If you are looking for a place to sell your artwork online or even buy some original work check out d'Art. It's a complete online marketplace and community.  Currently there are over 4,000 artists listed on d'Art as well as information on over 12,000 artists.

d'Art has a community section where there are number of forums and opportunities to post comments. There is a ton of information available about selling and buying artwork, pricing artwork and much more.

One fun feature of the site is the 'Critics Corner' where you can critque the work that has been submitted.

Water causes paper to shrink. For this reason, watercolor paper should be prepared in advance of painting in order to prevent buckling and wrinkling from interrupting brushstrokes, and to ensure the good appearance of the finished, framed artwork.  

Watercolor paper contains sizing, a starch or glue that keeps pigment on the surface in a transparent glaze, allowing the white of the paper to reflect through, giving luminosity to colors. Watercolor paper should be pre-shrunk in preparation, and the sizing must be softened for this to occur.

The moment you wish to begin painting is too late to begin stretching paper. Always having a sheet or two prepared is a good studio habit to acquire.

Preparing different weight watercolor papers

90lb. paper can be prepared with a light sponging with a damp sponge.

140lb paper requires heavy sponging or spraying.

300lb papers and heavier may need to be briefly immersed in a bath of water to effectively wet them.

In all cases, after wetting, blot excess moisture from the surface with paper towels.

After the paper has been made wet

It should be attached to a rigid board to provide a good, flat surface. A hardboard panel or smooth plywood are fine, if sealed to resist water - a thick coat of varnish will seal boards well enough. Sheet acrylic and formica work well, also.

To attach paper to a sealed board, wide brown kraft tape is best. This must be the type with water-activated gum adhesive, not the self-adhesive variety. Moisten lengths of tape with a damp sponge, taking care not to wash away adhesive. Apply tape covering all four edges of the sheet completely, overlapping about 1 full inch (more is better, but will leave less working area). Allow to dry completely before painting. When the painting is finished and dry, cut along tape lines to remove from board (expect to lose some paper).  

Self-adhesive tapes such as wide drafting tape can be used for mounting watercolor paper, but should only be used for lightweight papers. Self-adhesive tape allows complete removal, and will preserve deckle edges. Occasionally, however, moisture will loosen this variety during painting, creating a mild nuisance. For stretching with drafting tape, moisten paper with a sponge after paper is firmly taped to board, as this type of tape will not stick to wet paper.  

Some artists choose to sacrifice a bit more paper at the edges to achieve a very tight stretch by stapling paper to canvas stretcher bars. Apply water to paper as when fixing to a board; insert staples starting at the center of each side, working across to opposite sides, working toward the corners. Corners may be folded over for sake of tidiness, but this step is not technically necessary.  

A more simple consideration is Watercolor Blocks

Watercolor Blocks are gummed on all sides to a thick book-board backing, and will wrinkle only minimally during painting.  There is no need to pre-treat or prepare these watercolor papers.  They also do not require taping.  A small space is left in the gum on the edge tangent to where the cover is attached to facilitate removal of finished work. Insert a palette knife in the slot provided, and cut all the way around, separating the glue.  

Drawing on our in-house painting expertise we created this useful recommended art brush kit for beginners to use when purchasing their brushes. We have grouped the brush selections into paint type related categories.  You will find a complete brush list for oil paints, acrylic paints and watercolor paints.

Art Brushes for Oil Paints: These should be natural bristle (long-handled) brushes.

Flat - #'s 12, 8, 6
Filbert - #'s 10, 8 (x2), 6 (x2), 4 (x2)
Round - #'s 6, 4, 2 (x2)
Bright - #'s 12, 10, 6

Kolinsky or good Synthetic (short-handled) Round #4

Art Brushes for Acrylic Paints: these should be synthetic bristle long-handled brushes.

Flat - #'s 12, 8, 6
Filbert - #'s 10, 8 (x2), 6 (x2), 4 (x2)
Round - #'s 6, 4, 2 (x2)
Bright - #'s 12, 10, 6

Good Synthetic (short-handled) Round # 4

Art Brushes for Watercolor Paints: These should be Kolinsky Sable or good synthetic short-handled brushes.

Flat Wash - 1½"
Round - #'s 12, 8 (x2), 6 (x2), 4, 1
Rigger #4
Asian - Goat's Hair Hake 2" or 3"

One of the fundamental principles of painting is that of fat over lean. If not followed with diligence, over time your painting will likely develop cracks and separate from your support. Fat over lean is the permanent adhesion and different drying rates of oil paint layers in a painting.

