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If your painting is stuck in a rut here are some suggestions for you to get out of it and start seeing your paintings improve.
How To Improve Your Painting Skills
If your painting is stuck in a rut, it is probably because of a lack of one or more key foundational skills. If you want to know how to improve your painting skills, here is how to go about it.
Step 1: Make A Plan
Decide what you want to achieve? Is it just to be a hobby painter? or do you want to really see some major improvements? If the latter then you need to build a set of foundational skills. Make a list of what you think you need to do better. This might include drawing, making things look three-dimensional, better color harmony, more realistic and true to nature, more expressive brushwork, and so on.
Step 2: Identify Skill Building Exercises
Focus on building the skills you are lacking. It is much more efficient in terms of time to do short exercises that are focused on one problem than try to do a complete painting. The actual learning of the skill is typically only taking place during a part of doing a full painting. So for most of your painting time you are not building your skills. Set aside time to do these assignments on a regular basis. If you want to improve your painting skills, it is better to do a little more often than a lot less frequently.
Step 3: Evaluate Your Problems
Step back every now and again, look at the work you are doing, and try to evaluate where the problems are. A good way of doing this is to compare your work with master artists who are particularly good at the skill you are practicing. In the Virtual Art Academy, we study various master artists’ work in detail to understand how they achieved mastery in certain areas. Learn from these masters and you will improve your own painting.
Additional Resources
- books on how to paint written by the author of the Virtual Art Academy
- a guide to critiquing art: The Visual Music & Poetry® Methodology
Key Skill Building Blocks: How To Improve Your Painting Skills
Here are the key skill building blocks you need to continually work on to improve your paintings:
For example the Virtual Art Academy® online painting classes is designed to build up your skills in nine key areas in order to paint well.
I call these nine areas the Virtual Art Academy Building Blocks™.
Many students are frustrated with their progress, and it is nearly always because they are lacking skills in one of these nine building blocks.
The four-year Apprentice Program will cover every one of these nine Building Blocks in a very thorough way. This will ensure you have a solid foundation for how to improve your paintings.
The nine Building Blocks are:
- Brushwork Building Block
- Color Building Block
- Composition Building Block
- Concept Building Block
- Drawing Building Block
- Form Building Block
- Notan Building Block
- Observation Building Block
- Process Building Block
Other tips for how to improve your painting skills
Here are some more tips for how to improve your painting skills:
- Stay focused on your learning assignments and always keep in mind what you are practicing.
- When you are painting, just have fun and relax. Don’t think about assignments and theory. That should be a different time from your learning time.
- If you want to figure out how to improve your painting skills, go for quantity rather than quality.
- Study the experts. Read books about master artists, and go to museums to see the works up close in person.
- Look for interesting compositions and play around with more different options.
- Try switching media. If you are an oil painter, switch to watercolors and vice versa.
- Evaluate your work more objectively by looking at your painting in a mirror or turn your painting upside down. Look at just a small part of your painting. Look at it from a distance. You will better see what is lacking if you want to learn how to improve your painting skills.
- Create a series of related paintings on a particular theme or subject. Each time you create another painting you will be improving your painting skills.
Thank You
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. I hope you find it useful. If you would like to get free painting tips by email, please sign up for my free tips newsletter.
If you are interested in a structured approach for learning how to paint, take a look at my online painting classes.
Happy painting!
Barry John Raybould
Virtual Art Academy
What The Students Are Saying
A great learning platform
I have been working my way through the Virtual Art Academy for almost a year now, and cannot recommend it highly enough. The Workshops are thorough, structured and substantive. There is a logical and step by step progression that makes the learning process so much easier, with new concepts being introduced and then practiced along… Read more “A great learning platform”
It is wild to see how much I am learning in this course!
Five star rating from me for Virtual Art Academy (VAA)! I retired last year, and decided I wanted to spend my time in retirement learning how to oil paint. But having never painted before, I wasn’t even sure what to look for in an online painting course. However, I did some searches for “Best Online… Read more “It is wild to see how much I am learning in this course!”
comprehensive art education
I wanted to get a comprehensive art education with the freedom to work at my own pace. I’m several years into the curriculum and I feel like my work has drastically improved. I’ve found holes in my knowledge that I didn’t know I had. Critiquing other students posts and reading their feedback to mine has… Read more “comprehensive art education”
Only online learning program I have ever discovered using a training industry best practice
Before repurposing my vocation into avocation, I spent 20 years in the corporate world as an instructional designer and performance consultant creating training curricula for diverse clientele from NASA to General Motors. I know curriculum development and how to guide a learner from beginning to certification. VAA is the only online learning program I have… Read more “Only online learning program I have ever discovered using a training industry best practice”
The small steps are easy to do
I am extremely impressed with the process that Barry has developed for VAA. Learning to paint can be intimidating, but when broken into many small projects it is very do-able. I just did my first live model painting session- a 5 hour, one day session. Thanks to VAA, I was able to break the painting… Read more “The small steps are easy to do”
An excellent foundation on so many aspects of painting
I never had formal training in painting and my style has always been very realistic, slow and not at all artistic, just a copy of a photograph. When I got word of the course available through Virtual Art Academy, I was very excited for the opportunity to learn what I never knew about painting. VAA… Read more “An excellent foundation on so many aspects of painting”
Barry gave me a fishing rod so I can catch my own fish
After weeks and even months of searching YouTube, “googling” and spending a fortune on art instructional books I finally came across the Virtual Art Academy®. When it comes to purchasing online I am always very careful how I spend my money. Especially when I already spent a small fortune on art books. They always seemed… Read more “Barry gave me a fishing rod so I can catch my own fish”
No need to buy expensive art books…. Just do the VAA 4 year course. I still refer to it
I finished the VAA course a few years ago, but always refer to the notes, rereading the course many times. This is not a course the day you are finished, you are done. No, you keep practising the assignments getting better and better over time. When I look back at my work when I had just… Read more “No need to buy expensive art books…. Just do the VAA 4 year course. I still refer to it”
The equivalent of a 4 year art education at a fraction of the cost
This is a great course for anyone who is serious about improving their painting. I have been a student here for several years. When I am finished, I will have the equivalent of a 4 year art education at a fraction of the cost. I can do the lessons anywhere and at my own pace.… Read more “The equivalent of a 4 year art education at a fraction of the cost”