Beginning to paint actually starts long before you visit the Art shop and buy all your materials. It starts with your desire to put down on paper either the world around you or the stuff of your imagination. Both are valid sources for your paintings or drawings. As I have a rotten imagination I usually start with something that exists in the real world and work from there. So you should decide what it is you would like to paint and give it some thought. If it's from the real world go and have a look at it. Take a notebook or small sketch pad but before you put pen to paper spend at least 5 or 10 minutes just looking and taking in the subject. Then with your notepad open jot down some of the qualities of the subject that particularly strike you as interesting or visually exciting. Make a note of the colours you can see, what shapes can you identify in the subject. Most things around us can be reduced to a grouping of simple shapes, so try to find these shapes and see how they fit together to make up the subject. You might want to make a few doodles of what you see - make sure they're doodles, you're not looking to get bogged down in a finished drawing of the whole thing. These doodles will help you process the things you see in terms of their shape and scale. Compare one shape against another and note the differences between them. Especially look out for shapes that are closer to you than others and notice how even if the closer one is actually smaller than the one behind it in terms of inches, because it is closer to you it may appear larger than the rear one. This is the effect of perspective which might be touched on at a later date.
Having taken these preliminary notes and sketches you are in a far better position to tackle your subject as a finished piece. Take these home and think about how you might want to arrange them to make your picture. Think about the colours - do you want to use exactly those that you saw or do you want to make them more personal? You can change the whole look of the scene by changing the colour scheme. A summery picture can become autumnal just by picking a scheme of ochres, reds and browns instead of greens and yellows and blues. Think about the various parts of the picture - do you want to put everything you saw into your picture or do you want to centre on one specific thing? It may even help to trace your sketches and then cut out the different parts so you can more easily arrange them on your paper. Once you've got a composition that suits you draw out your picture accordingly.
At this point you have to decide whether to return to the scene and paint directly from it using your final sketch or whether to work from your material done earlier and your memory/imagination.
This should let you get started and I'll be posting more in a short while.
| Next Step | Stretching Paper | Composing your picture | Applying a Wash | Adding Some Texture |