Please note: This rule of Fat Over Lean applies to Oil Paints only and not to Acrylic Paints.

Your painting should be built up like illustrated in this diagram

Leaner paint mixtures contain less oil; excellerating drying time. Fatter paints are those with a greater percentage of oil, are less absorbent and slower to dry. The lean layers of paint absorb some of the oil from the layer on top of it. This absorption causes the layers to adhere to one another anchoring all of the layers below. One can apply either a lean or fat layer over a dry lean layer, and the layers will adhere. The final paint layer can be either lean or fat.

Here are 3 Simple Rules to follow when painting fat over lean...

1) Always work from quicker drying or leaner paint mixtures to slower drying fatter paint mixtures.

2) Never place a quick drying paint or medium over a slow drying paint or medium, i.e. alkyd paints or alkyd mediums over slow drying paints or stand oil mediums.

3) You must be aware of drying rates of all mediums or colors you chose to use so they are applied in the proper sequence.

For example,

Earth tones like Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber dry rapidly.

Prussian Blues & Greens, Phthalo Blues and Greens have a high oil content and are slower drying.

Copal Medium, Japan Drier, Alkyd Painting Mediums excellerate the drying time of oil colors.

Stand Oil, Safflower Oils are slow drying oils.

If you have any questions feel free to send us an e-mail.

While you should eventually form an aversion to skin-tone formulas, they can be helpful in the beginning. Understand that the model's local skin color (inherent color), lighting, and the surrounding setup will all influence flesh tone away from any static formula. If you are struggling, use this combination to get started:

Cadmium Yellow 
Cadmium Red Light (Toned down with Sap Green)

This combination is rather versatile, and can be used for Caucasian or black skin. Its versatility is due to its composition of the three primaries: red, yellow, and blue (contained in green). This basic mixture can be adjusted in value and color by mixing its components in different ratios. Black skin, for example, tends to be more reflective than translucent, and often is composed of a wide range of reflected colors and subtler cools. Using this same basic palette with altered ratios can effectively capture skin tones of any ethnicity.

This information is an excerpt from Portrait Painting - with Palden Hamilton, an online course offered by Sessions Online School of Fine Art.

Want to learn more? Interested in taking this online art class? Learn More and Register Here.

The consistency of artists' oil colors can be controlled with the use of the oil painting mediums. The two fundamental oil paint qualities are called Short and Long Paint. With the controlled use of oil painting mediums the artist can produce a wide range of effects.

Short Oil Paint:
The oil paint as it comes out of the tube is called short paint. It has a stiff buttery quality which retains its brush marks easily; and when stippled with a palette knife it creates many short crisp peaks of paint, from which the term is derived. Short paint produces a paint quality not easily obtained by any other means.

Long Oil Paint:
Short paint can be made long with a mixture of a little stand oil or painting medium. You will notice far fewer pointed peaks of paint after stippling with a palette knife. The peaks level off gently. Long paint leaves few brush marks and produces fluid brushwork.

To learn more about selecting oil painting mediums read this post.

Selecting a the right medium for your oil painting can be confusing.  Oil painting mediums can have very different qualities and produce a variety of results in your artwork.  We have put together this quick guide to oil mediums for your reference.

Linseed Oil
Linseed oil is a drying oil expelled from the seeds of the flax plant (also the source of linen fibers). Health hazards mistakenly attributed to oil paints have nothing to do with the oil itself. Linseed oil has been a vehicle and medium for oil colors for over 500 years. It can be diluted by turpentine
for mineral spirits. Although linseed oil should never be consumed, purified flax seed oil is sold in health food stores everywhere as a nutritional supplement.

Stand Oil
Stand Oil is a heavy bodied polymerized linseed oil that has superior paint film qualities when used as a medium in oil paint. The thickness comes from long chains of molecules formed while the oil is heated in an oxygen-free environment for many hours at 550 degrees. Stand oil can be thinned and modified with Damar Varnish and turpentine to reduce drying time. Stand oil is flexible, nonyellowing and crack resistant in its dry film. It gives an enamel-like surface to paint film and does not disintegrate.

Safflower Oil
An alternative to linseed, Utrecht Safflower Oil is modified to dry at a slightly slower rate and is not as prone to yellowing, which is preferable for use with pale or white colors. It is suitable for all oil painting applications.

