and A painting is much more than a picture depicting a particular subject matter. For that matter there is nothing special about painting a particular scenery that was painted by so many people over and over again. Each painting should be telling a story, a story that the artist would like to present in a pleasing and artistic way. It does not mean that the subject matter needs to be always nice or pleasing. Caravaggio and many others painted quite gory and macabre subjects, but still they are beautiful works of art admired in museums hundreds of years after being painted. 

So what does composition means? Composition has to do with the placement of shapes in a way that are pleasing to the eye and brain. The concept of composition knows its origins from the time of the Greeks and has a mathematical foundation related to the musical scale and tones. These concepts were further developed during the Renaissance, where it was discovered that the same harmonic ratios that creates sounds and vibrations that are pleasing to the ears have a similar effect on our eyes. Hence the same concepts were applied as the underlying framework of a painting composition. 

This concept can be applied to any kind of painting, whether its a landscape, still life or even figurative. For my latest painting "First light on Cradle Mountain, Tasmania" I used the armature of the rectangle to position some important features within the painting including the direction of light (shown in first picture above). The third picture shows the basic sketch of a still life I was working on recently. On it I drew the same basic lines and its interesting to see that objects were instinctively placed in the right places without any prior construction of lines. It will become second nature and automatically one starts creating appealing compositions instinctively following these guidlines of composition without even trying to do so.  It is a good exercise to find some pictures of masterpieces done by historic or even contemporary artists, print them out and draw on them the lines that make up this armature. Its is amazing what you can learn from such an exercise.

The painting process is executed in steps, during each step one will be isolating and focusing on only one aspect of it. The first step is drawing, focusing on the arrangement of shapes making up a picture. One will need to start from the bigger shapes moving on to smaller shapes including the shapes that make up light and shadow. The next step after drawing is to focus on value, or light and dark. Value is the most important aspect of the three dimensions of colour, if your intention is to create the illusion of form on a flat surface. It is more important than colour itself. However it is the most difficult simply because our brains are not that developed to see it and hence we need to focus on an extensive amount of deliberate practice to train your eyes and brain to see value transitions that sometimes are too subtle for the untrained eye to see. Value is also what gives depth in a painting especially when it comes to landscape painting. This can be complicated by highlights on different objects located at different positions in space within a painting, so initially one needs to focus more on shadow rather than on highlights. These effects are more controlled within a still life, for the simple reason that there is a stationary light source and only a small space to focus on. Once a person understands the concept of how light bends and turns on a few basic shapes then it will be easier for that person to paint complex objects made up of different combinations of these shapes. Understanding these basic concepts is important and useful to paint anything that you want including things from your own imagination, or simply wanting to change lighting conditions in a scenery. In order to check your values in a painting there are different things that you can do. One is to look at the painting from a distance. The wrong value at the wrongs spot can be easily spotted by moving back. Alternatively you can look at the painting through a mirror. Something which really works well for me is to take a photo of the painting and convert it to black and white (as shown in second image above). The painting has to look OK in black and white, if not then one will need to evaluate what's wrong and which values are not in the right place. 

In this video I demonstrate how to paint the ocean and waves in oils. This painting was painted in two stages and here I show the second stage where I developed the detail of form and light.
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I was wondering what I was going to paint this morning and so I decided to do a small still life. As always the first difficulty is what I am going to choose as my models. So I had a look around me and I decided to create something from what I had in front of me. Its like a chef that creates a recipe from what is available at that time. I just wanted some neutral colours, something colourful and an object at either side of the value scale. So I took my mocha coffee pot, excellent as a neutral grey with very dark handle but can create some interesting reflection on its shiny surface. I had a small diary, green in colour and so I had to find a complementary cloth and finally I took a coffee mug, the other end of the value scale. I placed these objects in front of a window and started painting. The palette I used consisted of titanium white, cadmium yellow, pyrrole rubine, ultramarine blue and burnt umber. I started by blocking in the background first and then moving to the objects from dark to light.
Starting from the darks, I started from the coffee pot. I find reflective surfaces a very easy to paint as they are usually grey and its the value contrasts that create the reflective illusion.  Then I moved on to the green book that is a mid-value colour. Finally I had to the coffee mug and that was the challenge. Pretty much the whole mug was shiny and one can barely see variation in tone. Using natural light as a light source especially on an overcast day, will soften the shadows and hence everything looks like flat. However, the problem is that one cannot paint this mug as flat white so I started looking at it more in details and started mixing a number of very light greys using the colours that I used for the objects around it. There were very light tints of green, red and browns while the part in the light was a whitish grey since the sky was overcast. I also tried to keep the values somewhere in between mid-value and white.  It was the hardest part of the whole painting challenge as one does not have too much space to play with values when you are approaching the lightest tones.
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Landscape painting is one of the genres most popular with both art collectors and artists/students. Looking back at history of arts we observe that actually landscape painting was introduced and started being a subject matter very recently. Before that, paintings mostly depicted the human figure in various ways including as part of mythological or religious/biblical stories. Leonardo da Vinci was one of the first to introduce the landscape as a background for his famous painting of the Mona Lisa. From there onwards artists also started to go out and use sketching/drawing as a way to record what they observe and then translate those sketches into a studio painting. Later on as paint tubes were developed life became a little bit easier and artists such as Monet and other impressionists started painting more outdoors. 

