You don’t need to be an artist to paint an amazing picture, you just need to find your style, and be influenced by the right styles, things and artists.

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Nobody can pinpoint who your influences are going to be but you. Firstly I recommend you have a look around, what inspires you? It might be nature, it might be the city, it may even just be people interacting with one another, whatever it is its allowed, no mater how weird, unusual or ‘boring’ You might want to have a look on the internet, try Wikipedia, you can type in some artists names you recognise, you can then read about them and see which artists inspired them, and then which artists inspired them, soon enough you’ll find a collection of artists you admire. If this doesn’t work for you buy a book on artists, you’ll be able to get them cheap of Ebay or just at a local book shop, art books can sometimes bye quite expensive so make sure you don’t get ripped of.

 Once you’ve done this and have a collection of artists and styles you admire try and read up on what materials they use, acrylics, canvas charcoal, mixed media…?

 You should probably recourse some materials, get some paints you enjoy working with and some nice, soft pencils, unless you would rather work with a harder medium, though I would recommend 2B or 4B to start with.

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 Find a sketchbook or a canvas, or just a surface which you’d like to paint or practice on. You should probably keep a sketchbook at hand just for a bit of practice or even testing how lines or colours look on a page. Invest in some proper drawing paper, not just plain A4 which you would write on.

 When you’ve done this start experimenting, get things from nature or just things you encounter from day to day, sweet wrappers, photos, or just things from nature like branches or pine needles, even soil, you can mix these natural things in with your paint and give a textured surface.

 Now you are ready. You’ve got your tools ready, paintbrushes of your choice or just whatever your comfortable working with, you’ve got your paints, clean water and a tissue for the mishaps.

 Set up your paint on a plate or some mixing palettes and get painting. Remember how your artist works whilst incorporating your own style into it, if your unsure of your own style just paint how you want, it doesn’t have to be any special way, there is no correct way to paint, though I do recommend tilting your painting surface at an upwards angle, this normally helps most people paint to the best of their ability.

 You might want some varnish for a finishing touch, you could apply this while your paint is still partially wet if you’d like the colours to merge a bit, though this take a bit of practice but go for it if you want. There’s nothing wrong with experimenting. You can just use floor varnish if you like.

 Once you’re done step back and admire it. If our happy with it then excellent. If you aren’t, don’t throw it away. You need to keep it to track your progress. You’ll soon notice a change as you get comfortable with painting.

Good look!

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