Preview our most recent tutorials

Every two weeks there is a new tutorial for you to enjoy.

Fun, challenging and something you'll be proud to say is your painting.

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BEGINNER TUTORIALS:

Mar 10 2024

141. YELLOW IRIS – PREVIEW

Happy Mothers day to everyone in the UK! And what better way to spend your free afternoon than painting a little something just for you. This is a departure from our normal figures and we’ve gone for a yellow iris with lots of wet into wet to make our smooth soft edges in the background and a little more crisp and detailed work inside our main flower for focus, just make you background darker than your flower here, and this is a great way to relax for an hour and a half…

Feb 25 2024

140. GIRL WITH THE STRIPED TOP

This week we’re doing this fantastic painting of “Girl with the striped top”. This uses our normal process of a three colour first wash and using our 6 colours to add depth and tone to our main subject, then we add the dark top background which makes our highlights pop off the page and finally add a little texture to our foreground. You’ll really love this one and you can do it a few times to really master highlights. Enjoy…

Feb 11 2024

139. SUNSHINE MESSAGES

This week we’re doing a really quick single wash painting. It’s called ‘sunshine messages’ and is a photo of something we see everyday, a lady sat outside catching up on social life by phone! The challenge here is preserving whites correctly, look for your soft lines and crisp lines to keep those highlights as bright as you can, try it a few times and see if you can improve each time. It’s a nice easy piece to get us ready for some of my more complicated paintings coming up. Enjoy...

Jan 28 2024

138. DAD AND SON FISHING – PREVIEW

This week is a beautiful image of a father and son fishing from the steps in Tenerife. This is a great tutorial for all abilities and is broken down into easy sections. You can start with the usual light wash followed by focusing on our two fisherman, then the sea and the dark background steps make our two fishermen lift off the page and become the stars of the painting. You’ll all enjoy this one.

Jan 14 2024

137. ENJOYING HIS PINT – PREVIEW

Remember when we were ‘Back in the pub’ well this image is a close up from that very painting that were going to do in more detail. He’s looking quite sombre as he contemplates life over a good old British Pint. Lot’s of light to use here, in fact its the most important element, use it to accent where the brights hit his face and the table in front of him is important as it bounce light back onto him too. Use those deep tones to create a rich, wood effect, and don’t forget to let the soft furnishings feel nice and rounded. This is great for all levels.

Dec 30 2023

136. YELLOW BEETLE – PREVIEW

And now for something totally different… Yellow Beetle is a fabulous painting that everyone can complete. No figures here but plenty of detail to add as we create this beautiful image from Mexico. Lots of wet into wet with a little bit of wet into dry for our crisp details and we add a final layer of dark detail to really accentuate the colours and highlights here. This is a great tutorial for all abilities and a fun way to start your new year.

Dec 15 2023

135. SNOW SHADOWS – PREVIEW

It’s Christmas season and what better way to celebrate than painting our winter scene. This is ‘Snow Shadows’ and is a beautiful composition of my own using two photos to create this stunning snow painting. This year we aren’t using any masking fluids, we’re going old school and using the paper to create our highlights. Plenty of colour is still used in our surroundings to accent the whites, a great painting for all abilities. Merry Christmas everyone.

Oct 8 2023

130. TEXTING

This week we are painting ‘texting’. After our last few tutorials I thought it would be nice to do a simple beginners piece with just a single figure. This is the type of painting that I do at my in person workshops and is broken into a first wash and then three sections, the top background, the woman and then finally the foreground.  The result is this beautiful painting with lots of retained highlights and a bright colourful main subject. Give it a go a few times as it’s only 50 minutes. Enjoy...

Sep 10 2023

128. COUPLE’S SHADOW

This week were doing a great piece for our beginners and anyone wanting to practice their vibrant shadow work. This is a photo taken from an unusual perspective that casts shadows diagonally towards us so they’re important in our composition. We also use a ruler to create some very straight pavement (sidewalk) lines that go through our shadows but behind our subjects which finishes our painting using a new technique. You’ll enjoy this one and it is just over an hour so it is one you can do a few times.

