Wotartist art school

When drawing or painting allow the pencil line and brush stroke to take on the direction of the form. This will help to convey the form better and give a greater feeling of spatial depth to the work. As simple exercise, draw a cube and experiment with the pencil stroke direction. Make several drawings; some where the line follows the form and others where it contradicts its direction. You will soon notice how lacking in special depth are the drawings where the direction of line and the form have not been carefully considered.

Before beginning a sculpture, the sculptor unlike the painter will make studies of his/her subject from many different angles. The painter is more accustomed to finding a single viewpoint and proceeding to paint from it alone. The painter however can learn a lot from the methods of the sculptor and should take great care when selecting a viewpoint by making sketches just as a sculptor would. This of course is even more important when the subject is close, for example in the case of a portrait subject, a still life or interior scene. Often simply shifting one's viewpoint to the left or the right can help the painter to explain what they are seeing.

Exercise 1.
Take several objects and arrange a still life. Without making a drawing re-arrange them several times and each time step back and try to observe how colours change, how shadows darken, how lights lighten, how mood changes, how cast shadows can distort the appearance of objects. Just like the sculptor would you could try to draw the subject from many different angles. You should start to see that the appearance and our preconceptions play games with us, and that which we hold to be true one moment may no longer be the case!

Hold to your eye your clenched fist leaving a small opening just large enough to see through. Use this trick to better understand localised tonal and colour contrasts in a subject.

Pastels are a robust and versatile medium adapting well to whatever support you apply them too. This is mainly due to the fact that the pigment unlike oil based and water based mediums, sits on the supports surface and does not absorb. Of course there are papers designed with the right tooth for pastels but I would try to see any support as a possibility, from old book covers, coloured card, to the cardboard sides of boxes etc.

Framing your art and photos can be costly. Standard sized frames are mass-produced and are readily available at greatly reduced prices when compared to bespoke framing. You can save a lot of money by getting to know what frame sizes are available in your local area and produce work to fit them.

When painting a portrait make a note of where your lightest light is and where your darkest dark is. Try to set up the lighting so that there are not multiple lightest lights all competing for attention. This will contradict the correct rendering of the form and tend towards a flattening of the form and an unpleasant result. The Dutch masters of the 17th Century would often paint their portraits with one source of natural light from a window set high above the sitter. This made it easier to see the highlights, middle tone and darks, which is essential to complete the illusion of three dimensions.

Colours can only be understood in the context in which they sit. It is important therefore so that there is no discord between the mixing of colours on a palette and their positioning on the painting surface, that the colour of the palette and the painting surface are the same. Get into the habit if using a toned painting surface to prime your palette at the same time and with the same colour. Imagine how frustrating it would be if every time you mixed a colour when positioned on the paining surface it appeared quite different. Remember a grey surrounded by black will appear much lighter than the same grey surrounded by white.

There is always considerable wastage of unused paint from dried out palettes. Artists should not underestimate the possibilities of re-use of this paint. You could submerge your palette in water overnight or for days and even put it in the fridge! Or simply lightly spray it with water. Artists have been known to submerge under water unsuccessful paintings rich in paint, until inspiration might come to their rescue.

The paper you choose for your pastel paintings is entirely of personal choice. Remember that smooth paper has little “tooth”. That is the papers capacity to hold pigment within its groove and would require working in layers fixed with fixative. Pastel paintings with little tooth are ideally suited to very polished and realistic finishes. It is best to experiment as much as you can.

The laws of perspective assume that the earth is flat and states the following:

1. All lines parallel to the surface of the earth will converge to a vanishing point situated on the Horizon line

2. Lines parallel to one another will share the same vanishing point.

3. Non parallel lines converge to distinct vanishing points.

Ariel Perspective refers to the bluish and faint appearance objects take on when viewed at a distance. Think of how mountains in the distance appear fainter and tinged with blue or how on a misty day trees not far away appear a pale grey green. This is caused by the density of water vapour present in the atmosphere that has the effect of not only merging tonal contrasts by making dark tones lighter and light tones darker but also making colours appear cooler. This effect in nature can be mimicked in your paintings by making the far ground paler and bluer.

Having good reference material at hand is the bedrock of good illustration. I remember a painting project at art school where through damn laziness I thought I could get away with painting a building from my imagination alone, only to be told by my tutor to go out and do some studies from life. The lesson was well learnt and my painting improved immensely because of it. It is a good idea to collect when and where you can, a rich variety of different reference material that you can have ready at hand.

Learning to represent the three dimensionality of the world as we observe it is the foundation of all art training. To begin with the art student learns to draw and then paint, and it is the drawing skills that he obtains in his/her early training that will enrich and ultimately form the backbone of his/her paintings. It is therefore vitally important that the correct measure of discipline is applied to questions raised whilst learning to draw.
In the absence of a life drawing model one can complete the following exercise at home by stripping down to your underclothes and drawing yourself in the mirror.

