ALL | BEGINNER | INTERMEDIATE | ADVANCED | SPORTS | PEOPLE | UNDER 1 HOUR | OVER 1 HOUR | DARK COLOURS | LIGHTER COLOURS
Welcome to this weeks tutorial, we’re painting this stunning “Old Ford”. I took this photo quite a while ago now but always loved how the light shines off the various angles and shapes the car gives us, It also gives a lovely stark contrast compared to the softer foliage, This is the painting to really practice your highlights using the white paper to create lighter areas, and even though I don’t do it much n the tutorial, you’ll probably want to lift a fair amount especially if you don’t think if yourself as an expert. Enjoy…
He’s still waiting in that queue even after all this time! We painted this chap last year as part of a larger painting, this time we’re zooming in on a single subject and we will keep it to just two layers using all six colours from the start. This is a great one to use our techniques in a different way and is really fun to do at just under an hour. That means you really can try this one several times and see your improvements with each version. Enjoy…
This week is an advanced piece for our members. Creating dark indoor tones with vibrant lights reflecting off our hero of the piece, the saxophonist. There’s lots of wet into wet here to create that lovely background and some great lifting off at the end to create those bright highlights. Enjoy…
This week is an antidote to some of the more complex paintings we’ve been doing. A single wash and a little tweaking to create this wonderful little piece called “Just Chilling”. A single figure for simplicity with a variety of textures in our background to create some interest. Get your shadows right and your colours bright and you won’t go far wrong here, enjoy…
This week we go a little more in depth into one of our intermediate pieces “Getting ready to fish”. This brings us some great use of our colours to create dark rocks. We don’t want muddy brown so we mix them on the paper to keep the colour really vibrant. This one is just over an hour and thirty minutes so we split it into reasonable sections, doing our first wash, main wash on the person and finally the background plus a little tweaking. I really hope you enjoy this one…
This week is a lovely still life composition of my own. Its called ‘Potting shed’ and is a great piece to practice wet onto dry. We use just two washes here, one for the background and then a second more intense wash using more pigment to bring out our plant as the hero of the piece. You can do this several times as it’s only just an hour and see how you improve each time. Enjoy…
Wow, this week we have a fabulous project of painting a dog perched at the front of a boat! He is clearly the ‘king’ of the piece but there’s also smooth reflective surfaces, animal fur, and floral elements to create in our background. This is a challenge for all of our members so give it a go and I look forward to seeing your work in our gallery. Enjoy…
What a great way to end the summer, a beautiful photo, one of my own featuring this really interesting “rusty old bike”. This is about letting the negative space do the work, don’t get hung up on every spoke, create a feel of spokes with loose brushstrokes and let the paper shine through to create your highlights and emphasise the shapes you’re creating, This is great for all levels and can’t wait to see some in our gallery. Enjoy…
This week we are painting a simple single figure in a great pose from Tenerife. It’s called “Hey, what’s up?” A great pose from our main subject gives a really happy feel to this painting and allows us to use all of our techniques, preserve those whites, a light first wash and wet onto wet and wet onto dry to create a soft background. Enjoy…
This week we are painting something sentimental to my wife Pauline. This is just simply called ‘Daffs’ but the beautiful dove piece next to the daffodils was given to pauline on her 18th birthday. I've set this still life in a nice bright window upstairs to catch all of the glorious sunshine streaming across both elements, we’ve got soft flowers with some nice white porcelain and an intricate vase too, so its a tricky painting to get right but its a lovely still life to really get your teeth into. Enjoy…
As the second part of our double tutorial weekend we are really pleased to introduce “Rock Singer” This is a really different image to my usual choices and creates some fun challenges along the way. We use several washes here building layer on layer and this is a difficult piece to master, but try and try again and you’ll be really surprised with your results. Enjoy our 150th Tutorial.