Aug 26 2023

127. AFTERNOON BOWLS

Fancy a Great British tradition? Well today is your day, we’re going Bowling but this is Crown Green bowling and a photo taken mid afternoon to create a lovely, active photo for something that’s quite a calming activity. We have so many whites to preserve here but you have to keep some colours in here too to show our reflected greens and our blue top lady. This is a great painting if you’re at an intermediate level but is good for all to try, keep your lines sharp and your backgrounds soft. Enjoy…

Aug 12 2023

126. CASTING

After our advanced tutorial last time I thought we’d do something a little easy going this week, so I’ve chosen a subject I like to paint and is easy to repeat. ‘Casting’ is a great beginner/intermediate piece for our core skills, making sure our lights are preserved well and using a vibrant yellow to bring our main subject forward. The sky and foreground are great practice for blending colours to achieve some variation in the colours. Give this one a go a few times if you have some time. Enjoy…

Jul 1 2023

123. VENICE SCENE

This week it’s just one wash, yep you heard right, only one wash of all six colours directly onto a wet canvas to create this great Venice Gondola scene. We then use some lifting off to help enhance our highlights. This is one of our really simple paintings to really encourage our new members to give this painting a go several times to see your progress each time. You’ll really enjoy trying this and seeing your water and pigment controls improve as you go…

Jun 17 2023

122. THE LITTLE MAN – PREVIEW

This week we have something totally new, its two paintings in one. We do our first painting with a sea and sky background and then replace that background with a darker version based on our original photo. This is a great opportunity to see how just changing the background can transform your painting without touching our main subject at all. It’s a great exercise in knowing how to correct something using darker tones. This is fairly advanced but good for all levels to try if you can set aside a couple of hours to complete it. Enjoy…

Jun 4 2023

121. SAN FRANCISCO SAILING – PREVIEW

Something a little different this week! We’re painting a seascape, from San Francisco. It’s not the Golden Gate but we are further along the coast and painting the equally beautiful and often overlooked ‘Oakland Bay Bridge’. We have plenty of opportunity for expressive brushstrokes here in both our water, backgrounds and sky with some lovely details in the sails of our boat and the bridge itself, especially those cables, so take care on those. You’ll love this change of pace and it’s a great intermediate level piece for everyone to enjoy…

May 20 2023

120. READING IN THE PARK – PREVIEW

This is perfect for our new members and established members alike. We are using just three colours to show what amazing work can be done with a simple palette, we have a single figure with a lovely blurred background and we use Quinn Gold and Cobalt Blue to create our base greens, then focus on our figure with all three colours mixing them to create depth of tone. It’s also a great way to really hone your eye into looking for the colours and where to place them to create that bright white t-shirt. Be careful and use the white of the paper to its best effect. Enjoy…

May 7 2023

119. LITTLE BOAT AND REFLECTION – PREVIEW

This week we’ve chosen a beginner tutorial for our newer members, this is “The little boat and reflection” and it’s essentially a light wash and a main wash followed by a few tweaks to tighten up a couple of areas. This means we’re looking to create our highlights in our second wash using the paper itself and adding our “halo” effect to really highlight the outline of our boat. We can practice this piece again and again as its only 30 minutes start to finish, so do it several times and watch your own progress too. Enjoy…

Apr 8 2023

117. WALKING IN MEMPHIS

I’m currently in the USA on my workshop tour 2023 so I thought this week would be a great time to use a photo taken on one of my last visits. This is “Walking in Memphis” and is a perfect beginner piece for all of my students to try. This is a single figure, just like I start my three day workshops, it gives you a simple area to focus on for the details and keep your background nice and simple using wet into wet to create shapes rather than worrying about details. You can really focus on our figure and preserve those whites to make this painting really shine. Enjoy…