Exercise
Cut 30 individual, foot long strips of narrow brown sticky tape and attach them to yourself so that they go around your limbs, for example, around your wrists, your forearms and legs. Attach some at different angles and now attempt to draw only the pieces of tape. This is a good exercise to help you to see the way in which the various structures and forms of the human form interconnect and relate to one another. It also forces ones eye to observe the world without the muddied water of our preconceptions polluting what we see.

Never throw away your old sketchbooks. Sketchbooks are microcosms of your artistic development. Although I believe in the power of the inspirational moment, ideas are more often than not the result of development by increments. Through the regular use of the sketchbook you can learn how to develop ideas and it is often by looking back over past drawings that fresh ideas are born.

Pastels are produced in a greater range of colours than any other medium. The typical box of pastels contains many sticks. Try organising them into groupings of warm and cool colours, and even experiment with limited palettes, perhaps using a different set of colours with each painting.

The art of selective seeing is an art in itself. Set up a still life and decide on a number of lines with which you will attempt to describe it. Start by setting yourself the task to represent the arrangement with ten lines and working downward see if you can make a drawing with as few as possible, for example, three. You should begin to see how economy in the use of lines, in sensitive hands can result in expressive and beautiful drawings. (Look at the work of Modigliani 1884-1920)

Art is an experiment in how to experiment, in how to avoid falling headlong into the pit that is one's aesthetic limitations and predictability. Try, for example, to empty your mind of preconceptions before stating a work and instead to allow the work to take you to those unexpected places where magic occurs!

Under a strong directional light, either from one window or from a lamp, draw a subject without first making a preliminary drawing of any sort. With a large stick of charcoal or the edge of a soft pencil block in areas of tone, simply and directly and beginning with the large tonal relationships, work towards the smaller ones. Notice how the shadows of objects can be linked together with adjacent tonal areas to form larger areas of tone.

There are numerous exercises to help to train the eye to observe accurately. The best way to do this is to force the eye into situations in which the comfortable connection between its understanding of what it is seeing and what it is actually seeing is broken.

One good exercise is to hang a master drawing upside down and to copy it. Why not take an art book and try to draw all the artwork in it. Make sure it is you who is the right way up and that it is the book that is upside down!

The solvents turpentine and white spirits are commonly used for cleaning one’s hands after painting with oil-based paint. Both are harmful by inhalation and when in contact with the skin. As an alternative why not try using oil itself, just cheap cooking oil is a perfect substitute. Rub your hands in the oil straight from a bottle and then remove with a washing up liquid. You can also use this method to clean your brushes after use.

Whilst working with pastels you should try to maintain order. Try to put each pastel back into its stored position so as not to contaminate an adjacent colour. Perhaps you could hold a cloth in one hand and give them a wipe before returning them. Remember they are delicate and you can save a lot of money by treating them carefully.

Many photographers invest a great deal of time, effort and money pursuing the belief that buying a more expensive camera, or acquiring the camera used by one of their photographic idols will help them take a better picture.

Whilst well crafted lenses or cameras have a role in helping a photographer realise their creative ambition, its worth remembering that many of the more famous photographers of the last century used a single camera or a very limited selection of equipment to realise their vision. Examples of well known artists who used a single camera for the majority of their life's work include Henri Cartier Bresson (French photographer 1908-2004), Diane Arbus (American photographer 1923-1971) and Edward Weston (American photographer 1886-1958).

The best camera you own is the one you're using now. Don't be put off taking photographs because you're waiting or saving up for the 'perfect camera'. Use the camera you have and push yourself further with the means you already have at your disposal . You might be surprised at the results.

An artist's observational skills should be kept well oiled. It is a good idea to draw something new everyday. Try to keep more than one sketchbook for this purpose and separate them into distinct subject matter. That way it is easier to note and be encouraged by one's advancements.

The degree to which light is absorbed or reflected when hitting an object is dependant on the nature and substance of the object. Artists need to understand this phenomenon if they are to attempt to imitate nature in their paintings and drawings. A useful exercise is to paint some brightly coloured objects placed on sheets of white paper with a white paper backdrop. You will soon see how the colours of the brightly coloured objects are reflected into the white surround and how the white surround reflects back into the objects. This useful exercise teaches us how everything we see is inter-dependant and that nothing exists in isolation. Having realised this you will start to see things you did not see before. It would be a good idea to use cylindrical objects and cubes for this exercise as from these “mother forms” from which all objects derive you will see clearly how the behaviour of reflected light on them is what creates the illusion and reality of their three dimensionality.

This is a nice little exercise you practice your observational skills. Instead of looking directly at something when drawing, try drawing it but looking slightly to the left or right of your subject.

Symmetry should be avoided in your paintings. The human eye by nature is looking for logical and structural instruction. It is pleased when it is given clear and logical steps to follow. Imagine how two identical objects positioned side by side in a painting would compete for your attention and not allow the eye to rest. Imagine how unsettling a grid of identically sized and coloured squares would be to look at and then consider how soothing the same set of squares would be if the squares themselves were arranged in a gradation of tones from the dark to the light. Composition is the order that the artist imposes on his work. Remember to always consider the subordination of elements to a main point of interest.

