Step-by-Step Painting Demos and Tutorials
By Marion Boddy-Evans, About.com Guide
- Wildlife and Animal Painting
- Abstracts and Abstractions
- Figures, Portraits, and Self-Portraits
- Free Painting Videos
Beginner's Demos
These painting demos deal with relatively simple, straightforward subjects. They're intended to be building blocks to help you develop your painting skills. You've got to learn to walk with your paint brush if you want to run wild with it and your imagination successfully.
- Painting Basic Shapes: 3D Sphere (Not a Flat Circle)
- How to Paint a Realistic Apple
- How to Paint a Realistic Tree
- Painting Clouds Wet-on-Wet
- Sunset Painting Demo
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
- Demo: Forest Landscape
- 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: Chameleon
- Painting Demo: Zebra
- Painting Demo: Orangutan
- Watercolor Demo: Horse
- Painting Demo: White Horse
- 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.
- 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.