Mar 26 2023

116. THE GOLFER

It’s golfing season so what better time to do a lovely painting of this golfer, I can’t decide if he’s happy after a successful put or wandering the long walk thinking where did that go?  It’s a great beginner painting that can be repeated again and again to see improvements each time (we have a much bigger and complex golf scene that is a real challenge coming this summer).We’ve soft backgrounds with nice sharp and soft lines in our main figure.  Don’t get lost on the green 🙂 keep your focus on our main subject…

Mar 11 2023

115. SUNDERLAND POINT

This is a stunning scene of a once thriving small port that is now more or a tourist attraction for people in England. Many scenes of boats have been painted here as the regular low tide and stunning background buildings give us a great composition. So today watch those darks don’t go too dark in the background, keep it bright enough as its in sunlight, and dot and dash your foreground with some nice texture in it to show the pebbles and stones with the sands here. Keep your boat the focal point, that’s the star of the piece…

Feb 25 2023

114. LADY IN THE RED TOP

This week we’re going to paint “Lady in the red top”. This is an intermediate level piece but anyone can still give it a go. We start with our three colour wash to map out where we want to keep our brightest highlights. Then we use our six colours to paint our main subject using wet onto dry, add some deeper tones to the background this helps emphasise the lighter tones in our main subject and we finish off with our foreground adding some interesting texture. This is a great piece to really understand our painting process and how we structure our work to achieve a great painting.

Feb 12 2023

113. TWO ON A BENCH

Today we are painting a scene similar to ones we’ve done before, but were doing this one in a different way, rather than three washes were doing it wet onto dry in just one wash so I chose a subject we’ve done before and something we see everyday, this one is called “On the bench”. We will use all 6 colours with dry paper and only one pass over the entire image but splitting the background form the subject. This is nice and short so you can watch it several times and try it several times. Do submit each attempt and I’ll critique each one. That’s the way we improve folks…

Jan 28 2023

112. THE RED HAT

This is a fabulous image of a woman sat in the sunshine, (where we all want to be in January). What caught my eye was the shape and highlights in her hat so were calling this “The Red Hat”. Plenty of lights and shadows here and a nice textured foreground which blends to a calmer sea and sky, don’t merge you’re sea and sky colours too much you still want your horizon. This is nice an quick so you can do this several times and try to improve each one. Enjoy everyone…

Jan 15 2023

111. TWO GERANIUMS

This week it’s something a little different we’re painting something that could be anywhere in the world really, two geraniums outside an ornate window with the sun beaming across them beautifully casting shadows. There are no people or facial features to worry about here just use your brush to create shape, shadow and light areas. This is something a little different to our ‘people paintings’ as it’s always good fun to do something a little different and see how our brush strokes create the overall effect. Enjoy…

Dec 31 2022

110. THE ANGLERS

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE. Well nearly, it’s 31st December so I thought I’d get in there first. Todays painting is one of my favourite subjects, and I particularly like this one because they’re standing in the boat which is not an easy task in itself, there’s plenty of wet onto dry here with highlight retention being your primary objective, try to keep this one light and bright and most of all enjoy some downtime during this busy period with a little bit of painting…

Dec 17 2022

109. ROBIN IN THE HOLLY

Merry Christmas everyone, I thought a lovely themed Christmas painting of a little Robin amongst some festive holly in the snow would be perfect for this time of year.  This one is great for practicing maintaining highlights and we even use masking fluid here which I don’t normally like but here its perfect to protect the whites. Enjoy...

Dec 3 2022

108. QUAYSIDE FISHING

Who doesn’t love a man fishing? Our main subject is looking down wishfully into the water hoping for that little nibble on the fishing line whilst relaxing in a great pose for practising your skin tones. With bright sunshine and some deep colours in the quayside and on the man himself this is a great way to relax a little after our last few large and long paintings! Enjoy…

Oct 22 2022

105. WOMAN AND HER SHADOW

The week its a sequel ! We did man and his shadow a while back so thought it only fair to do woman and her shadow too. This is perfect practice for all important shadow work, we want a nice light background with a dark yet colour filled shadow here, don’t go with greys or blacks use the colours mixing to create interest in your shadow areas. This is one you can do a few times so practice practice practice…