All water-based paints, such as acrylic, gouache and watercolour, can happily be used together in a painting both by mixing them together and laying them in successive layers. Oil based paints can also be used in combination with water-based paints so long as the water-based paint is laid down first. The quick drying time of acrylic can be used to great effect to sketch in an under painting or simply to create a toned working surface.

To avoid possible drips landing on the painting pin it in an upright position and not on the floor. Working from top to bottom and with smooth continuous sweeps maintain the fixative aerosol at about a foot distance from the paper. Ensure that each stroke does not repeat over the previous one but that does not miss areas between either. Remember to use sparingly as fixative does darken colours and dulls the natural beauty of the pastel. Using paper with more tooth can reduce the need to fix too often.

The shapes of spaces that surround the objects that we see and draw are referred to as “negative shapes” and can not only be used creatively to describe objects that we see, but should always be considered when drawing or painting. Imagine you draw the outline of an apple on a sheet of paper and then cut out the shape of the apple along the outline. The cut out shape of the apple and the shape left where it had been are both perfect descriptions of the apple.

Exercise 1.
Draw an outline of the same still life and trace this through onto six separate sheets of paper. Now you can colour the negative shapes and experiment with different abstract arrangements of both the negative and positive shapes.

Exercise 2.
Take the objects you used in the still life exercise above and re-arrange them by turning some of them upside down and some on their sides. Being now in unfamiliar and unexpected positions will force you to draw shapes as you see them and not as you know them. Now without making a preliminary linear drawing of the still life, take a stick of charcoal and attempt to draw the negative shapes only.

It is a common practice when mounting a picture to allow more space at the bottom of the mount than the top and sides. Some artists, however, prefer to have their mounts cut with all sides equal so that if they need to re-use the mounts for a new picture that they can re-use it for both landscape and portrait works.

Regardless if your working method is spontaneous or methodical always try to have materials ready at hand. Nothing more disruptive to the creative mind than the break in concentration and inspiration caused by having to buy or prepare your materials on the spot.

The greatness of a drawing is not judged by its accuracy alone but also by the manner in which you can make the drawing visually sing. Through disciplined drawing practise you will become better at representing what you see with quickly executed lines, lines that capture and communicate emotion rather than describe.

Exercise one.

Drawing pedestrians in the street is a good exercise. A window seat in a coffee shop makes a prime location. Drawing from the television is also a great exercise. Try to capture poetic movements, watch for rhythms, draw speed, draw slowness, draw awkwardness, draw age, youth, happiness, leaps, slips, running, skipping, and all the time working as quickly and spontaneously as you can. Leonard da Vinci (Italian Renaissance artist 1452-1519) suggested an oval for the head and bent lines for both the arms and legs.

Although brushes traditionally are the most common method used to apply and manipulate paint on the painting support, it can often be a very liberating experience to discard them and use an alternative and perhaps innovative method. It is only through experiment, that the art student can find their own unique technique. Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), laid his canvasses on the floor and using household paint poured and dripped his paint on to them. Rembrandt in his portraits sometimes made use of the handle of his brushes to define single hair strands by scraping into the wet paint.

Amongst the pot full of drawing exercises is one that is not only fun but a good way to help you to feel and understand intuitively the relationship between the eye and what it sees and your hand movement in response. Practice both drawing rapidly and methodically without taking your eye of the subject.

A simple coloured background can be achieved with pastels by simply collecting some pastel powder and rubbing it into the paper (Lightly fix before use) Alternatively you can add some water to the pastel powder in a jar and then use it as a watercolour wash.

In a world that seems more than ever governed by goals and targets, learning to take the time to seek out and to be inspired is an art in itself and one that requires discipline. I highly recommend a trip to your local library. Spend time just looking, there is plenty of time for note taking and sketching what you see later, but take time just to absorb and to be moved. The subconscious is a beautiful and clever creature that responds well to a calm and stimulating interaction. Allow your mind to wander, to be taken away by a drawing or a painting to other places. You will be amazed how beneficial for your artistic growth this simple little exercise can be.

The removal of excess pastel dust from your painting should be done by holding the paper from the top and tapping it on the back. Blowing away the dust can get into the lungs and is not only harmful but creates a great mess.

It is important when preparing your portfolio for selection either for a competition or for entrance to art school to be very selective in what you include and what you exclude. Art schools are looking for potential in a student and will be put off by art that looks as though it has run its experimental course. Try to include more experimental work, drawings that show an eagerness to improve rather than work that might be perceived as showing off! Remember, the impression that a portfolio transmits about your talents can be spoilt by the inclusion of a weak painting or drawing so include diverse drawings rather than many repetitive drawings.

