Brief Introduction to the Fine Art Techniques

..and a checklist for you if you are painting already

These techniques are your painting tools.  Without tools you cannot paint to your potential.  As mentioned elsewhere on this site, advanced techniques are so rarely taught.  Poor technique is guaranteed to give you frustration and threatens to stop you painting altogether.  If you are struggling on you will be well aware of this, and the wastage of time and money.  Thankfully, you've found us and we can assist you.  

Learning advanced technique is easy, and practising them with your painting is exhilarating and rewarding.   You can make a dramatic change to your painting immediately, and yet you'll still be excited about what you can paint in two decades' time, because learning advanced technique opens us up to our higher imagination as well, bit by bit, with each painting we accomplish. The more we do, the more we see or envision, so we do more.. and envision more!  Each step of the way the techniques have enabled us to do and see.

Please note:  The explanations on this site are introductory only.  We have taken many months and into years to produce highly detailed comprehensive DVD packages for which teach you the techniques.  Use this site as an interim preparation and a checklist only.

For immediate reference, the twelve Fine Art Techniques are as follows:

As you can see, there are different types of techniques - empowering and refining - which we'll explain in a moment.

Technique Combination 

Please note: One thing we should make clear is that these techniques can be combined any way you want.  It's the combination of them which helps define your style. You may not like to use one or another of these techniques.  You may construct a painting entirely with glazes, for instance, or with the impasto (using thick paint) techniques.  At least by knowing them, you know you can use a particular technique at any time should you wish to.

Thick & Thin Paint

The physical qualities of oil paint are crucial to understanding advanced technique.  Paint can be applied thinly or thickly.  The difference is profound.  Paint is thinned by the use of medium.   We teach you how to make medium in the Fine Art Techniques DVD Triple Pack, which will save you money, as you will use a lot of it in your painting.  Paint can also be applied anywhere in between thick and thin, by the use of medium.

Types of Techniques

Day One

As the name implies, Day One Techniques are used on the first day of painting, when paint goes directly onto the canvas. We set this day apart because it helps us understand how to create with power.  Understanding Day One Techniques helps us to assert our creative energy onto a canvas and lift it into a realm where we can enjoy the full flight of painting and creating, going on to mould the image and finally, when it's done, all that powerful energy is held there for centuries.  Viewers are affected by this energy.  Buyers, particularly, are atuned to it. 

Empowering

These techniques empower the canvas with your creative energy.  They're strong, bold, assertive techniques.  Empowering techniques are used on Day One,  but can be used at any time throughout the painting process.  These techniques can change the direction or color or mood - and anything else - of a painting.

Refining

Refining techniques refine the paint that is already there.  Empowering techniques often leave a raw effect to the eye, so we use refining techniques to adjust the paint and make it appear more the way we want.   These techniques don't really add to the creative energy that's there, but they make that energy and appearance easier for viewers to take in.

As you can see, some techniques can perform either the Empowering or Refining function - this usually depends on the amount of paint or medium used.  

Transparent & Opaque Paint

This relates again to the physical qualities of oil paint.  We are blessed today by having a fabulous array of oil paint to choose from - though you don't need very much at all to create amazing paintings.  What you do need to understand and enjoy is the difference between transparent and opaque paint.  For paint manufacturers this usually also means a change in the color, so we talk about transparent and opaque colors.   You can see through transparent colors, but not opaque colors. 

Transparency can be obtained in varying degrees by the use of medium - even with opaque colors.  We use this varying transparent qualites to create amazing effects.  Briefly, the way this advances your painting is through a process whereby the light which lands upon your painting actually enters the paint surface, through the different layers, finally reflecting off a foundation you've created, and as it bounces back out it picks up all the different colors and effects that you made.  This sounds awesome and it is - but it's not hard to do.  By learning the techniques correctly this will happen naturally with your work.  The result is a painting which looks as though it is lit from within. It is extremely vibrant and alive, and of course you can use this effect to create not only amazing detail, but also the capturing light itself - that's top shelf art creation.

Number Two Medium

Rembrandt used something very similar to this in his day.   It's your stable, ever-present medium for use with Fine Art Techniques.  Basically, this alters the physical qualities of your oil paint.   The changes you make to the paint enable you to apply the paint differently, and the altered paint throws up very different effects.  You'll come to love your Number Two Medium.

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Techniques Help 1