Step-by-Step Painting Demos and Tutorials
By Marion Boddy-Evans, About.com Guide to Painting
This collection of step-by-step painting demos and tutorials ranges from landscapes and seascapes to self-portraiture to abstracts. Each demo takes you through the process of creating a painting, from initial steps to the final painting.
Painting the Sea
The sea is a tantalizing subject to paint, with its ever-changing colors and moods. Whether your painting style is realism or abstract, painting the sea alone could be a lifetime's work.
- Observing the Sea with an Artist's Eye
- Demo: Sea with Rocky Shore
- Demo: Breaking Wave
- Demo: Abstracted Seascape
- Demo: Rocky Seascape in Pastels
- Demo: Abstracted Seascape Using a Limited Color Palette
- Using a T-Square for Painting Horizons
- Painting Video Demo: Surf Seascape
- Reference Photos for Artists: Seascapes and Waves
Landscape Painting
One of the keys to painting a landscape successfully is to ensure you have a consistent direction of sunlight, with all your shadows falling the same direction. It may sound obvious, but a beautiful landscape can seduce you into forgetting this.
- Demo: Painting Clouds Wet-on-Wet
- Demo: Monet's Lily Pond and Bridge
- Demo: Quiver Tree Step by Step
- Demo: Forest in the Style of Klimt
- How to Paint Realistic Water Drops
- Light Direction in a Landscape Painting
- Tips on Painting Trees
- Top Tips for Landscape Painting
- Tips on Painting a Sunset
- Watercolor Pencil Painting Demo: Color of Winter
Other Styles of Landscapes
A couple of painting demos that deserve their own category as they're unlike any of the other landscape paintings.
Wildlife and Animal Painting
Whether you aspire to paint a friendly feline, a big cat in the wild, or a creepy crawly, painting fur, feathers, and scales is a compelling challenge.
- Painting Demo: Cat
- 10 Tips for Painting Black Fur
- Tips from a Wildlife Artist
- Top 10 Tips for Painting Dogs
Abstracts and Abstractions
Pure abstract art is a painting "without a subject", whereas an abstraction reflects of the source of its inspiration, but of course there are all sorts of possibilities inbetween.
- Demo: Pure Abstract
- Demo: Color-Field Painting
- Demo: Abstracted Tree
- Using Nature as a Source for Inspiration for Abstracts
Figures, Portraits, and Self-Portraits
One of the advantages of painting a self-portrait is that the model is always available when you're ready to paint.
- Demo: Figure in an Expressive Style
- Demo: Self-Portrait
- Why Artists Should Paint Self-Portraits
- The Thin Line Between Portraiture and Caricature
- Figure Studies for Figure Painting
Free Painting Videos
Browse through the visual index of the step-by-step painting video demonstrations and you're sure to find something enticing.