This week its our double tutorial to catch up on the one we couldn’t launch whilst Phil was in Hospital. This is a nice single wash to create the wonderful ‘couple walking’ and we use all six colours in our first wet on dry wash and then use some lifting techniques once its dried to create a little additional highlight in several areas. Its a nice and short tutorial, at under an hour, so enjoy…
This week we are painting something that looks simple but gives us the perfect opportunity to really practice creating whites using our 6 usual colours. Our background colours are really important here as they create our soft focus background and make the pillow cases feel bright and sunny. We also use plenty of subtle colour in our white pillow cases to create shape and form. It’s a great painting to really hone your white techniques and it’s only 50 minutes so you can try a few times and see your improvement each time. Enjoy…
This week I’ve followed on from our very basic reflections but using just our three colours creating a more intermediate look at reflections of people. We have four great walking poses, to work at, all in differing positions, with added umbrella’s which creates yet another element, We’ve got it all going on here, pavement lines, strong reflections, details, umbrella shapes and we must not forgot those all important highlights. Don’t fill in all the space, you need those whites. Enjoy…
This weeks tutorial is another in my animal series, this time were painting “Seagulls on the shore”. This is a great way to really practice using bright colours and light in our background and foreground to enhance a fairly simple main subject matter. This painting really uses wet reflections well and shows how simple brushstrokes can enhance your paintings final outcome, you can try this one a few times and really enjoy improving each time. Enjoy
This week we’re painting a still life. It’s one of my favourite times of the day especially if the coffee is made in a lovely cafetière, and that’s what we have here, a bright white espresso cup for those lovely bright tones and our worn down silver cafetière for some loose reflections. Using simple shapes in the whole painting keeps detail to a minimum and you can focus on really staying loose. Enjoy…
After our advanced tutorial last time we’re doing a simple, single figure. This is what I start with on my in-person workshops. We have one focal point being the woman, and we can let our background run a little so we’re genuinely not too focused on background details. We do just one wash, and this is perfect for beginners and intermediate students alike. I really hope you enjoy this as it’s a great way to have some fun with your background and try to make your single figure the star of the painting. Enjoy…
Let’s get back to painting some figures, and this week we’ve got one of my favourite topics. Buskers make great subjects for “studies of light and shadow” because they are usually in the direct sunlight and so focused on their music there is an intensity and focus about what they’re doing, and that’s what we have to capture. This guy also has a great hat that masks the face but gives us great highlights and so we are going to do one wash only using the bright whites of the paper for our highlights, no first wash, no little adjustments, just one pass creates the entire painting. This is quite advanced so if you’re starting out, either slow the video down to half speed or watch 20 mins then go back and paint that section, take a break and repeat. Take your time here and really preserve those highlights. Enjoy…
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is our second painting in our cycling series and is faster paced and has a little more detail. We kept our Charleston cyclist very loose but here we’re spending some more time focusing on the bike detail, still loose, but a little more focused and precise. Plus our background matches more with our reference. We’re trying to improve our observations and retain detail from our reference photo this time whilst moving slightly faster to ‘keep it loose’. We’re not fine art painting just adding a little more precision here. Enjoy…
It’s highlights week, so we are painting “Two old friends”. This image was chosen specifically to give all of my fabulous members some real practice on your highlights, It’s a stunning, bright subject with tonnes of white sunlit areas, so be bold and go for the best highlights you’ve ever created. Remember it’s easier to add layers than take away layers so slow and steady wins the race here, watch a section, rewind and watch it again as you do it. You’ll love it the results if you PTW (preserve those whites) enjoy everyone…
This week we start a three part series on one of my favourite subjects, cycling. This week is our beginner piece where I take a little more time on a beautiful image from Charleston in 2017. But we won’t do the second instalment straight away, so next time will be something involving people and we will revisit cycling in a month or so. Here though we really focus on highlights and using colourful shadows to create depth in the image. Don’t get bogged down in every detail, keep it loose, especially in the background, less is more here. Enjoy…
Small boats. The title says it all. This week we’re not painting any people but this beautiful collection of small boats floating in the harbour. I love painting boats as they present a different challenge for us. We have stunning reflections, which are not just mirror images of the boats, so look for the subtle changes in tone and shape as the water around them moves, ripples and bounces our sunlight towards us. This is a great intermediate piece but everyone can give this a go. Enjoy…
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…
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…
I love this weeks painting, it’s a nice intermediate to advanced piece that’s quite long but produces a fabulous result. “Join the queue” is something very British, we will stand in queues for pretty much anything, but this is a typical scene you see on our streets and this one is from our great city of Oxford. We split this up into bitesize chunks to allow some time for coffees, but you could do it all in one sitting if you’re really brave and let your brush stay loose and expressive. I really hope you enjoy this one it was a fun one to paint…
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…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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...
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…
Get comfortable. Todays painting is one of the hardest projects yet. It’s a busy scene with lots of small marks to help form the shapes of the people in the distance, but you must preserve those whites between, this will help to keep those lovely highlights in between as the sunlight bounces down. This one is a world famous market in London called “Portobello Road” enjoy…
The streets of San Francisco are famous for there undulating nature and we have a challenge here for our students, the perspective changes due to the nature of the hill but you’ll see as we paint along that it’s still using our normal techniques to create this effect. This is a really fabulous painting to display if you can master it, an interesting location, a great bustling scene and some vibrant colours, what more could you ask for…
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…
This week were using just one wash, no going back over areas, just one single wash to create this nice quick piece called “Been Shopping”.
Keep your brights bright and your background nice and wet to keep the colour flowing. Your foreground should be subtle and in the light here so don’t overdo it. Enjoy everyone…
This is a little different today, we’re using 8 colours not three or six ! So if you’ve been here a while you’ll know I use Winsor Violet and Winsor Green when I’m in the mood, lol, just to add some extra tones into paintings and that’s exactly what we're doing today. "A hot day at Long Beach" deserved to add those extra colours to give our greens and purple shades a little boost. You’ll have lots of fun here…
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 ;-)…
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.
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…
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 …
This week were painting this stunning little side street in Venice. This is an intermediate level tutorial with our highlights falling onto the balconies of the background building so its all about creating the correct angle of sunlight, so stay focused on what im doing, our foreground is in shadow so were using some nice blues to give that darker feel but most of all this is something a little fun and different to try. Enjoy…
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…
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…
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…