qualifications: have been painting for my whole young life, sell my paintings, etc etc. im assuming youâre working with acrylics but this could apply to oils as well. sorry for the incoming infodump!
lean to fat rule: this refers to the idea that you want to put down your âleanâ layers (thin, watered down paint) first, and increase the thickness of your paint as you go, using impasto last. âimpastoâ is the application of paint in thick strokes that dry as raised, 3D texture. you wouldnât want to put that first because you would struggle to correct mistakes or add details over it later.
paint in BIG sections. what i mean by this is you want to be working on the entire canvas all at once, not focusing on achieving perfection on one bit while the rest is undeveloped. theoretically you should have all your shapes and the basis of your values blocked in before adding much texture or detail. this helps you measure balance and harmony within the composition as you go.
another important part of this is to use as big of a brush as you practically can when painting large sections of color. i used to use one tiny brush to fill in huge areas of canvas. save your time and sanity by daring to go bigger
paint dark to light. this is a rule that you can break depending on what youâre trying to achieve, but basically this means identifying the absolute darkest parts of your reference picture or thumbnail sketch and blocking those in over your underpainting first. this is the framework that you build the whole painting off of. be careful because this is very important towards establishing proportions, and prevents you from overpowering lighter sections of the painting later.
donât use black straight from the tube if you can help it. pure black, when overused (especially by beginners who use it to starkly outline shapes or use it in huge swaths) can really suck the life out of a painting and make it look chalky and dry. instead, i recommend mixing a custom black one of two ways: purely from colors, (roughly 30% blue, 40% red, 40% green), or adding colors to a premade black (when i do this itâs usually 50% black, 30% blue, 20% red, depending on the undertone of your black paint)
color mixing: this can be tricky if youâre new to painting, pay attention to the undertones of your paints and be intentional about the temperature you want to achieve- if you want a warm green dont mix a cool blue and yellow, for example. it can be impossible to mix a vibrant purple with trad primary colors.
donât be too precious with your palette⌠if youâre working with acrylic that shit dries fast anyway so get messy. you can always squeeze more paint out to restore the purity of your color but a little mixing amongst your palette will make a more harmonious painting anyway.
impressionism is your friend. painting is a trick of the light. a couple well placed brushstrokes vaguely indicating a light source or something will get you farther than hyper detailing something into muddled oblivion
these are the most important for painting probably but the rest (composition, motor skills, proportions, color theoryâŚ) is learned from a general arts background which i assume you have since youâre in HL art, along with a lot of practice over the years that lets you get familiar with the behavior of the paint, your brushes, the surface, etc etc
not sure if you mean IB HL arts? but i absolutely loved that class and have never been prouder of myself than when i had my exhibition and finished the artist study. wishing you luck and happy painting!! try to enjoy the process!!
