.

It's easy and fun!

Continue reading "Paint a Watercolor Hummingbird"

How to Mix Your Art Painting Colors

Mix the primary colors to get your painting colors

Learn how to mix the colors for your paintings.

You can mix many of your painting colors. You will save money at the paint store because you don't have to buy a whole bunch of different colors.

Create color harmony in your paintings by mixing your own colors. It's easy!

Continue reading "How to Mix Your Art Painting Colors"

How to Paint Roses

How to paint a rose with oil paints

Flowers are one of my passions. Either tending the flowers in the garden or learning to paint them.

There is a page on painting watercolor flowers. It covers painting an Iris, Echinacea and Oriental poppies.

A daisy painting page shows painting daisies with oil paints. This rose page is painting with oil paints.

You can paint either a red rose or a beautiful multicolored rose.

Try it, you can do it!

Continue reading "How to Paint Roses"

Watercolor for Beginners

Get started with watercolor for beginners

The new website design will make it easier for you to use. I am revising and moving pages around. Two watercolor pages have been put together for the beginning watercolor student.

Learn what watercolor is, about watercolor paints, the surfaces you can paint watercolor on, good colors for the beginner.

Plus there is an easy 5-step tutorial that you can use to paint any watercolor paint.

Enjoy!

Continue reading "Watercolor for Beginners"

Moving forward in "Faith"

Faith an oil painting of a horse

I thought you would enjoy this painting. This horse painting is named "Faith".

It often takes faith to move forward into new things.

"Faith" found a new home with a lady in Georgia. She said Faith looked just like a horse she had raised.

What a blessing!

Continue reading "Moving forward in "Faith""

HAPPY NEW YEAR

An oil horse painting by artist Carol MayIt took courage to do this painting because practically every other person I know is a horse owner.

I no longer have a live model to paint from, but I stepped out in faith. Lots of fun!

Continue reading "HAPPY NEW YEAR"

Christmas Pony

An oil painting by artist Carol MayWe went to a cookout at the local feed store. The best thing was watching all the children run and play.

I had been working on this oil painting of an equine. And I thought some lucky child will soon be getting a "Christmas Pony".

Happy Holidays to everyone.

Continue reading "Christmas Pony"

Painting with a Limited Palette

Painting-with-a-Limited-Palette

Painting with a limited palette is fun and easy. It is the fastest way to give your art work cohesion and color harmony. Plus you only have to stock a few colors.

Continue reading "Painting with a Limited Palette"

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