In this blog post I have had the honour of interviewing Ben Haggett who makes pochade box easels through his company Alla Prima Pochade. Ben Haggett is a woodworker and plein air painter and he operates from his home in Missoula in Montana, USA. As a plein air painter myself I personally have been using one of Ben’s pochade boxes for the last few years.
In this painting tutorial I am going to share some tips for painting beautiful trees and show you the step by step process of how I created the art work pictured above.
I love painting landscapes and I especially love to paint mountains! I love how their natural height and the extreme weather conditions they are exposed to makes them fascinating to look at. They are intimidating but so beautiful that they invoke a sense of awe and reverence within me, so much so that I love to paint them.
Are you tired of struggling with mixing colors? Do you want to create beautiful artwork without frustration? Then this article on color mixing made easy: a beginner’s guide is for you.
Color theory can seem daunting and a bit dry, but it doesn’t need to be. Learning a few basic principles of color theory and values can help you set an easy-to-remember structure in your head that can make a difference to your painting.
One of the trickiest colours to mix in a landscape painting is green and it’s one that causes artists the most problems. Mix your greens right and they can look amazing and vibrant but get the wrong and they can look acidic and harsh.
In this painting tutorial I will show you how to paint the landscape above and how to mix some basic greens that you can use in a landscape painting.
Mountains are one of my favourite subjects to paint and it’s also a good subject to paint if you are learning to paint landscapes as it’s much easier to see the different tones and values in the scene you are painting.
I normally paint art works in oils but I’ve had a few requests for me to do a painting tutorial using acrylics so this is for the acrylic painters. However if you are an oil painter you still may find this painting tutorial useful as the principles of colour and tone are the same.
For some people painting in oils is not practical, so I wanted to show you that you can still get some good results with acrylics. Also the fact that they dry very quickly can be an advantage.
Whenever I paint a landscape I never just get straight into it, I always do some planning first and the planning always begins with my sketchbook. But why sketch and draw, why not just start painting? Well there is a simple answer, if you go straight into a studio painting it’s likely you’ll run into trouble with the composition.
Planning a painting in your sketchbook first is an important step in the painting process in my opinion. You wouldn’t start building a house with no foundations or prior plans and drawings, it’s the same when planning a painting. Besides which drawing and sketching is fun.
Why is Composition in Landscape Painting Important?
Composition is a very important aspect of landscape painting but one that is surprisingly overlooked. I have visited many art galleries where there are landscape paintings for sale, some with very high price tags that have terrible compositions. Some of the compositions I’ve seen are so bad that it’s at that point I think to myself am I missing something here? Did I miss a meeting? It’s a shame because I have seen many a potentially good painting that has been ruined by a bad composition.
I have always loved landscape art and even as a child when I used to draw and paint all the time, it has always been my favourite subject to paint. As a traditional realism landscape artist and plein air painter I am drawn to colourful, vibrant but natural looking landscape paintings and many of my inspirations come from historical painters, particularly from the 19th century.
In this blog post I have compiled a list and examples of ten of my favourite historical painters which really inspire me and have influenced my own art works. I hope these historical painters give you lots of inspiration you too.
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