For me, there needs to be as much importance put on the intervals as the time spent in activity - the spaces are full of contemplation and reflection - these mustn't be disturbed by outside interruption.

Sometimes a painting begins to slowly die from overwork and it becomes necessary to tear oneself away from it. The temptation is to just go on and on trying to resurrect it. Sometimes pictures can be rescued but sometimes it is best to 'abandon ship' and start afresh. Many times I have agonised over the decision and when I have decided the picture can't be saved and decide to start again. It'll be the 'same picture' only with the weight of my previous expereience contained within it, however this time I'll know when to stop.

Sometimes you don't need to destroy the whole picture but just areas (which may even be beautiful) for the sake of the whole. This is also difficult because the 'whole' doesn't always surpass these areas - and the picture is lost. It takes courage and tenacity at different times. The more you do the better you become at these decisions.

By applying and releasing pressure between a pencil and paper as you draw can be used to great affect to add spatial dimension in your drawings. By applying more or less pressure you create tonal variations in the line. Darker passages of line will suggest areas of greater tonal contrast and lighter passages will suggest less tonal contrast. Without the need to add any shading to define the varying planes of your subject, line alone, used expertly can achieve it for you.

Canvasses are expensive so never throw away an old canvas. Simply re-prime it with either an oil-based primer or acrylic or turn an unsuccessful painting upside down and re-use it. Under many a great master painting sleeps a previous failed painting.

Artist quality paints are very expensive and for a beginner may prove prohibitive. Student quality paint adequately meets the needs of the art student but as you develop you will find yourself falling for the charms of the superior quality of artist quality paints. The difference in quality between student and artist paints in the earth colour range is not so noticeable and so it is possible to save money by using a combination of both student and artist paints.

How can we learn from our mistakes if we pretend they never occurred by erasing their tracks with a rubber? As an art teacher there is nothing more satisfying than to see a students finished drawing with all the corrections and re-adjustments still evident. There are numerous examples of this in the drawing repertoires of many a great master so always try to work out and improve your drawings without reaching for a new sheet of paper.

A lot of wastage of tube colour can be avoided by ensuring that the correct tube caps are replaced on their respective tubes. Tube tops can also become contaminated by picking up alien colours from the palette as they are used. Wiping around the top of the tube before replacing the cap can avoid this.

The horizon line is the line formed where the earth and the sky appear to meet. It will always be at eye level whether you are standing or are seated. When painting a landscape its position within your picture space should be the first thing that you establish. Even if it cannot be seen, for example, when painting a mountainous scene you should establish a position for it, either in your minds eye or position it in the under-painting. It is important to help us draw the perspective of the scene correctly as all perspective lines will converge to it. Remember that it will always be parallel to the base of the picture but should not be positioned dead centre in the painting so as to divide the picture space into two equal and not satisfactory parts. The atmosphere of a painting can be greatly altered depending on if it is positioned high or low in the picture space.

"The artist's task is to create art that is more than the sum total of its parts."

Workable fixative allows you to rework your drawing and permanent fixative is used at the end of a painting as a final seal.

Learning to see complete shapes is important as it teaches us to see relationships over and above detail. Silhouettes are often used to suggest the middle ground and far ground in paintings and illustrations. As an exercise take a large soft haired brush and try to paint with as free flowing suggestive strokes as possible the complete shape that grouping of objects create.

During one life painting class at art school and after we had been merrily painting all morning, our tutor suddenly announced that we were to move towards the sink and pour water over our paintings! Although this caused a certain dismay the lesson we were being taught was to place greater value on what we might have learnt than the on painting itself. I challenge you to destroy a painting that you have just finished and then to paint it again, but better!

When painting a portrait it is a good idea to spend time taking note of the exact relationship between you and your sitter. Mark on the floor your chair positions and remember how you are seated, for example, whether seated sideways or full on the chair. Establish if you are looking up or down at the sitter, remembering that this can create all sorts of foreshortening problems. Sitting still for any length of time is tiring and wearing and the sitter will invariably seek a more comfortable pose by small increments. It is therefore very important that you take note of some key positions so that you can return the sitter to their original position. Most important of all is to take regular breaks otherwise you may start painting a pleasant expression and end up with an angry one!

We are all endowed with great capacity for imagination. Artists are simply better at exploiting their own and as they develop as artists become more attuned to it. As an ever-present necessity to seek out new inspiration and possibility, artists have often drawn on dreams as a rich spring of inspiration. Try getting into the habit, before you forget them, of recording as you wake, images and emotions in your dreams.

Artists have always needed to look beyond their own cultures to find inspiration and to advance their work. A striking example of this can be seen in the work of Pablo Picasso(Spanish artist 1881-1973) where African sculpture can be seen as a notable influence in many of his works.

Museums have always been the haunts of artists in this quest. From the artists perspective museums seem as if they were created for them alone with hundreds of objects displayed and waiting to be studied by the artist’s eye. Take your sketchbook and spend a day in a museum, making studies of every visual treat. After every study you make of an object, try to then make a drawing next to it inspired by it. Attempt to make drawings combining your observations from different periods, for example, try to draw a Victorian object with the stylised and poetic line that the Egyptians employed. Make studies of objects from many angles.

