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Why You Should Join an Online Life Drawing Class

When the online classes are led by a tutor, they can give helpful guidance and tips throughout the session. It might be less hands-on than a session in real life, but some artists might prefer it to having a tutor looking over their shoulder! Not all classes are guided, and these can feel more informal, allowing you to take your drawing in your own direction. (More…)

Silverpoint: A Rare Art Form

Silverpoint, or Metalpoint, drawing (the two terms are often used interchangeably) is perhaps the most challenging of graphic techniques, and its practice is often limited to the work of specialists. However, it has been used to extraordinary expressive effect by some of the most famous and canonical artists in history.

As the name suggests, it is a medium that uses a thin stylus of a soft metal, most commonly silver mixed with copper – although gold, brass, and pure copper serve equally well. The pointed or round-ended tip of the stylus leaves no mark on a plain piece of paper, except to scratch its surface, but once the sheet has been given a preparatory ground, it will deposit a shiny metallic line.

During the Renaissance, silverpoint was one of the most commonly used mediums for young apprentices to practise their drawing skills before they advanced on to oil painting. Today, however, it is an almost forgotten medium, with only few contemporary artists practising it. (More…)

5 Reasons Why Artists Keep Sketchbooks

If you’re an artist and you don’t have a daily sketchbook habit, you may want to make time for it. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that taking time to draw in your sketchbook each day could increase your artistic abilities exponentially.

That said, many artists have trouble getting started with a consistent daily sketchbook habit, even if they love to draw. Some of this issue has to do with not knowing what to draw, but some of their reluctance also has to do with the “why.”

In other words, they really don’t know why artists keep sketchbooks, so they find their motivation lacking.

This blog post offers a little help for both of those issues.

Here are five reasons why artists keep sketchbooks.

Importance of light direction in the composition of a pencil sketch.

Apart from the subject, medium, and skill of the artist, many other factors are there that go into the creation of successful pencil sketch, one of them is the light direction while sketching.

How light reflects off of objects determines how we perceive them. Therefore, it becomes important for the artists to capture the light in a way that creates the exact illusion of what is observed in the drawing. (More…)

DIY CAMERA OBSCURA

The lure of large format photography attracts many. Relatively few can justify the cost of pursuing it, though. Even 4×5 sheet film gets pretty expensive, and that’s the smallest of the large formats out there. What if you could make one relatively inexpensively, though, and at the same time, avoid the hassle and cost of chemicals by shooting the results on your digital camera? (More…)

The Basics About Prints, Editions, and Multiples

Starting a collection would require a lot of knowledge on everything you’ll find in the market. Even in huge collections, versatility among media and artists stands out. A lot of collectors still go for prints or multiples and most begin through this. But what are prints? What are multiples and what makes editions still so valuable? (More…)

5 ways to lay out your painting palette.

There are no hard and fast rules to laying out your oil paints and over time you will each have your own way of doing this, that best suits your own style of painting. But if you are a beginner it is a good idea to have a system because then you can paint without thinking just like driving a car, it becomes an automatic action. (More …)