If still life painting is fundamentally important for those who want to learn how to draw and paint realism, without doubt that outdoor painting is same as important to learn to paint the landscape. It is very difficult for a person who never observed with his/her own eyes sceneries away from city life, to conceive the vast space and effects of the light and weather on the landscape. These skills one cannot get them from using photography only as reference material. Photography is a good tool but only when its used in combination with other sources including your observation of reality. The hardest issue when painting outdoors is the constant change in light intensity, direction and colour. This issue will force you to paint faster and to make fast decisions about colour mixes. 

On a recent trip to Kangaroo Valley , while staying at a very interesting property at Barrengarry (Bedford and Bunker) I took the opportunity to paint a number of sketches of the farm land and surrounding scenery at different times in the afternoon. As my setup I used a pochade box with a glass palette, 12 x 9 inch Ampersand boards to which I attached a piece of linen double primed with a non-absorbent acrylic primer (Michael Harding). The palette of colours used was ultramarine blue, phthalo blue, Venetian red, Pyrrole rubine (PR264), yellow ochre, cadmium lemon, viridian and flake white replacement. Cold pressed linseed oil was used as medium when needed. One of the most important issues when painting outdoors has to do with your position in relation to the sun. The worst that can happen to you will find a place in the shade and within an hour you end up with the sun on your canvas in such a way that you cannot see anything. I usually also wear a hat with a wide brim or a cap to prevent constriction of my eyes due to the bright light which will not allow you to see and judge values well. Before I start painting I always spend a significant amount of time observing in which direction the sun is going to move across the sky as well as the landscape around me in order to decide my subject matter and make some decisions about the composition of the painting. To help you with the issue of the sun, there are a number of very useful tools that can calculate for you the position of the sun and shadows even at different days and times such as Sun Calc. 

During these two sittings I finished two paintings (shown in the images above) one early afternoon and the other an hour before sunset. I always try to finish the entire painting within a maximum of one and a half hours. I also took a number of photos especially at sunset when the light will be changing literally every minute and so its very difficult to capture the light in paint. Another tool I use is my memory. I try to sit and observe in order to memorise what I am seeing as well as the whole experience and atmosphere which consists of not only the visual sense but also the sensations from other senses. Using this combination of tools I am now working on a bigger studio painting of this location.
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Today I am going to give a brief overview of the painting process of this painting. I found the subject matter interesting in a number of ways. The human figure looks like he is a meditative and reflective state while at the same time there seems to be a friendly and peaceful relationship with the monkey. It also reminded me of when I was young and I had this obsession that I wanted a small monkey as a pet, however this never happened. It also reminded me of our connection as humans with mother nature and especially with the other creatures with whom we share our life on this planet. It is also a reminder that we are part of the natural world from which we all are coming. 

From the artistic perspective I loved the combination of colours and contrasts. The background is fairly neautral leaning towards a low chroma orange which contrasts with the relatively high chroma complementary bluish tones of the turban. Other complementary contrasts are red/green and yellow/purple.

As a surface I prepared a stretched fine linen, primed with three layers of acrylic primer. The initial tonal sketch was done using raw umber which was allowed to dry for a day and then painted over with a second layer of transparent red oxide red. Both of these paints dry very quickly.

After allowing the painting to dry for couple of days I proceeded to the next layer of paint, where I started introducing more colour and opaque paint. A 50% cold pressed linseed oil was used as medium and added to the paint. After identifying the colour groups, an mid-range colour was initially mixed and adjusted to create a tonal variation of that colour suitable to use for shadows and light. The darker but warm underpaint helped me to establish and control the tone as well as for the darker areas in the shadows.

The last stage was focused to continue modifying the tones in each section of the painting, usually darkening the shadows and lightening where needed. During this stage both scumbling (for opaque paint) and glazing (using transparent paint) are used to continue adjusting the tones while creating more form.

The painting is currently in its final stages where I might do some minor and final adjustments before signing it.

I would like to share with you an over view of this still life painting. I always found still life painting as the best way to learn the various aspects of painting. Still life teaches you to see shapes and to observe with your naked eyes the subtle changes in colour and tone. These two are usually miss-represented in photography as the camera is not able to see what your eyes and brain can. It also teaches you about composition since a still life is not simply a collection of objects as in a bazaar store. 

From the technical perspective every object will have a different difficulty how to approach it and how to apply the paint onto the surface. For this painting I chose a highly reflective metal tea pot, a tea cup, tea bag and a pear to include some colour. 

The overall big shape of the composition running between the main objects is a triangular shape with the string coming of the tea bag and hanging off the edge creates a very gentle leading line to the main subjects. The objects are painted almost the same size as the real objects and are partly touching or coming off the edges of the canvas. I did this specifically to make the viewer feel like being part of the painting. This is an approach Caravaggio used in a number of his paintings. 

