--- title: Painting Techniques description: Painting techniques encompass the methods of applying pigment to surfaces using various mediums like oil, acrylic, or watercolor. Learners will understand color mixing, brushwork, and layering to create texture, depth, and realistic or abstract forms. category: arts-design subcategory: painting difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/painting-techniques --- # Painting Techniques Painting techniques encompass the methods of applying pigment to surfaces using various mediums like oil, acrylic, or watercolor. Learners will understand color mixing, brushwork, and layering to create texture, depth, and realistic or abstract forms. ## Available Resources 3 Books • 1 Courses • 4 Websites ## Websites ### 1. Will Kemp Art School Structured free tutorials and paid courses from a professional artist and teacher, covering acrylics, oils and drawing: colour mixing, limited palettes, tonal underpainting and brushwork. Step-by-step demonstrations supply reference images so beginners can complete finished paintings. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://willkempartschool.com/ **Tags:** painting, acrylic-painting, oil-painting, color-mixing, tutorials ### 2. Draw Mix Paint Realist painter Mark Carder's free instructional site for oil painting, with videos and a forum. Teaches a systematic method of mixing and color-checking paint to match observed colors with a limited palette, so beginners can paint realistic still lifes and portraits. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.drawmixpaint.com/ **Tags:** oil-painting, color-mixing, realism, painting-techniques ### 3. gurneyjourney.blogspot.com Gurney Journey is James Gurney’s art blog offering tutorials, process breakdowns, and essays on painting, perspective, and composition. Visitors will find step-by-step demos, color notes, sketch studies, and behind-the-scenes insights into illustration and visual storytelling. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com **Tags:** websites, arts-design, visual-arts ### 4. wetcanvas.com WetCanvas is a long-standing online artist community focused on painting techniques. It offers forums, step-by-step tutorials and demonstrations, reference photos, and user galleries where painters share process, seek critiques, and discuss materials across watercolor, acrylic, oils, and other media. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://wetcanvas.com **Tags:** websites, arts-design, creative-arts ## Courses ### 1. Composition Library Master advanced composition techniques with Matt Kohr's Composition Library! Learn to create compelling art through proven visual principles. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.ctrlpaint.com/library/#composition **Tags:** composition, digital-painting, visual-design, value ## Podcasts ### 1. Art Ed Radio **Author:** The Art of Education A podcast from The Art of Education University on teaching visual art in K-12 schools. Listeners hear classroom strategies, curriculum and assessment ideas, and conversations with practicing art educators that they can apply when planning and running their own art lessons. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.theartofeducation.edu **Tags:** art-education, teaching-art, k-12, curriculum, classroom-practice ## Books ### 1. The Oil Painting Course You've Always Wanted **Author:** Kathleen Lochen Staiger Kathleen Lochen Staiger's structured sequence of guided oil painting lessons, built from her decades of classroom teaching. Readers work through brush control, modeling three-dimensional form, color mixing, and still-life, landscape and portrait exercises, finishing able to plan and complete a representational oil painting. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0823032590?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, arts-design, creative-arts ### 2. Watercolor Painting: A Comprehensive Approach **Author:** Tom Hoffmann Hoffmann breaks watercolor into four decisions — value, color, wetness, and composition — and works through paintings showing how each choice is made. You come away able to analyze a subject and plan a painting before touching paper. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0823006735?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, arts-design, visual-arts ### 3. Acrylic Painting Step-by-Step **Author:** Wendy Jelbert, Carole Massey, David Hyde A Search Press guide in which three painters cover acrylic materials, basic techniques and the effects they produce, then landscape composition, color choice and depth. Readers follow photographed step-by-step demonstrations of ten paintings and can reuse the techniques in their own acrylic work. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1844484114?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, arts-design, creative-arts --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/painting-techniques