Sparks of inspiration Apr ’24

Some good things to share in April

Here are some things that inspired me and my art practice recently. This is a hot mess of various resources and this is how my practice looks like. One moment I am googling how to photograph my artwork and the next second I am watching a video on value!

Hopefully, you’ll find something useful, fun and inspiring for yourself!

Some great educational resources:

• First Steps To Making Good Art & How To Get A Strong Value Plan - a mini series on value by

  Sandi Hester
  . Value is something I struggle with and am always on the lookout for a good video, post, podcast or book devoted to the topic. These videos simplify a lot of things when it comes to ensuring you have a nice value range and enough contrast in your work.

• Mark Eanes (The Design Episode) - Learn to paint podcast. This episode is gold, Mark explains a lot about design and composition in detail and in simple terms. I highly recommend it!

• 15 landscape composition tips to improve your paintings - Artists & Illustrators. I think this guide is a very good addition to the information from the podcast on design, especially if you’re interested in painting landscapes.

• Everything You Need to Know About Watercolour Supplies - Angela Fehr. A detailed guide that will be useful for beginners, but also for more advanced painters.

• How to Mix Watercolors - Art in Context. A great exercise in colour mixing! It’s especially useful, of you have a new watercolour palette.

• Best art book series (for beginners) - Marian Parsons. I love Marian’s work and art and she is also a great teacher. I already have some of the books from her list and they are really useful. I am excited to check out the rest of her recommendations!

If you liked Marian’s article, you can check out these posts, where I share some of my favourite books and other tips for self-taught artists:

Resources for a self-taught artist (part 2)

Focus in art practice for beginners

Some helpful resources on having an online art business:

• 7 Tips for Building a Brilliant Website for Your Art Business - Laura Horn. I love everything that Laura does and her art biz recommendations are usually very very helpful. I am looking into creating my site in the observable future and I really enjoyed the tips. By the way, Laura’s web-site is amazing.

• 9 Common Mistakes when Photographing your Artwork - Will Kemp. I am constantly trying to improve the way I create photos of my artwork, which is especially important for the web-site. I use my phone, so this guide is very useful and the explanation is very clear.

• Ways to sign your paintings - Jackson’s Art. I think this is one of the topics that are very important for building your identity as an artist. I am still experimenting with how I like to sign my work, so these tips were very handy.

Additional inspiration:

• Spring sketch walk -

  Melanie Chadwick
  . I recently overcame my fear of sketching outside and this video by Melanie was one of the sources of inspiration to go outside and capture the spring scenery around me.

• The Magic of Belonging - Art2Life podcast. A very uplifting and genuine conversation about overcoming difficulties and answering to your calling.

I hope you found something to inspire you!

Thank you for being here and until next time!

Lisa