Risa's Art Journey - The Woman Who Never Painted Before

I have been trying to up the difficulty level of my paintings so that I learn even more. This one involved a technique using a palette knife, which is used to make your painting more textured and give a more real life feel to it. I did not have a palette knife but Cinnamon suggested that an old credit card or business card could serve the same purpose. I used a business card and it worked fine. I used it on my rocks and it really helped my rocks look more authentic. There is also a tool called a splatter brush that I used on my painting. It looks very much like a toothbrush, but since I didn't have one of those either, so I used a toothbrush. I am becoming the queen of improvising.  I admit, I got a bit frustrated with my poppies. Cinnamon using Golden paints in her tutorial. All I had was a cheaper brand and when I painted mine were see through. I had to use a few layers just to get the colour payoff I wanted and they still din't look as vibrant as hers did. The only Gold...

I am currently working on my first still life. I am only part way through the process as you can see from the pic. The flowers I am working on are a far bigger challenge than I thought they would be.  From the Sherpa's lessons, I think the problem is more with my brushes than it is with me. My brushes are super soft, soft enough to put makeup on my face. In the art world you want the opposite. You want a brush that feels uncomfortable on your skin. My strokes are just not turning out right, but I said on my previous post, I do not let this deter me. I decided to take a small break from this project however and do something a little more whimsical instead. I chose an easy peasy, cute, little elephant to paint. The fact that I called this easy peasy is astonishing to me, as just two months ago I would have said this was far too hard to paint. My confidence is growing. Still, I can never get enough practice, especially this early on in the game. Even something as easy as th...

If you have been following my blog, my last post left you wondering whether I gave up on the world of art or not. If you haven't been following, basically I made a mess of my third painting and was wondering if I really had what it took to paint. I decided to push on. I am new. I don't have a painting style or technique down yet. I joined an art community and they informed me that if I don't like a painting, I can just gesso over it and start again. Gesso, yet another new art instrument I learnt about on this journey. It is basically a paint-like substance used to prime or prepare a surface for painting. The community also reassured me that they produce duds too, and that it was ok to fail sometimes. I felt a little better but it would be a few weeks before I got the confidence to paint again. During those weeks, I surfed through the community, looking at painting by others. Some of the paintings intimidated me. Thoughts of,  I would never be that good   entered my mind...