Sep 10 2022

102. A MAN AND HIS DOG

This week we are painting a man and mans best friend. This is an intermediate tutorial but beginners should really give it a go too as it’s all the techniques we’ve used before. Happy painting and enjoy a nice simple one ready for something a little different next time ;-)…

Aug 27 2022

101. SEASIDE GIRLS

After our marathon painting last week this one will be a nice easy one. It’s a simple painting broken down into simple stages. The photo is of three women sat looking out to sea on a crisp spring morning, Just the thing to remind us this heat won’t last forever, there’s plenty to enjoy here and its under an hour so you can really practice and hone those skills multiple times. I hope you really enjoy this one.

Aug 13 2022

100. ANOTHER FINE MESS

It’s my favourite comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, this is my 100th Tutorial on Paintwithgraham and I’m so glad I kept this one for today. There’s lots in this one and the final result is fantastic, we’re using wet in wet, wet on dry, some nice interpretations of colour by taking a black and white photo and imagining the colours that would be present in real life. I hope you’ve enjoyed our last 100 and look forward to adding more and more to our collections. Happy painting…

Jul 30 2022

99. SUMMER COUPLE PREVIEW

It’s the height of summer here and we’ve just had our hottest days on record so today we’re painting a rather aptly named ‘summer couple’ with plenty of bright highlights to keep and great bright vibrant tones in the clothes here its an exercise in tone management. We have a bright pavement with an area in darker shadow to show our depth of field too, but keep that shadow bright and varied, you’ll love doing this one and its a nice quick one so you can enjoy the sunshine with a glass of something afterwards …

Jul 2 2022

97. THE SPECTATOR

It’s summer, so we wanted to give you something quite fast paced this week so you can go and enjoy the sunshine, or do another painting maybe? This one is great for your brush control and PTW, preserve those whites. Using only 3 colours and two washes this is only 40 minutes but gives you a great look into how the white of the paper creates the light of highlights. You can do this lots of times to really get it right and will help loosen up your brushwork. Enjoy…

Jun 17 2022

96. TWO DOGS SWIMMING

This week its something a little different, no people just lots of fun painting these two fantastic dogs cooling off from the summer heat. And today we are using just three colours. Thats right only our first three primary colours are used to create this great painting, plenty of retaining those whites here, some nice sharp highlights which in places we soften later, but this is a great way to practice your brush control. I hope you really enjoy this one…

Jun 2 2022

95. HOLIDAY FUN

This weekend is the Jubilee so we wanted a typical British scene to paint, being from Blackpool we decided a small boy with his bucket and spade couldn’t be more fitting. This is more of a challenge than it looks but what a great way to spend one of your extra Bank (National) Holiday days painting this beautiful image. Enjoy…

May 21 2022

94. LAZING IN THE PARK

Lazing in the park, a perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon… This is a great example for our intermediate students of capturing everyday life and turning it into a great piece of art. We’ve got some great highlights throughout the main subjects to maintain , a nice deep coloured background, and a bright and vibrant couple that just hop off the page with the lovely green grass drawing your eye towards them. Enjoy…

May 7 2022

93. FIGURE IN SUNLIGHT

This week its something a little different for our beginner and intermediate members, this is 'Figure in sunlight' and no hairdryer until the very end and were starting and not letting anything dry in between, its a great exercise in brush control and how much pigment vs water you put on your brush. Get painting...

Apr 9 2022

91.FISHING FROM THE SEA WALL

What better way to spend the weekend fishing, or painting fishing... This is a beginner intermediate piece for all to enjoy and its about brush control with some small marks and some lots sweeping strokes to create the dark foreground. You'll have lots of fun with this one...Its a really fun quick one to do but pay attention to getting your background cool and foreground warmish yellow, that sets him off beautifully, don’t forget those little pavement marks too enjoy...

Mar 26 2022

90. THE FLAT CAP MAN

This is an interesting painting because we have one simple main figure, but, we have some hard shadows (using dry brush onto dry paper) for his trousers and some nice soft shadows around the shirt area where we’re using wet onto wet and adding further pigment to it. Its a really fun quick one to do but pay attention to getting your background cool and foreground warmish yellow, that sets him off beautifully, don’t forget those little pavement marks too enjoy...