Try to establish a feel for the overall colour relationships of your painting before working up individual areas in isolation. Artists will loosely lay in the large areas of colour with washes and cover all white areas before moving the painting on in detail.

Always squeeze your tube colours from the base upwards and expel air by folding the used section of the tube back on to itself. This not only helps to minimise wastage but prevents rupture of the tube casing.

Instead of bringing them out only when you intend to work on them, keep your unfinished paintings and drawings on view around you - only then can the suggestion of an unexpected solution surprise you!

By closing one eye when drawing or painting a subject up close can help you to see and draw more accurately as the bifocal viewpoint is eliminated. Hold an object close to your face. Now slowly move it away from your face alternating the opening and closing of both your left and right eyes. Notice how the relationship between it and surrounding objects shifts radically and you will appreciate the impact this can have on the accuracy of drawing up close.

Pastels contain pigment and pigment is expensive. It is easy when using pastels not to get the most out of their use. Instead of wasting all the little ends of pastel sticks and the fragments of a stick that has fallen and broken into tiny bits, collect them together and work them into another stick by adding some drops of alcohol.

With ten of them at hand, fingers remain possibly the most readily available tool to blend pastels! Of course to keep their vibrancy pastels like all pigment need to be saved from contamination by other colours, so keep a damp cloth at hand to wipe you fingers clean between blends. You could use a Tortillon, paper rolled tightly to create a point and both toilet paper and paper hanky tissue. Remember to keep contrast of soft and hard edge alive in your paintings if you want them to sing and to create depth. An over use of blending can produce a dull and unpleasant result.

Artists need to develop their visual memories so that they can re-create fleeting visual moments at a later time. It is also a way of building a visual memory bank, one which becomes your own permanent visual source which you can draw on at any time. Noting similarities and creating connections between things and moments we observe is the foundation of all good art.

Exercise One.

Make a drawing of an object and then immediately afterwards attempt to draw it from memory. Then draw again from memory after an hour.

Exercise Two.

The next time you walk to your local shop or at any appropriate moment you can find make a mental note of colour relationships you see around you. Think them through and visually mix them with the colours you are familiar with from your palette.

Both these exercises not only encourage articulate visual memory but also better selective memory as you are forced to remember only the bare essentials.

“It is all very well to copy what you see, but it is much better to draw only what you still see in your memory” Edgar Degas (French artist 1834-1917)

If you do not have time to clean your brushes after a painting session, try submerging them under water in a jar. This way they will be kept moist until you find time to clean them thoroughly.

An alternative to fixing a drawing from the front is to fix from behind. Hair spray makes an adequate solution when you have run out of fixative. You can also literally hang your drawings out to dry. Try pegging them to your washing line with an edge of cardboard either side along the top edge to stop the peg leaving a mark on the paper.

Copying the drawings of the old masters is a great way to learn how they used studies to understand their subjects better and how through a great variety in line quality they created drawings that were alive with beauty.

Not only should you use your sketchbook for drawings but fill it up with notes and observations about your own work and the work of other artists. If you are unable to record with colour some interesting colour harmony you observe, write out your observation and describe how you would mix the colours you see.

The stress free time art students spend at art school is invaluable in allowing the budding artist to develop more specialist interests - ones which hopefully will become the basis of a successful career on graduating. A great way to better your understanding of your interests even if you don’t go to art school, is to sit down with a pile of art books and make notes about everything that you like and everything that you don’t. Try to observe patterns in your likes and hates group. Build connections between your likes. Look at paintings and consider how you might build on them, or improve on them, or how badly you feel they have resolved a visual question.

When beginning a drawing or painting the invested expectation of its success or failure can cause us to be less relaxed. One exercise that I believe is effective at encouraging us to be bolder and attack the works execution with more intuition and confidence is to do some warm up exercises with either a brush or charcoal that is larger than fits the purpose.

Complementary colors sit opposite one another in the traditional colour circle, i.e. Red-Green, Yellow-Violet, and Blue-Orange. They are colours of maximum contrast and when placed next to one another will create a powerful visual colour effect. Illustrators sometimes produce work that is executed with just blue and orange. This combination is ideally suited to creating an illusion of depth as the blue will recede and the orange advance in space. A study of master portraits from the 18 century onwards will reveal how the cool of blue or green-blue is used to suggest the planes of the form that turn away from the viewer in space and produce a pearl like luminosity that so accurately mimics the appearance of skin.

Getting a feel for when a drawing is complete and at which point to put it down and finish takes time. An overworked drawing is a dead drawing, one that does not communicate. There will always be an innate insecurity when drawing that can compel us to continue to work past the point at which you should have stopped drawing. Try to heed the appeals to stop that you may hear!

