60 Minutes to Better Painting: Improve Your Skills in Oil and Acrylic by Craig Nelson

This article is a review of 60 Minutes to Better Painting: Improve Your Skills in Oil and Acrylic by Craig Nelson.

Craig Nelson articulates in simple words (and with his paintings) the benefits of quick studies, by themselves, or as a test before attempting a finished painting. His approach is practical and it is easy to see the teacher behind the artist.

I already discussed some practice tips for quick studies in my article Pochades: practice makes perfect that I wrote before I read this book. The benefits the author lists match my own experience: studies help you to break inhibitions, not to be afraid of mistakes, to learn the difference between lines and mass, learn brushwork and understand how to see.

Craig demonstrates the use of three time frames: 25-30 minutes, 40-45 minutes and 60 minutes. I would not go as far as having a timer in front of me when I paint, but setting a time limit (use your watch) is an excellent idea.

Example of demonstration in the book. You can see on the right corner of each image the icon with the time spent on a particular step.

The demonstrations are classic step-by-step ones showing the painting from start to finish. The added feature is a small icon showing the time spent for each step. I would not try to copy the demonstrations in the book.

The reader should rather understand the spirit, the main stages and the techniques used (like the “Two value statement technique” and “The block-in technique” which are well explained) and apply them to her or his own studies.

Numerous examples in the book will inspire you to paint your own favourite subjects and to seek new ones.

The parts I preferred in the book dealt with:

• Composition: The book puts a great emphasis on composition, exploring cropping, simplifying, points of view and how to break the space in interesting ways. There is one page titled “Compositional clues” with thumbnails of different compositions arranged in a “Yes” and a “No” columns, with diagrams and short comments to explain the flaws and the strength of each composition. This page does not look fancy but contains so much information that you have to come back to it.



• Lighting effects: The part on creating light effects is very well done, concise yet clears, on the possibilities offered by different lighting conditions (flat lighting, sunlight, low angle light and night lighting as well as atmosphere in lighting).



• Editing: How to simplify, edit out elements or add them to balance the composition in a finished painting done from studies.
  
  

The chapter on colours is limited to the minimum. It contains a short explanation of the full palette, the limited palette and analogous colours. This is not the core of the book, but it gives you enough clues to go and explore.

The last part of the book discusses how to use quick studies to execute more refined paintings in the studio.

Overall, 60 Minutes to Better Painting: Improve Your Skills in Oil and Acrylic is an excellent book that you will keep in your art books library after reading it. It does not try to cover all grounds of painting with oil or acrylic, but gives you a logical path to practice using quick studies and it delivers on the promises of its subtitle: “improve your skills in oil and acrylic”.

An immediate effect of this book is the urge it gives you to paint. I executed the “Watching the movie” study as a result of reading this book and it comforted me in painting pochades and quick studies.

Favourite quotes from the book

“Remember: color is always about relationships, greys vs. intensities, warms vs. cools, darks vs. lights”

And this tip on finished paintings: “Probably the most important aspect of finishing a painting is not to finish it too quickly.”

About the artist and author

Craig Nelson has been painting for 30 years. He graduated from Art Center College of Design with distinction and won many awards. He began teaching in 1974 at Art Center College of Design and then at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco where he is Director of Fine Art, Drawing and Painting.

You can review the artist’s paintings at Craig Nelson’s website.




Craig Nelson Art book Oil painting Acrylic Painting studies Composition

Thinking about Benoit Philippe Art Studio Limited?

Artists of the past, since medieval time, employed assistants and apprentices in their studio (Rubens counted many, included the gifted van Dyck who made a name for himself). Some contemporary established artists still have assistants who take in charge part of the execution of the work and deal with anciliary activities.

Most of us work and create alone, so why should you think of yourself as a business employing a skilled workforce?

In the book E-myth Revisited, Michael E. Gerber promotes the idea of creating an organisation chart of your business with the different functions. He explains how the exercise is valuable, even if you are a one-person business. It forces you to work “on your business” rather than “in your business”.

In Mark Forster’s book Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play, he gives an additional reason to do that from a productivity standpoint: “Employing yourself gives you a degree of detachment from your work”. He gives some compelling examples of how we do things easily for friends that we struggle to do the same task for ourselves. There is a French saying that reads “Les cordonniers sont les plus mal chaussés.” (Cobblers wear the worst shoes).

Mark Forster's blog has an excellent article titled “Employ yourself” on this topic. He explains that if you dread doing your accounts, you should appoint yourself accountant for a day per month. During this time, this is your job for your artist company. So, it becomes harder to evade. You also know that at a precise point, the accountant will leave and the artist will be able to create without bookkeeping worries at the back of his mind.

Taking my own practice, I found five areas:

• Operation (which includes the actual artistic creation)
• Marketing
• Finance
• Sales
• Support (Information technology, legal, etc.)

What is the point of spending time dreaming of your large organisation if you are a one-person only practice? There are multiple benefits to this exercise:

• It forces you to look beyond the creative side of your artist practice: It is easy to neglect the business aspect of being an artist. When you have completed the organisation chart, you realise that painting is only one strand of your trade.

• You can identify gaps in your business practice. Once you identified the different roles, you can write the job descriptions with the activities and tasks assigned to the different members of your organisation. If one person has a job that you are not currently doing, you know this is a gap you must fill in. Below is an example for what the Marketing function could cover.
  


• You can allocate your time more effectively: How many hours do you need to dedicate to the business side of your practice? How many hours per month you need to accomplish the projects allocated to your different functions?