Feb 26 2022

88. BACKS ON THE BENCH

The perfect intermediate tutorial… We keep our colours really clean and vibrant here and using simple lines to create the bench you can see how Graham adds colours into wet paint to create the variations in tone and how he adjusts for light and dark areas. Not forgetting to add our our two people with their backs on the bench we also have a vibrant blue sky with some movement all created by loose simple brush actions during that wash. You’ll really enjoy this one…

Feb 12 2022

87. SKIPPOOL CREEK

Well, this one is slightly different to usual, we don’t have any people in this scene, but a lovely warm bright boat, sadly sat upon the sands. This is great for everyone to paint along with, nearly an hour long, it’s great for intermediate levels and its important to keep this one nice and loose.

Dec 5 2021

82. WALKING HIS DOGS

This is a quickie! It’s perfect for you to try several times. At just over 30 minutes it gives you a great opportunity to try and refine it each time you do it, it is also great as a beginners piece too. Happy painting.

Nov 6 2021

80. WHERE ARE WE?

This is a fun little project to try a few times to practice some of our core skills. It's a quirky photo of two ladies stuck in an unfamiliar city, looking at their maps, trying to figure out where they're going, and I think it's something that's just fun to do. Happy painting.

Oct 9 2021

78. PROMENADE COUPLE

This week were painting a subject we’ve painted before, but from a different photo and using just two main washes to try and create a vibrant painting you’ll be proud of. This is a great piece for all levels and at just over an hour long its one you can practice a few times.

Sep 25 2021

77. SUNNY GIRL

This is a great piece for all abilities. “Sunny girl” was taken near Kew Gardens in London a few years ago and is a great way to hone your watercolour skills, especially maintaining a lovely warm but bright highlight on our main subject as well as soft backgrounds that hint at the setting without doing every tiny detail. Enjoy…

Sep 11 2021

76. WALKING THE DOG

This is a fantastic beginner/intermediate piece. Its based on a photograph from San Francisco a few years back that I caught sort of by accident, its a woman walking her dog and i immediately loved the pose she was in. Rather than being pulled along by the dog she was in compete control and mid stride which gives quite a serene feel. I’d love to see a few of your own dogs instead of the drawing for our more experienced painters. That’s if you’re up to the challenge?

Aug 14 2021

74. TEXTING IN THE SUN

This is great for beginners and above. It’s a common scene we see today; “Texting in the sun”. She’s sat reading her phone, as we all do, so I thought it was just an interesting shot of everyday modern life. This one’s nice and quick at just over an hour so you can try it a few times to see how much you can improve each time.

Jul 31 2021

73. LATE SUNDAY AFTERNOON

This week we are undertaking a more advanced tutorial, this is ‘Late Sunday afternoon’ and is just over 2 hours so its not for the feint of heart. But the result is an incredible painting with sharp chromes in our ice bucket and lovely soft sunlight on our main subject. You’ll really enjoy this…

Jul 17 2021

72 TWO BOYS FISHING

Today we’re painting this charming scene of two boys fishing in the rock pools of Tenerife. It’s a lovely beginner tutorial for all levels to have go at and produces really fantastic results in just over an hour. I’m sure you’ll love this one…

May 22 2021

68. CYCLIST IN THE SUN

We've painted a version of this scene a long time ago but I think its worth revisiting, this time we have a great dark background, using all six colours blending together and a foreground with a lighter sandy tone for the pavement. Its one to do a few times and perfect for beginners.

Apr 24 2021

66. THE BEACH BOY

Todays tutorial Is “The Beach Boy” and has been requested by lots of my students that wanted a piece they can practice again and again to help master some of the techniques before moving on to more intermediate and advanced pieces. So give this a go, its a nice fast piece only 40 minutes and if you’re not happy with it you’ve enough time to give it a few goes. Enjoy…