Art Lessons from a Professional Finger-Painter

Over the last 5 years I have taken many online and in-person art lessons. They have been so much fun and I’ve come away a better artist each time. In these years the most valuable lessons that have made the biggest impact on my work has been the following.

Values do the work and colour takes the glory. That is that our eye recognises values over colour. It is important that the values (lights to darks) in our work are telling the story and the colours are the added bonuses we can use to add our personality and vitality to the piece.

Colour relativity. Teeth aren’t actually that white. They look white relative to colours around them. This is the same for the whites of the eyes. If you use white for these elements of a portrait you can easily make the artwork look cartoony or gimicky.

In general, people do not want paintings that look like photos. For ages I was trying to get my portraits to be as real-life looking as possible. However I don’t want someone looking at my piece and wondering whether it is a photo. I want my personality coming out in my perception of a portrait and that helps make my paintings look like my paintings.

Paint or draw daily! Even if it’s only 5 minutes. You will notice much more improvement in your art with 10-15 minutes a day than a one hour session a week.

So get out there and create. The good, the bad and the ugly. It’s always one step closer to where you want to be xx