• You can train yourself more efficiently. Once you know what activities you are covering, work on a training plan in the same way you would do for a business. Do you know about accounting? How good are you at PR activities? etc. This way, you have a chance to escape the “Jack of all trades, master of none” syndrome.

• Clarify your goals and action plan. By writing down who’s doing what in your organisation, you can better define priorities in a balanced way.

• Make your goals achievable by breaking them down: Aspirations and visions are great to lead you where you want, but you must translate them into projects and then define the next action to get each project moving. Each member of your organisation should have at least one project with one defined next action. Big aspirations (e.g. “I want to make a leaving from my art”) can look daunting until you bring them down to earth and anchor them into reality with a next immediate action you can take to move in the right direction.

• Keeps you focussed: This comes back to a comment already made. By separating roles, you can concentrate on the task at hand for a given role. You avoid the situation where the artist is in charge of the accounts and the sales person manages the finance.

• You can write procedure manuals: This idea is also at the centre of the “E-myth Revisited” which recommends applying to any small or medium business the turn key concept used in franchising. In a nutshell, you need to structure your business in a way that would enable anyone to step in and run it. How do you do that? By documenting every aspect of your business into procedure manuals that, when followed step by step, will give a predictable, consistent and high standard of service. You may think that painting is such a personal skill that this is not relevant to an artist. But what about your marketing manager, your account, your supply manager?… To give you an example, you can write a checklist on how to create and upload a new page onto your website.
  

It’s time to put the idea into practice. Take an A3 sheet of paper and put your name in a box at the top of the page. Underneath, write “Artist, CEO”. Then create your organisation and start working on your business.

Worth reading

E-myth Revisited

Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play

Mark Forster's blog : highly recommended.

Art business Art marketing Goal setting E-Myth Revisited Michael Gerber Mark Forster Get Everything Done Turn Key

Relaxing at Mevagissey Oil Painting

This is an oil painting of two fishing boats in Mevagissey harbour in Cornwall. I went there in vacations and took many pictures in the harbour. I like the strong composition and the coloured reflections on the water.

I took some notes and photographs while working on the painting and will do a series of posts demonstrating my working process with oil.

Relaxing at Mevagissey - Oil painting on canvas (24” X 20”) by Benoit Philippe

I have done in the past several watercolours showing other views of the harbour that you can see in my Watercolour Portfolio.




oil painting seascape mevagissey cornwall

Visit to Bristol´s City Museum & Art Gallery

I recently went back to Bristol´s City Museum & Art Gallery. The museum is a typical city museum with collections of fossils, minerals, natural history, eastern art, world wildlife, Egyptology, archaeology. It also counts seven galleries of fine and applied art.

The Art galleries have a few treasures worth the journey. They have a good collection of classic paintings as well as contemporary ones. I however spent most of my time studying the impressionist paintings in the collection:

• Eugène Boudin, “Harbour scene”. This harbour scene is based on some wonderful grey harmonies. The artist captured the essence of the boats with their white sails and riggings. This small painting must have been started on location and finished in the studio, as Boudin used to work. It retains the freshness of a painting executed from nature. The notice had and interesting piece of information regarding the relationship between Boudin and Claude Monet and the influence Boudin had on the great impressionist painter. Boudin persuaded Monet, then 17 years old, to work with him from nature during summer 1858. Monet declared: “My eyes were finally opened an I really understood nature; I learned at the same time to love it.”
  
  
• Alfred Sisley “Entrance to a village” (c.1880). The subject is representative of Sisley’s works: the centre of the painting is occupied by a tree. Two ladies are walking on the road and, in the middle ground, the roof of a house is the only orange touch In the painting. The brushwork is very loose and free. The clouds are vibrant with pink and purple shadows.
  
• A large pastel by Pierre Auguste Renoir “The Two Sisters” (c. 1889).You can see a reproduction of this pastel here. This is a rather spontaneous pastel, not overworked. The figures have the roundness of the girls painted by the artist in other works.
  
• Georges-Pierre Seurat “Sunset” (c. 1881). This small work on panel predates the pointillism period that made Seurat famous. In the background on the right, a house is lost in the vegetation. In the foreground, two trees are anchored into a blazing field. The work is based on a contrast between the ultramarine trees and the orange creamy warm clouds. It is also interesting to see how the painter used the grain of the wood to create texture in the foreground.

• Edouard Vuillard, “Interior with madame Hessel and her dog” plays on an unusual composition. Most of the surface of the painting represents the floor and the piece of furniture and the figure are pushed to the upper end of the picture, giving an impression of space. This picture was painted on unprimed cardboard that shows in some areas of the painting. The unprimed surface also gives a mat finish to the painting.

Location of the museum

Bristol's City Museum & Art Gallery,
Queen's Road,
Bristol, BS8 1RL
Opening hours
Open 7 days a week, 10am - 5pm.

Bristol Art Gallery Museum South West Monet Renoir Sisley Boudin Vuillard

Watching the movie - Oil painting study

Watching the movie - oil on panel (6" x 8") by Benoit Philippe

I painted this quick study while one of my daughters was watching a movie on TV at the week-end. That gave me around one hour to complete the painting. I want to do more figure works and this is a perfect way to get started.


I liked the way the light from the window was hitting from the left side, spreading blue light on the reflective leather surface of the sofa.


Armed with my pochade box (see my pochade setting here), I used a MDF panel toned with a cool grey and a set of hog brushes. I barely sketched the proportions of the figure using a small brush, then started with the head and developed the painting from there.



pochade oil painting oil study figure