Speed painting!

Okay, guys.

People ask me on a daily basis HOW I make my artwork and how I learned to paint digitally. Of course there is no magic button you can press to magically become a good painter, but there are ways to practice the important skills needed to become a great artist. 

First of all you need to LOOK AT ART. You need to really feed yourself with inspiration and knowledge about what is out there, and how other people work. Looking on the internet, in books or magazines are a great way to do that, and tutorials are of course a source to technique and tricks you might not no of. And this site is trying to help you with that, by the way By doing my weekly tutorials and workshops, you´re on your way.

Second you have to practice. There are many different ways to do that. You can do tutorials like already mentioned, but speed painting is probably the most effective way to develop as a painter. When speed painting you give yourself a time frame of approximately an hour or so, and I prefer to do it without any reference material. Just come up with an idea of what you want to paint. It can be anything you like, your pet, a castle on a hill top, a butterfly on a flower, a portrait or a starry sky. When the motif is decided, you may want to make yourself a colour palette. Then you set up your canvas, make your colour palette available and start to paint! I know it can be frustrating when you notice you´ve only got ten minutes left and the painting looks like shit, but that is really a part of the process. When you get used to working in such high speed, you start to evaluate what is important in your painting and what is not, and suddenly you´ll create beautiful art faster than you ever thought you´d be able to.

I am perfectly aware of that most people are quite busy and you might not have the time to do this everyday, but I strongly recommend you to do it as often as you can; At least every other day. You´ll see progress in a month, maybe less, I promise you!  

 

This is a little something I did in Painter yesterday, and you can see how roughly the strokes are applied. It is important not to be too precious about it and just go for it!

Good luck:)