Matt Miller
My thoughts on painting
I have wanted to write an artist’s oil painting book for quite a while. The problem with such a book is that it is next to impossible for the reader to absorb all the nuances of new ideas and in some cases understand what the author intends to convey by reading a few short sentences or paragraphs.
So instead here on this page you will find my ramblings, quick thoughts, teachings, instructions, and demos I have shared with my students in my in-person classes these past dozen plus years. Together, these ramblings make up the body of knowledge you need to deeply beautiful and sensitive representational art.
With an online-based venue you will be able to review these concepts as they are presented in multiple different ways and as often as needed for you to truly absorb the concepts contained herein.
This is an ever growing body of knowledge. New videos are added monthly, so sit back, enjoy, and come along with me on this wild and exciting ride of creation!
If we haven’t yet covered a topic you’d like to see let us know and we’ll add it to the list Thanks! Send us an email
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SPECIAL EVENTS:
Three Day Workshop: The Three P’s: Perception, Photography, Painting – This workshop will cover:
- Day 1: Understanding perception as it pertains to art
- Day 2: Understanding photographic errors, lies, distortions, perspective shift, and depth collapse
- Day 2: Understanding how to successfully paint realistic three dimensional paintings from a photo – utilizing all we learned from the previous two day’s lessons
- DATE and PRICE: TBD
Live Demonstrations: TBD
Live Critiques: TBD
Personal Coaching/Critique session:
- $60/half hour ($45 Members)
- $120/hour ($90 Members)
- Schedule Coaching session
The Basics
COMING SOON:
- Mixing paint
- Mixing paint 1: Understanding how to mix colors – what colors mix and what colors don’t
- Mixing paint 2: painting yellow on a blue sky
- Mixing paint 3: on the palette
- Mixing paint 4: on the easel
- Carving shape with warm and cool color
- How to properly apply shadow
- Warm vs cool shadows
- How to make something come forward or recede in a painting
- Why warm colors come forward in the light but recede in the shadow, and how to use this to your advantage
- Color: Hue, Saturation, and Chrominance
- Why purple exists as a color: it shouldn’t and why a color wheel works
- edge perception and enhancement: how our eyes preprocess and enhance edges before our brain is involved and the impact that has on painting three dimensions.
- Why we are blind to gradual value changes
- Color theory: Part 1
- Color theory: Part 2
- Mixing colors: The basics
- How to avoid muddy and chalky color and how to fix it if you need to
- How to properly apply varnish to a painting
- The solvent free studio: how to paint without OMS or Turp
- Speed of Light Part 2: cloth textures
- Simplify simplify simplify
- Simplification Demo: painting an orange slice
- Painting from photos: the problems, distortions, and issues
- EDGES: the heart and soul of a painting
- Lost and found edges
- EDGES: how to let light flow through a painting
- How Edges affect value
- How to make a painted object glow
- How to make something look bright with paint
- How to paint a sunset
- How to paint a recognizable portrait: important features to recognize a face
- Painting skin tone: with geometry
- Building geometry with temperature not value
- How to describe a turning form
- Core shadow
- Selecting a shadow color
- The quality of shadow: how dark should it be
- How ambient light effects your shadow
- Finding / selecting skin color in a portrait
- Painting from a photo and all the prerequisites needed to know before painting from photos
- Understanding warm and cool color
- First color dictates…
- What is background vs foreground in a painting
- The color of the air
- Photographic distortions and how to mitigate them
- and much more
