An Art Lesson on How to Paint

Acrylic on Canvas

I've been giving art lessons to a lady who wants to learn how to paint "abstracts with feeling" in 3 or 4 lessons. A tall challenge for the amount of time. It's taken me 10 plus years to figure out I really love to paint the human body abstractly...and I'm still learning.

Her Experiment With Texture

The first couple of meetings we explored the elements of art like line, form, color, repetition, balance, movement, proportions, etc. For the third class (today) she decided she'd like to paint a female form instead of what she originally thought. We used a picture and the grid system to lay the proportions correctly on the canvas. She only had enough time to put the wash (a watery application of paint) on the canvas. This is such a hard but good lesson for beginning painters. I've found that beginners think the first brush marks are the last. Most people don't realize how much working and re-working goes into creating.

She has done a really awesome job...especially for her first painting. I'll post her progress after she gets done working next time.

Abstract painting and technical painting are worlds apart. I won't get off on this tangent now. It's a separate topic for a future post.