Alkyd Painting Medium
An Alkyd Painting Medium is a tough, resin-based oil painting medium that is ready-to-use. Alkyd Painting Medium imparts a glossy surface to oils, and enables a much faster drying time than traditional mediums. Instead of days, oils will tack 30 to 45 minutes with thin layers and a few hours for thick layers, becoming touch dry in approximately 24 hours and ready for repainting. Alkyd medium can be used in varied portions, to add a thin glaze of transparent color, or moderate to thick layers of impasto paint. Because alkyd mediums dry so rapidly, they are excellent for glazing techniques, even allowing the artist to do hundreds of layers of color, if the painting style calls for this.

If paint mixtures are drying too rapidly, drying time can be extended by adding a few drops of linseed oil or adding mineral spirits to paint. Alkyd Painting Medium can be used to create an underpainting for traditional oils, beneath fatter layers, or from start to finish in every layer. As alkyd mediums are relatively oil-free, they should not be used over top of traditional oils or traditional oil painting mediums to avoid cracking in later paint layers.

If you have any more questions feel free to e-mail us.

Begin by selecting an area of the face that falls within the middle tonal range, illuminated and rich in color. Mix this color on the palette. This will be your base skin tone. Mix a substantial puddle, as most subsequent skin tones you mix will branch off of this puddle. The puddles off of puddles method refers to the practice of starting out with a base color, and adjusting its hue or tone by pulling off a piece of the main puddle and introducing other colors. It can be very helpful: It will keep you from having to constantly remix from scratch slight variations of a previously laid skin tone.

Using a limited palette can help keep your painting unified. Because you may not remember the color combination or combination ratios of your base skin tone, remixing can lead to unevenness and discrepancies in color from one area of the face to the next. Having a bit of the same color work its way subtly into other parts of a painting can also create harmony. This is the strength of limited-palette paintings: The inherent lack of color variety can keep the composition from breaking up into shards of competing color.

This being said, be careful not to rely too much on this base skin tone. A dangerous tendency is to use the same flesh tone over the entire face, simply value adjusting it with white and darks where necessary. This can result in a plastic look, static and lacking nuance. Skin changes color temperature, in addition to value, from one area of the face to the next. Skin also changes in opacity and reflectivity in different areas, which should register in your painting.

This information is an excerpt from Portrait Painting - with Palden Hamilton, an online course offered by Sessions Online School of Fine Art.

Want to learn more? Interested in taking this online art class? Learn More and Register Here.

In this post the folks at Sessions Online School of Fine Art make suggestions for how you should go about writing/creating an Artist Statement.

An artist statement is an integral component of creating and showing your work. It is a written statement that discusses your work to the viewer.

The artist statement is not meant to be a substitute for your work, but merely just a helpful guide.  Not meant to tell the viewer what to think about your work, your statement instead gives viewers a reference point in which to interpret your work and come up with their own conclusions (Maybe this pieces is part of a larger body of work or perhaps knowing the material used to make the piece has some conceptual significance like the sculptures of Joseph Buoys?).

Writing an artist statement helps you pull your thoughts together.  Being able to put into words the basic idea behind your work makes it easier for you stay focused and resolved in your work. You can write a statement discussing a particular piece, a series of work, or an entire body of work.

Your artist statement should answer the common questions viewers will have when seeing your work. 

Answer questions like:
1. Why do you make your art?
2. How do you make it - what is your process?
3. What is your favorite tool and why?
4. What materials is the work made from and why?
5. What does your art means to you? How do you know when a piece is complete?
6. What elements of you process do you use that you were taught? What elements of your process are different than the way you were taught?
7. Where do you derive your subject matter from and why?

When writing your statement make sure to keep it brief. Keep your statement close to 100 words.  Write two or three paragraphs of no more than 3 sentences each.  This will keep your thoughts focused and will keep you from over burdening the reader with unnecessary details. You will find that if you use the statement to create questions in the mind of the reader, rather than overpower them with answers, they will be more interested looking at the work and talking to you - asking questions. This is a statement, not a manifesto. 

Keep in mind that this document isn’t necessarily meant for people with the same education in the arts as you and thus shouldn’t be too filled with artistic jargon.  Use language that everyone can understand.  An artist statement is similar to a corporations mission statement as it is a prepared document for you and your viewers to communicate. 

When you first start writing don’t think too much about the end result.  Work quickly, answering the above questions in a string of consciousness.  Try writing a list of words that your works makes you think of.

Once you have some raw concepts down and your internal dialogue is in process you should begin to organize your thoughts in sentence form. When you have a draft together you should have your statement proofed by both someone who has an Art background and who knows your work very well in addition to  someone who is more of layman and is new to your work so you can see how it reads to others. You can use the feedback to help you get focused and tighten up your next draft. Be prepared to go through several revisions.

Please visit Sessions Online School of Fine Art if you would like to learn more about their program.