An eraser may seem like a small part of your big project, but it plays a significant role in bringing out the final shape of your drawing. Especially if you are working with charcoals and graphite, an eraser is your go-to problem solver in the initial stages of learning. Not all erasers are created equal,

Have you ever wondered looking at a Rembrandt that how come some people can draw immaculately while there are others like you who can’t even manage to draw a straight line on a piece of paper? We have all been there. Man drew even before he learned to speak or write, as evident from the

For the beginning oil painter, perhaps the least intimidating way to familiarize oneself with the medium and tools used in oil painting is to concentrate on simple alla prima techniques. Alla prima painting covers a wide range of styles, and is basically everything except glazing. It is painting quickly, loosely, and usually quite simply.

Drawing is not a separate activity from drawing, but rather, the skills one acquires in learning how to draw are foundational to painting. This is true not only from the perspective of learning how to accurately depict forms and making things look the way you want them to, but also in terms of making

Glazing is the technique used by the great masters of the Renaissance. In glazing, thin coats of paint are layered one on top of another so that the colors underneath are still visible. Think of glazing as stacking pieces of colored glass on top of another. It is slow, because each layer needs to

Alla Prima painting, roughly translated “all at once,” is the fastest way to paint in oils. It includes a wide range of variations, all of which involve direct painting as opposed to mixing thin layers of transparent colors and then glazing one color over another. In alla prima painting, your goal is to work

Learning how to make life-like portraits begins with accurate shapes and ends with realistic lighting. There’s more to lighting than simply finding highlights and shadows. As this illustration of a simple white mug shows, light plays on the surface of a three-dimensional object in ways you might not expect. Careful observation is the key

Have you ever wondered how some artists get those absolutely perfect lines in their drawings? Not just straight lines, but razor-sharp curves, dead on accurate shapes and even tiny white lines? The answer is that there’s nothing special about the artist, it’s all a matter of know-how and tools. You can have those lines

One of the key elements in making realistic portraits is starting with a smooth base tone for the skin color. Unless your drawing is very high contrast, the skin is going to have at least some tone on it, and that tone needs to be blended smooth before you can start to develop shadow

Every shade of gray that you use in your drawing is also known as a tone. The value of a tone refers to how light or dark it is, and put together, those values form a gradation from black to white called a value scale. Here is an example of a value scale. Notice

Guidelines are your friend! If you’re having difficulty making your drawings look realistic, especially if you always seem to find mistakes in the placement or size of your features, then it’s a safe bet that you need to go back to the drawing board regarding guidelines. Guidelines are just what you’d guess from the