Pastel scumbling is a pastel method of mixing colours optically. First lay down a colour and fix it with fixative. Now lightly scumble another colour over the top allowing the under colour to show through. To exploit his technique to its maximum a clever use of cool and warm colours and colours of contrasting light and dark tones should be used.

It is preferable to rub out an unsuccessful drawing that reaching for a new sheet of paper. Not only will this save you money in the long run but the interplay between the residue of the under drawing and the new drawing can help to spark the imagination and lead to unexpected results.

If a stretched canvas has lost its drum like tautness, you can remedy this to a point by spraying the reverse side with water.

Where you want a colour to sing, place its complementary nearby. Where you want to enhance the warmth of a colour, place a cool colour nearby. If you want a dark area to appear darker place a light nearby and where you wish movement to stand out, surround it by stillness. This teaches us to see relationships, to see how everything is linked, how nothing exists in isolation. Understanding this can often help us rescue a seemingly failed work. Rembrandt was known to paint the highlights in his paintings only at the last moment, I imagine for him a moment of great joy, when that final contrast brought everything together and made the painting sing!

We are all guilty of the smugness trap of over confidence in face of the task ahead, of thinking we know how things look, how to represent them, how to achieve effects, etc. The only end result for this thinking process is art that is over stylised and designed and lacking in originality and the depth. A useful trick to help one avoid this is to try different mediums and different combinations of mediums every time you start a new work. You can try this easily by going out to do five drawings. Do one with charcoal, one with watercolour, one with a pencil, one by finger painting and one with pastels. That will keep you on your toes!

Having more than one work in progress at any one time encourages development and the inspiration for new paintings. It is a good idea to try to see each painting as a stepping-stone on the way to an unknown and yet beautiful destination. During the execution of any painting allow yourself to see other yet un-started paintings in it, let each influence the next. Try to see a body of work as a living being with ideas spilling over and intertwining between each individual work.

Experienced artists will always establish a feel for the overall proportions of whatever they are drawing before looking at the details. For example, when drawing a portrait, establish the structure of the skull and how this connects to the neck and shoulders before looking at the features. The large proportions that describe an individual are equal in importance to capturing a likeness as the description of the features themselves. This way you will avoid the need for costly later adjustments.

The squinting tip is similar to the clenched fist trick but used to better understand the large tonal and colour relationships of the entire subject rather than individual parts. Look at your subject with half closed eyes in a semi-squint.

You can stop your pan colours from drying out and cracking with the addition of some gum Arabic or honey.

Always use fixative outside and not in an enclosed non-ventilated area. Fixative not only is noxious, but as the aerosol expels the fixative it is blowing across your painting and pastel particles can be blown away too. Spray from left to right evenly and don’t repeat over an area. Spray directly in front of the painting so as to avoid blowing away particles.

As an experiment instead of composing a subject just to your taste why not set about painting or drawing the first randomly organised grouping you see around you. This might be the jacket you threw on the bed as you arrived home that sits on the book you were reading before going to bed the night before that’s next to your dozing pet cat! This is a good exercise in dictating to your subject rather than letting it dictate to you. You will be forced to seek out more unusual ways to paint it if you are to be successful in making it interesting!

The mixing of pigments is a subtractive process in which the colours become less pure the more they are mixed, i.e. tending towards black, which is the opposite of what occurs when light is mixed. It is important therefore to avoid contamination when you mix colours together. With the exception of “coloured greys” it is best to remove a muddied area of colour and start again instead of adding more colour in search of a solution.

Everything we see is conditioned by light and it's character and mood is in constant flux. It is important therefore to always consider the light conditions whilst you work as a subject may be brought to life by a timely change in light mood. Photographers are well known for waiting patiently, perhaps for hours, for the right lighting before taking a photograph. Turner (1775-1851. English Romantic landscape and marine artist) was famous for his discipline with respect to this and would sketch with watercolours in the morning, after lunch, in the afternoon and early evening. It was his depth of understanding of how the mood of light changes during the course of a day that makes his paintings so timeless and profoundly interesting.

When taking photographs of fast moving scenes, try not to close one eye when looking at the scene in front of you when you're looking at the scene through the cameras viewfinder. If you keep both eyes open, you can often anticipate and plan for movement and changes to the composition in front of you before they happen, by taking account of what's happening outside of the viewfinder frame. Remember, when working fast, the best images are often the ones you didn't anticipate. Act on instinct and embrace the accident!

Experiment is the key to all artistic advancement and skill. The Great Masters often painted over a Grisaille under painting. (A tonal under painting worked up to varying degrees of finish). This was in keeping with their more disciplined approach to the art of painting. It is however worth experimenting with all manner of techniques. Why not try a tonal under painting and then work over that with your pastels allowing areas of the under painting to show through. The subsequent interplay of texture and contrast of medium can be inspiring and result in very satisfactory results. Remember though that unlike watercolour where you work from light to dark, in pastel painting you are working from dark to light so the under painting would have to be dark in tone.

