Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art and Writing

How to paint in 21 easy steps.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

I get so many emails asking me simple questions like:

"Can you show me how to paint?"

"How do you paint?"

"I want to paint, too."

"Can you tell me your exact technique for such-and-such a painting? I'd like to try that myself."

Clearly, this post is desperately needed. I love to give away all the trade secrets and techniques I've come up with so I can create new competitors. So, just for you, I've provided this handy step-by-step method to paint like me. However, you'll need your sarcasm decoder ring handy in order to translate what I'm really telling you. OK. Ready?

Assemble your ingredients, both high grade a shoddy. | view photo |
Carefully organize your painting area. | view photo |
Tape your paper to your drawing board with quick release non-archival distracting blue masking tape. Ignore any unfinished art that may be attached to your board that you know you'll never finish. | view photo |
Dig through your dirty drawing box for a soft charcoal. | view photo |
Try to become artsy and start drawing with the charcoal on the paper. The paper isn't sacred! No erasing! You're going to paint over it anyway. | view photo |
With a damp sponge, apply unbleached gesso with abandon. Feel very arty when you're doing this so the end result is arty abandonment. | view photo |
Use some Higgins brown waterproof drawing ink and scribble and drip all over with the dropper from the bottle. Again, be arty. This is a low-grade student-quality ink (read: cheap) which means you have less control which means the end result is much prettier than some high-falutin' stuff. | view photo |
Spray the whole thing with a few squirts of water from the water bottle. No reason. Just because.
Using acrylic matte medium, adhere some cheesecloth in random snippets to the painting. This makes the painting worth about $20 more because you can call it a "collage" along with being "multi-media" and can also add glowing phrases about how it has both actual and visual texture. You'll sound really arty. | view photo |
At this point, put on your beret. You've earned it.
Using a water soluble crayon, such as Caran D'Ache, throw some color into your painting. Contrary to what your kindergarten teacher taught you, you do not get points for staying in the lines. | view photo |
Slop some water around to activate those crayon scribbles! | view photo |
While the paper is still sloppy wet, go back with a water crayon in a color that "doesn't belong" (artists should naturally love outsiders) and put in some lines of contrast. Trust me. It will make this painting "real art." If you don't like it, pretend you do and start searching for a reason for why it should be there in case your detractors demand to know what you were thinking. | view photo |
Using a non-water soluble medium, like color crayons or colored pencils (both wax-based), go in and give your painting some interesting line work. This stuff will stay put, though it will be covered in some spots in later steps. But make this count! And be arty! | view photo |
At this point, if you're feeling depressed, turn on some Sarah McLachlan music. It'll make it all that much worse.
Take out your expensive travel watercolor set, and start laying in some shadows and broad areas of wash. Let that watercolor feather and run! No control needed! | view photo |
Once the watercolor is dry, mix some unbleached gesso, water and a little glitter together. You don't need the glitter but nothing says class like glitter! So smoke 'em if you got 'em! Then brush this watery mixture onto your painting as a highlight. Again, be arty and let it slop around, but make it "controlled" slop! | view photo |
Let this gesso layer dry. It'll leave the surface with a bit of tooth and allow you to add another layer of line work and/or watercolor washes over the top. The more layers the better! It's like peeling an onion, except it's more like building one, except it isn't!
If you have a copier or a laser printer, either black and white or color, you're in luck for this next step. If you don't, that's a tough bounce for you. Print out a sheet of whatever symbols, letters or other imagery you think would really make your painting pop, making sure to mirror it before printing. Place the sheet on your painting, put some Acetone on a rag, and rub the back of the sheet. The acetone is a solvent and will transfer the toner to the painting. It will also fry your skin and your brain so wear a latex glove and don't do this too much in a closed space. Of course, it will degrade the glove after not-too-long of a time. So don't dilly dally. Some color printers and copiers use toner that doesn't work well. I chose to use cave painting motifs in my painting simply because it makes no sense at all, kind of like people who cover themselves with stock tattoos to express their individuality. The more nonsensical, the more money you can charge! | view photo |
You may embellish your transfers, paint over them with the semi-transparent gesso, or whatever you'd like. | view photo |
This is the step where I step back, look at the painting, and fudge around with it by repeating a few of the techniques I've already done until I get it to look right. Then I slop a thick and uneven coat of acrylic gloss medium over parts of the painting because it has a way of tearing the best (and most over-worked) laid plans asunder, creating lovely textures. | view photo |

Have a look at some close-ups of the finished product: | detail 1 | detail 2 | detail 3 | detail 4 |

I'm pleased with the final results except for one thing: it looks too much like anime. In my book, a book which is fully devoid of anything anime, that makes it crap. It looks like an anime Legolas. It looks a litttttle too angry.

I'll try again tomorrow.

However, my main point here, in answer to the many questions thrown my way requesting help, wanting me to tell someone how to paint in one quick email, is this: It's not an exact science. I don't know that I think I know how to paint so handing out advice is a bit creepy. It's not super easy to just tell you what to do without you having the benefit of years of painting failures and successes and personal discoveries of style and medium techniques.

How to paint?

Learn to draw. Learn all the rules of perspective and chiaroscuro and all the boring, restrictive stuff that no one seems to want to learn. Then you can break the rules. Then, squirt out some paint, dip in the brush, slap it on the paper. That's it. You have to experiment with all kinds of stuff, make huge, ugly mistakes, paint over them, and try again.