Matt Miller
“With sensitivity, mastery of technique, and a magician’s sleight of hand, I endeavor to engage you, the viewer.”— Matt Miller
On learning to paint
There are four equally important components to learning how to paint, especially when creating representational art. Through videos, live demonstrations, and an interactive forum, this page will explore all four elements and provide you with a thorough understanding of how to paint professionally, regardless of your personal style.
1. Understanding light, color, and value
It is essential to understand how light behaves in the physical world. This includes what happens as light passes through the atmosphere, how clouds affect light, and how temperature, color, hue, and value interact in the real world. We will also examine what warmer and cooler colors mean in practical terms, and why—and under what conditions—light can take on a blue cast.
2. Understanding perception
The second component is understanding how we perceive reality. This is the other side of the process: how our eyes and brains work together to interpret what we see, how those interpretations shape our overall perception, and the visual illusions that result.
This is where composition and artistic concept come into play. By understanding how viewers perceive visual information, we can guide their attention and create more intentional, compelling images.
3. Understanding the process of painting
The third component is painting itself: developing a thorough understanding of how paint is manipulated, mixed, and applied. This includes learning the proper use of brushes, palette knives, and other tools, as well as understanding how fillers and mediums affect the transparency, movement, and behavior of paint under the brush. We will also cover the proper use and application of varnishes, glazes, and many other materials and techniques.
Painting also involves learning how to create the illusion of depth, direct attention to one area of a painting over another, and use value, temperature, hue, and edges to create convincing dimensionality, luminous light, harmonious color, and whatever else your artistic expression demands.
Ultimately, painting brings together our understanding of physical reality, visual perception, artistic concept, composition, paint handling, and application. It is the interplay of all these elements that makes a painting sing.
4. Understanding the science of artists’ materials
The fourth component is understanding the science behind the materials artists use to create paintings that will last. This subject is covered by George O’Hanlon and Tatiana Zaytseva through their Painting Best Practices website.
In collaboration with Natural Pigments, they provide an information-packed online resource of painting best practices, covering every stage of materials, from the support and ground to the final layers and varnish.
In Summary
This is a long-term project. Beginning in September 2026, I will release new videos twice a month, with the goal of developing a comprehensive educational resource for artists ranging from beginners to advanced practitioners.
The aim is to provide an educational foundation that enables you to create art that fully expresses your individual vision.
In Person Classes
In addition to these online classes I and my business partner Reena offer limited in-person classes at our studio in Norton MA. For more information on in-person classes click here.
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
Free Videos
Section 1: On Light
Coming Soon
Section 2: On Perception
Coming Soon
Section 3: On Painting
Coming Soon
Silver Subscription Videos
Videos Added in the Past Three Months
Recently Added Videos
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