Lay out on a sheet of paper about fifteen matchsticks in a random distribution. Now try to see shapes in the arrangement by drawing the ends and lengths of the matchsticks to other points and lengths. This teaches you to observe how points relate to one another and also the proportions of the larger shapes that are formed.

When making a drawing study of any subject the artist is in a constantly questioning state, needing to verify verticals and horizontals. The simplest method artist’s employ is to hold their pencil in a vertical or horizontal orientation at arms length. They are then able to determine all relationships in their subject to it. A more accurate method of determining a vertical can be obtained with the use of a plumb line, made by attaching a small weight to the end of a piece of string and holding that up at arms length.

When instructing a pupil who was hesitant to start a painting Rembrandt, (Dutch painter, 1606 –1669) would say "Pick up your brush and begin" At art school a tutor of mine repeated with abundant frequency "When the going gets tough the tough get going". Although budding art students will always encounter moments of difficulty and despair one should try to believe in and enjoy the process rather than to set oneself impossible targets.

Humans express themselves in order to reveal themselves, which can result in great feelings of personal satisfaction but can equally be a frightening and unnerving experience and one that can subdue us in face this enormity. Art schools are the perfect environment in which the art student can learn from balanced criticism and protect them from the dangers of withdrawal from the experiment. Basically keep them on their toes!! Artists are always testing the ground between danger of the unknown and the comfort and security of what they know. It is important that you seek out criticism and take it on board. Become your own critic too. Why not test yourself by pulling your favourite painting or drawing apart. Be as honest as you can, then try to work out ways in which you can improve on weakness and use strengths to your advantage.

The truth is that we as humans are only limited by our capacity to see possibility and that if only we could become better at revealing possibility in the world we live in, then the more possibility there will be. Anything can spark your imagination, pebbles along the shore with their infinitely beautiful patterns, shells with their ornate finishes, driftwood with its rugged charm, even a blade of grass with its poetic simplicity. Context can also create new sensations and visual metaphors. Try picking up some random objects and look for unusual arrangements. One is reminded of a simple sculpture by Pablo Picasso, (Spanish artist 1881-1973) in which he took a bicycle seat and upturned bicycle handle bars to create a wonderfully simple and powerful sculpture of a bull's head.

Bockingford paper is a highly versatile paper and one ideally suited for the beginner. There is no real need to stretch paper. Watercolour paper will expand when wet and all you really need do is with masking tape on each corner attach it to your board. When it expands simply pull it tighter at each corner. After you finish the painting you can also spray the reverse side of the watercolour paper with water and then weighted down place between a sandwich of clean dry paper.

Pastels can get very dirty after only short use. To clean them put them in a bag together with ground rice, give it a shake and strain through a sieve.

Illustrators must develop strong figure drawing skills as the central feature of their work is almost always a child or animal or monster! There are no short cuts to becoming proficient at expressing human emotions in the posture and animation of the figure. Good figure drawing is based on hours of life drawing. The best thing to do is to enrol in a local life drawing class. Drawing in isolation can be detrimental to ones progress and the benefit of seeing the work of others who are attempting the same subject can be very rewarding. Life drawing is often associated with the drawing of the naked human form but the illustrator must also learn to draw the clothed form with its numerous lessons in how clothes flow and hang and are shaped by the form within.

As you develop as artists you become more sensitive to imbalance in your paintings and drawing. Looking at your work in a mirror makes the spotting of weaknesses in proportion and balance evident. It is only a well proportioned and balanced compositions that will look satisfactory when viewed reversed in a mirror. Try also to position the mirror in such a way that both the subject and the mirror, and also the subject and the painting/drawing can be viewed simultaneously. If you get into the habit of checking all your preliminary drawings prior to working them up into finished paintings you can avoid tricky alterations later on.

A painting is often defined as an abstract painting if it has no recognisable objects within it. This seems to me, as a contemporary abstract painter, a rather blunt definition of abstract art. I believe that it would be more valuable in attempting to understand abstract art to demonstrate how artists are taught to see and observe the real world, and how it was through the study of representational objects and their depiction that artists were drawn to seeking solutions to more fundamental questions, regarding the nature of sight and reality, and how this resulted in what we term today as abstract art.

Firstly, it should be pointed out that abstract art is not a rebellion against the tradition of painting representational objects, but an outcome of a particular field of investigation - a historic building process. Abstract art is different from pattern. Pattern is simply the repetition of an element.

Historically, a large part of artistic endeavour has been taken up with solving questions of visual interpretation of the real world. It was only after artists had sufficiently understood how to represent the real world, that artists started to question what the real world was anyway.... Take for example a pencil outline of a simple object such as a mug, pretty straight forward really, but is it? When one starts to question the representation of a mug with a series of lines, all one's preconceptions come tumbling down. Firstly, we would represent the body of the mug by two parallel vertically placed lines. One look at a mugs form, however, and one soon realises that there are no edges to represent by a line, instead only a continuous curved surface. The lines we use to represent the body of the mug, are in fact the points on the mugs curved surface at which the curved surface moves away from our view in space, just like the horizon line that we see when looking at a view of a landscape is the point at which the curved body of the earth turns away from our view. Artists use lines in this way to create an illusion of form in two dimensional representation and are called contour lines.

