Why all great painters draw?

So the best place to start is with a drawing because this will also inform your painting to help you develop your own techniques and style there is no set way to paint or draw we are all individual with our own unique abilities.

If you start out with simple shapes or objects you will soon develop the confidence to become more adventurous with your growing scientific knowledge gained from your experimental testing of your own skills and ability.

This is what you do to begin the process you have four weeks to complete this task this will give some understanding of tone using thick paint it will give you your fist experiments with paint.

A tube of white water based thick paint and also some black this could be Gouache, Poster paint, Acrylic or what ever you can get your hands on you could even try some household gloss paint if you wanted to suffer the fumes and corrosive chemicals. The decision is yours but I would settle for Gouache because I am boring.

Find some objects to paint, look for objects that are shiny, reflective but simple in shape, objects of that nature reflect the light and so also help you to define the shape by looking at the tonal variations to enable this learning by looking.

Here are some more examples.

These are not simple shapes but are an example of what you can do with the information about how thick paint can be applied with water colour washes to great effect and presision.

Both paintings above and bellow are examples of using Gouache which is a very versatile painting material that can be used in many different ways it can be used in its natural state as a think paint or watered down to be used like water colour.

Both paintings are an example of Gouache being used in this way as both thick paint and water colour. The heavy black marks in the greyscale painting of the woman's face are made using the think paint method with the Gouache being slightly watered down for fluidity the lighter marks or tones are an example of using this with a very watered down consistency.

When the paint is in this state it is very fluid but also more translucent allowing the white of the paper to come through creating a lighter tone. The painting of the woman's face is an excellent example of how gouache can be used as water colour showing also a wide variety of marks and tonal variation.

The paining below is an example of how you can use both techniques, thick paint and wet into wet water colour washes as in the sky colours tand tonal values . The trees an foliage use both thick paint in the dabs to create leaf shapes or marks and other more lighter colour and tones are made with washes of very watered down paint. Thus making it very light in tonal value creating the effect of different values of ligh in the leaves appering to be shining in the daylight.

The only way to paint is to actually paint, you see when a person actually takes part in there own learning they actually retain as much as 90% of the information that they generate themselves. That is why hands on experiential learning is the very best you can get and no mistake.