Painting Made Simple for Beginners

Discover why professional grade paints yield vibrant pigment and binder performance, build a core palette for oils and acrylics (titanium white, cadmium yellow light, ultramarine blue), and use value checker.

Learn to pre-sketch from a photo on your computer by cropping, marking proportions, and drawing grid or envelope lines to transfer a simple chicken image to canvas.

Learn the grid method to transfer a reference image onto a canvas using a protective sleeve, ruler, and grid lines, then paint in simple shapes.

Explore how composition and values form the backbone of painting by arranging dark and light shapes into a strong design, while encouraging experimentation beyond formulas.

Learn to build and use a nine-value value scale or checker to judge painting values by mixing white and black on canvas, including a center hole for precise checks.

Learn to render a three-dimensional sphere by building soft transitions from halftone to core shadow, incorporating reflected light and edge softening for realism.

Develop dimensional form with light, shadow, and halftone, then master foreground–background relationships and value contrast to create space around a sphere.

Learn the basics of color: primaries red, yellow, blue; secondary and tertiary hues; and how complementary colors tone and balance vibrant greens.

Learn how color value works, including light, medium, and dark values, and how black and white modulate color as non colors, and compare values to describe lightness.

Explore color saturation, hue, and value with a color chart, distinguishing saturated and muted colors, and learn how these qualities interact to affect chromatic strength.

Explore color temperature, distinguishing warmer and cooler hues on the color wheel. Learn how temperature relates to value, saturation, and light source, using red and blue to signal warmth, coolness.

Explore hue, pigment purity, and the impact of fillers on color mixing. Master values, saturations, and temperature with primary colors to produce vibrant mixes.

Learn to mix muted colors and chromatic grays by pairing primary, secondary, and tertiary colors, using complementary hues to mute and tint with white or black.

Explore edge types in painting, including hard, soft, and diminishing edges, as planes, halftones, and value changes define the subject and ground.

Explore how hard, soft, and lost edges shape focal points across landscapes, portraits, and still lifes, guiding the viewer through contrasting values and edge variety.

Refine hard and soft edges by adjusting values, mixing ultramarine with yellow-green and red to build dimensional planes and subtle light transitions.

Tone the canvas to a neutral background before painting, using a palette knife, Gamsol solvent, and a cotton rag, with two methods shown and timing options.

Block in the background with darker greens and sand tones. Blend ultramarine, alizarin crimson, and white to build light, refine edges, and capture the sunlight on the chicken.

Block in the sunlit chicken with light, warm color mixtures—white plus yellow, white plus red, and blue-crimson—knowing sunlight isn’t pure white. Create halftones and refine edges and value for depth.

Master halftones by blending or mixing color to create smooth transitions between light and shadow, using a cooler mix of blue, orange, and crimson for a more life-like chicken painting.

Master the finishing touches by building up layers of light with white and color, keeping edges varied and colors warmer or cooler to capture sunlight, mood, and your focal point.

Block in shadows with varied stroke directions and soft edges, building background and foreground, then render a cast shadow. Mix warm and cool tones and study value relationships.

Block in still life fruits by mixing warm yellow, creamy white, orange, and greenish tones, compare to the picture, adjust edges, and prepare for refining the next steps.

Develop color mixing and edge control to render core shadows in a still life, using warm greens, darks, and oil paints to refine values, temperatures, edges, and transitions.

Wrap up the painting made simple for beginners course by encouraging learners to explore oils as a forgiving, fun medium, and discover the instructor’s work and teachings.