LVS Associates Online Registration

How To Paint
[255]

$30.00USD

$6 off 2 or more Acrylic Painting classes with coupon code PAINTING

Course Description

This class is for everyone who has trouble with painting certain things. Ever say, "I wonder how you paint this or that?" Well this class is all about learning how to paint individual things so you will be able to incorporate them into finished paintings. These are "studies" and not meant to be full sized finished paintings.

Anyone who has gotten discouraged and ruined a big painting because they couldn't figure out how to paint one particular thing, this class is for you as it teaches you many different techniques on some of the things that people have the most problems with.

I can't emphasize enough that you must really learn to "see" how things are put together. How colors and patterns blend in with other colors so they look like they are all one. Being a good artist means looking at things in a different way. It means that you no longer see an object as a whole but are capable of seeing all the subtle things that go into making that object a whole and actually that's a beautiful thing to do. You will find nature opening up right before your eyes as you see flowers and trees, bees and everything else with all their myriad parts instead of just taking for granted that they are what they are. If you can't see it, you can't paint it, so practice, practice, practice looking at everything with the mind set of seeing what makes it what it is and how's it put together.

Although this course is geared toward traditional paint on canvas lessons, digital artists are welcome. Some of our students have created beautiful digital paintings from the lessons. Digital students MUST know their program, as no help other than painting technique can be given.

Come join us on a painting journey! This class is a lot of fun and is geared for beginners and artists alike.

Online art supply:
The following are places that I deal with and have had very good results. The prices are good, service is great and shipping is fast. These are by no means the ONLY online art supply stores and neither I or LVS can guarantee any transactions with these companies.

Blick Art Materials Large selection of art supplies.

This is a 6 week, self-paced, online course. If you need additional help understanding the material presented, you can communicate with the instructor and fellow classmates. The instructor will monitor and track your progress throughout the class. LVS Online offers many wonderful learning tools to help you get the most out of your online course, including an online portfolio service that manages all your course registrations, certificate of completion option, a class discussion board to interact with your instructor and fellow classmates, free hosting account, and a student upload area.

LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel products at a significant savings. Follow this link for details.

LVS students are eligible to receive software and hardware at a discount. Follow this link for details.

Students are also eligible take advantage of special offers made available specifically for LVS by famous software developers such as Andromeda, AV Bros, Extensis, Harry Heim, namesuppressed, Nik Multimedia, and Ulead. Details are provided in the classinfo link found in the confirmation of registration.

Show off your LVS Online spirit with an item from the LVS Store

If you would like to receive more information regarding this course, click on the "Contact Us" link in the Information section and we'll try to answer any of your questions within the day.

Course Requirements

Homework must be reviewed by the instructor in order to earn a certificate. Students have the option of using the Student Upload Area or free web hosting made available for LVS students. Details are provided in the classroom.

If you prefer to use your own web space, you must know how to upload your files to a server. Free tutorials are available:

Basic HTML page
WS_FTP
SmartFTP

Students should have working knowledge of their operating system and must understand directories and paths:

Free Windows Class Here
Directory Structure Tutorial Here

Zip files may be necessary to complete the exercises provided each week. WinZip, PKZip, Windows Compression or similar program is required to unzip these files.

Winzip Tutorial Here
Windows Compression

These tutorials will show you how to crop and resize images that you want to place on your homework pages:

Resize Images for the Web using Irfanview, a Freeware program

*Mac* Resize Images for the Web using Goldberg 2.3, a Freeware program

All lessons are available in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view/print the lessons.

Plan to devote 3 - 4 hours per week on the lesson and assignment.

Supplies: I am providing a list of supplies that you will need. You can probably get them from your local art supply store but I will give you online links to art supply sites that I have been happy with.

What to paint on? Since these are just practice studies, you might want to buy a canvas pad. I used a 12 x 16 and sectioned each piece into either 2 or 4 sections.

Brushes:
Large, at least 1"or better for backgrounds
Fan brushes
Rake or comb brushes
Liner and detail brushes
Assortment of flats or filberts
Small Palette knife
Foliage brush which is a stiff bristle brush that is round on the end. A stencil brush works well too. Other stiff bristle brushes will come in handy.
For acrylic work, you can use natural or synthetic bristles, but the natural bristles do not hold up as well with acrylic paint.

A cheap plastic palette is nice. You can just scrape off the dried paint but in a pinch just use some wax paper.
A spray mist bottle for clean water.
Now for paint. There is a big controversy that you must use the top quality, most expensive paint on the market. Well, that's nice but, just starting out you don't need to spend a lot of money. The cheapest paint I have found is not worth buying. It's hard to work with and the colors are not so bright and vivid. Personally, I like Folk Art (they also have artist's quality pigments), Americana, Ceramcoat. I will give you a list of the paint that I used to create these lessons. You do not need to use these exact colors. If you want to try to conserve and just want to buy one green and dilute it with white to make the medium and light colors, that's fine too, but here's what you'll need to complete these paintings.
- White
- White Gesso
- Black
- Red
- Light Gray
- Blues:
  Medium Blue
  Ultramarine Blue
- Greens:
  Dark green
  Medium green (Hooker's Green)
- Browns:
  Umber
  Burnt sienna
- Yellow:
  Dark Purple
  Cadmium Orange

Course Prerequisites

None

Course Syllabus

Lesson 1 - Backgrounds Blended sky Clouds Distant mountains Trees	Lesson 2 Rain Sleet Falling snow Mist
Lesson 3 Basic tree Up close tree bark	Lesson 4 Foliage Grass Meadows
Lesson 5 Create and shade realistic rocks Using the palette knife on mountains	Lesson 6 Transparent water Under water Water falls Large ocean waves

Course Excerpt

LESSON 1

Step 1: Underpaint background:

Colors on palette: blue, burnt sienna, red, purple.

We're going to make a dismal, neutral sky that would fit with bad weather. This might be a little too pink, you can gray it down if you want.

You might want to read steps 1-4 before you start because they have to be done quickly before anything dries, one after the other; so have everything ready and an idea what you're going to be doing before you start.

Firstly, mist the canvas slightly with a spray bottle.

Use a large brush and pick up gesso and paint it on the wet canvas at an angle with sideways strokes.

With the same large brush start picking up color and make the same sideways strokes across the canvas, picking up color as needed. Blend with light pressure but do not overblend where you can't see the sideways slant to the strokes; just make sure the colors run from one to the other without obvious color change.

Step 2: Mist

Stand back and LIGHTLY spray the canvas with water and lay the canvas flat for a few minutes. This will create a watery sky.

Continued...

Please note: Lessons provide step-by-step instructions with detailed screen captures.

Course Goals

By the time you finish with the class you should be able to apply the painting principles to anything you want to paint. Each lesson adds new elements and challenges.

Course Reviews

New Class March 2008

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