Now let's look at that mug again. If we forget that it is a mug for a moment, what form would best describe its nature? I would suggest a cylinder would. Now we only have to look around, to realise that a cylinder could be used to represent many objects. The legs of a table, for example, a kettle, a bottle, a vase etc. To cut a long story short, artists soon realised that the world could be broken down into a few simple forms, the cube, the cone, the sphere and the cylinder. Having understood this, mugs were no longer mugs and bottles no longer bottles, but abstract forms to be studied, observed, and experimented with. This is fundamentally how abstract art came about.

Artists were now free to investigate in this new art form called abstract art, a new world of atmospheres and feelings and particular lines of enquiry. They could investigate, for example, how shapes overlap one another, experiment with their juxtaposition, play with colors, they could invent new worlds that didn't exist, try to capture tension, create imbalance, suggest anger, etc. Quite simply, a revolution took place.

The power of abstract art is in the way it can open channels to our inner core, our emotions, unlike any representational art can. Abstract art can achieve this as we are stripped of the need to digest and assimilate the representations of real objects, and free as an observer to feel and be taken by the artists away from the expectation of our preconceptions.

Wassily Kandinsky (Russia 1866-1944) was the first artist to break with the past and paint purely abstract paintings. The debate and experiment that lead to the art movement called abstract art, had however, begun earlier and it is possible to trace its roots back to Cezanne (France 1839-1906).

There will always be good and bad abstract art, but good abstract art will be born of a process, the process of investigation and be judged by how well the artist poses questions and presents solutions in his/her paintings. Imagine a room full of furniture cut up into unrecognisable pieces and reassembled into a new world, a world of hope, vision and mystery.

There is nothing more disheartening than working in a void of creative input. The most solid lesson artists learn is to search out work by other artists, and to be influenced by them. You must first absorb before you can create. This useful lesson can be applied each time you create a new work. Go to the library and browse through relevant artists work, take notes, make sketches, jot down references, and then you can go home full of ideas that hopefully will mix in your mind in your own creative way and enrich your next work.

Composition in the visual arts can be defined as the arrangement of shapes and forms within the picture space such that they form an interesting and harmonious whole. Composition can also be used as one more tool in the artist's armoury when seeking to provoke or unsettle the viewer or simply to entice an unexpected emotional response. As an exercise, cut out shapes in different coloured papers and then experiment with their arrangement by attempting to suggest different emotions, for example, balance, joy, anger, fear, imbalance, etc.

When painting with pastels it is a good idea to paint with the drawing board in an upright position or work on an easel. That way the pastel dust will fall away and you avoid its accumulation on the paper. Your painting will not be distorted and hidden behind a layer of pastel particles.

Try not to use a rubber to remove pastel from your painting as this can damage the tooth of the paper and you will find that area will subsequently not hold the pigment so well. You could try using a Hog hair bristle brush and then gently tap from behind the paper away the loose powder.

Traditionally artists organised their palette in a methodical and organised fashion, often starting a painting with a restricted palette and then further into its development including additional colours. Whether this method suits you or not, it is worth considering and at least experimenting with. It can not only encourage a greater understanding of the use and possibilities of colour mixing but also help one to manage the colour harmony of the finished work.

Make several drawings of a subject without lifting the pencil from off the paper. Work quickly and without regard to the accuracy of your drawing nor its final appearance. This drawing exercise is to teach you to take a general view of the relationship between forms and composition, so work freely. Look at shapes over and over again and try to be as alert as you can to new relationships as they reveal themselves to you. This may be, for example, you start to see that the shadow of one object mimics that of another, or how the depth of tone of one particular edge can be picked up somewhere else. Work continuously for 10 minutes.

Drawing is one of the most satisfying activities that you can do. It is so simple and yet can feel so complex at the same time. One way to improve your drawing skills is simply by keeping a sketchbook with you and getting into the practice of regular drawing. Observing and sketching simple every day objects or scenes is often the key to a greater expression. Regular drawing practice is an easy way to find your true expression and improve your drawing technique.

Falling into patterns of behaviour is a common human trait. The art of experiment is the art of breaking the patterns that the lazy mind subjects us to. I remember living in a shared house where another tenant would on returning home at any hour of the day or night, fill the kettle with water and then retire to his room. Breaking these habits which invariable will creep into one’s artistic life is a challenge and one that one has to confront if one is to develop as an artist. As an exercise try scribbling with a pencil or charcoal on a sheet of paper. Naturally the inclination is to fall into repetitions of motion, for example, circular or angular patterns. Instead, try to vary the scribble as much as you can and not to repeat the same motion twice.