The green background is the complementary colour to the red design on the cup and the purplish tag of the teabag complements the yellowish colours of the pear. 

As support I used a 30 x 30 cm cotton canvas attached to a wooden surface and pre-stained with a middle tone mix of alkyd oil burnt umber mixed with titanium white. The solid wooden surface protects the paint layers as it does not allow the canvas to experience repeated cycles of shrinkage as a result of the constantly changing atmospheric humidity. The light position for this still life was at the very top and I used a small neutral white light (5000k) 

The colour palette is as follows cremnitz white, titanium white, ultramarine blue, pyrrole rubine, burnt sienna, burnt umber, yellow ochre, Indian yellow and cadmium lemon. Paints are from Michael Harding, Blue Ridge, Old Holland, Gamblin and Williamsburg. Cold pressed linseed oil was used as medium added only in the second layer of paint.

Most of this painting was painted "Alla Prima" with only slight adjustments of tone and addition of detail onto the initial layer. I always start from the darkest objects, so here I started from the teapot. Most people have the impression that metallic objects are very difficult to paint, I find it the opposite. The teapot was painted using chromatic black (a mix burnt umber and ultramarine blue) adjusting and lighting up the value to almost a mid value grey. The reflections are painted with a low chroma version of the colours used for the objects being reflected. The contrast between values gives the illusion that the painted object is metallic. Still life painting teaches you to observe chroma and makes you realise how low in chroma are real objects around us. From painting the teapot I moved on to the background followed by the pear. The most challenging were the tea cup and tea bag that mainly consist of high value blue tint mixed with umber. The golden colour is a mix of burnt sienna, umber and Indian yellow from dark to light value. Painting the pear was an interesting and fun part of the painting because one can observe all the effects of light on a single object starting from the reflective  and shiny top part to the dark shadows and reflected light at the bottom coming from the background colours and the white cloth on the table.

The short video demonstrated the application of paint while painting the tea cup. Hope you enjoy.

Today I am going to share with you some tips about painting from life. Painting from life is one of the best ways to learn how to draw and paint. Besides the techniques that one can learn such a brush work, painting from life also helps you improve seeing subtle changes in colour while improving your observational skills. Both of these are essential if you want to become a better artist. My 3 years of training were almost entirely based on drawing from life objects and this helped me a lot when I came to the stage to paint. 

For this painting I chose the subject matter of drinking coffee. Drinking coffee is almost a ubiquitous activity across almost all nations. I wanted a simple composition consisting of the necessary tools including the mocha coffee pot, cup and spoon together with the raw ingredient, the coffee bean. This series of still life paintings is going to be focused to remind us about the connection between our daily activities with nature. Most of the time in this industrial age where everything is presented to us ready made, people lost touch with nature. 

I used a shadow box with a coloured background with a complementary colour to the objects. The mocha pot was placed towards the right hand side and light directed from the top left, casting shadows to towards the left, linking the objects. The reflective surface of the pot was also reflecting the bluish colour from the cup and the orange colour from the right hand side of the box. The spoon is leaning towards the edge of the table and of the canvas. The easel was placed close and towards the side of the shadow box, with the palette on the right and a small table on the left. Having all the tools needed handy is very important and helps to avoid distractions during the painting process.

The painting surface chosen is a cotton canvas attached to a 30 x 30 cm wooden panel, ready to hang, primed with an oil primer and prestained with mid value neutral alkyd oil mix of burnt umber and titanium white. This initial layer was prepared months ago.

The chosen palette for this painting is very limited and consists of Flake White replacement (Gamblin), ultramarine blue (Williamsburg), cadmium lemon (Blue Ridge), burnt umber (Michael Harding), pyrrole ruby red (Blue Ridge) with a touch of phthalo blue green shade  (Blue Ridge). The medium used was linseed oil. Most of this painting was done "Alla prima". Starting from the darkest object, the cup, moving on gradually towards the mid-range ones and to the lighter ones. This was done on purpose to prevent accidental contamination with titanium white of the darker colours. I used a colour checker to isolate and check the tones where necessary.

Today I am sharing with you part of the painting process of a painting I am currently working on. The scenery shows a view over the town of Bright in Victoria from Tower Hill Lookout. I visited this place couple of weeks ago at two different times of the day, at around sunset and mid-day. On my visits I prepared a plein air sketch and did a photo shoot of the whole scenery. Plein air sketching/painting is the best way of documenting the landscape as it gives you the capability to understand the landscape much better than taking photos, for the simple reason that you do observation from reality. Our eyes can see far more details than a camera could see. A camera is a machine and hence does not have a brain to created the illusion of reality. However its very difficult to capture the landscape at sunset and when the weather and light are constantly changing. So in that situation I preferred to use the camera to capture the light and my memory to record the atmosphere and the feel/smell of the air after the rain. 

This painting is a composite of three elements, plein air sketches, photography and memory. Its going to be painted on stretched linen 101 x 85 cm using oil paints. The first image above shows the first layer of paint (block in) where the main shapes and tones are established. Will keep you updated about the progress of this painting.