Well, the answer is no. You can’t truly learn how to paint in 15 minutes, but in 15 minutes 5 days a week for 3 months, you can totally learn how to paint and improve your art.
If you only have 15 minutes a day to paint, then take the 15 minutes and make it the best 15 minutes ever. In 15 minutes study color theory, learn how to use a bristle or synthetic flat brush, learn how to paint a daisy, paint leaves, paint a tree trunk, just start. Set your goal and a timer and paint for 15 minutes. Clean your brush, if you used one and move on to whatever you must do next.
Come back tomorrow and spend another 15 minutes. Look and analyze what you did yesterday, read about one of the masters or impressionists, make an art plan for the next week. Shut off your timer and get onto whatever you must do next.
Tomorrow, get out the plan you made yesterday, set your timer and pick one thing on the plan and work on that for 15 minutes. If you don’t understand color then work on that. Decide what you don’t understand about it and learn what you can. If you don’t know the difference between a bristle brush and a synthetic brush, look that up. Learn about brushes. Play with your brushes and see what they can do and what they can’t do. Turn off your timer and come back tomorrow.
Do you see a pattern emerging here. Learning to paint takes time and it takes effort. There are lots of moving parts and you’ll want to explore them all. But you don’t want to be like a cannon going off, going every where at once. Devising a plan to learn the things you feel you most need to learn or that most interests you is a good place to start. By putting a plan in action you will save time and effort. You will be concentrating on one specific area and improving there. Then you move on to the next area. You’re building a library in your brain of art concepts and you’re building muscle memory between your head and your hand and your brush.
Does all this make sense. When I started painting over 20 years ago I wished I had had this piece of information and direction. It would have saved me a lot of time and frustration. I was like the cannon trying something different every day. No plan. No direction. No way to really learn from the ground up. I figured it out, sort of, but it took much longer than it had to. I did take a 3 day workshop and I learned so much in that time frame and I spent over $1000 in that time frame. But I came home with a beautiful painting and I knew I could do it. I got some direction. I knew what I needed to work on. I was bound and determined to work on that and finally get somewhere. I painted every day for several hours a day. Things began to turn around. I began to improve on trees, rocks, mountains, cabins, grass, water, etc. Clouds still eluded me as did flowers. But I knew I could get those things, eventually.
I have taught many beginning painters, hundreds of them and I am always amazed at how just a little bit of instruction improve their art immediately. Then over time they really begin to improve.
I want everyone who wants to learn to paint to realize they can and what the best way to do it is. My Beginner’s Painting Club has been created just for you to do exactly that. It has been created for you to progress in several different areas. Fundamentals of Art is one section where you can learn the basics of color theory, perspective, composition, highlights, shadows, and the list goes on. Next is Elements of Art. Remember when I was painting landscapes and I said I got better at several parts of painting a landscape. Elements of art is laid out for your success in that area. I have taken 4 types of paintings, landscapes, seascapes, florals and still lifes and broken down each painting into parts of it and you can learn how to paint a specific part of a painting. You can also go to the section of Paintings and take a class from beginning to end of a specific painting. Everything you need to get you started and moving forward in your art journey is right there in one place.
I hope you’re going to look over the Beginner’s Painting Club and sign up to take a live webinar where I will be teaching you how to paint a blue glass jar. When you sign up you will receive a link to the live webinar that will b Thursday, May 20, 2021 at 7 p.m. EST. The Beginner’s Painting Club will open that night and will open for 1 week. If you’d like to join and really move your art forward, that will be your chance.
Click HERE if you want to get signed up for the free webinar.
Have a great day and let’s paint together real soon.