Introduction  Welcome to this month’s Oil Painting Blog for Beginners. * Apologies, we had promised this blog a few months back, but we were having trouble with the initial design illustrations, so we reached out to ‘The Color Wheel Company’ who have very kindly granted us permission to use the front and rear images of their colour wheel which are perfect for this three-part oil painting blog which will be broken down into the following parts: Part 1 How to use the Front of the Colour Wheel Part 2 How to use the Rear of the Colour Wheel (coming soon) Part 3 Using the Colour Wheel for ..read more

Welcome to this month’s blog on Pastel Drawing – A Beginner’s Guide. * This Pastel Blog is to coincide with our new pastel drawing workshops we introduced before Christmas. They are half-day workshops, with all materials supplied for the session and they will take place once a month, usually the first week of the month. No previous sketching or drawing experience is required, just come and join us and we will guide you step by step through each drawing. Introduction – What Are Pastels? Pastels are a fantastic drawing and painting medium. They come in three main forms, Soft, Hard and Oil ..read more

Introduction to the Art of Colour Mixing Welcome to this month’s Oil Painting Blog for Beginners. * The art of colour mixing, is a complex process. For the Beginner artist, it can be a difficult and mysterious skill to master. However, within this issue, we hope to remove some of the mystery for the beginner and provide a few clear guidelines to ensure successful colour mixing every time. Introduction to the Art of Colour Mixing Tip 1 – Work With A Limited Colour Palette Tip 2 – Learn To See Colour Bias When Mixing Colour Tip 3 – Consult Your Colour Wheel Tip 4 – Don’t Mix More Than 2/3 ..read more

Welcome to this month’s Oil Painting Blog for Beginners, An Artists Stroll Around Dublin’s Art Galleries * With summer officially underway, I thought you might like to follow me on my favourite Saturday morning stroll around Dublin’s art galleries. Now, given that the studio is working at full capacity at the minute, I haven’t had the pleasure of doing this route in quite some time, so before taking the trip do checkout, opening times, prices and summer exhibitions! So Let’s Begin with a couple of Pre-Gallery Stops National Gallery of Ireland Lavina Fontana: Trailblazer, Rule Breaker P ..read more

Welcome to this month’s Oil Painting Blog for Beginners. [*] In celebration of International Women’s Day and following our theme of ‘the Irish Artist’, this month we are taking a helicopter view of two of our twentieth century Women Irish Artists, including one of my absolute favourites, Mary Swanzy, and the revolutionary artist, May Guinness. Each of these artists deserves a full blog and indeed many books dedicated to them. However, through this short blog, I hope to introduce or reintroduce you to their work, which luckily can be seen in our galleries including the National Gallery of ..read more

Welcome to this month’s Oil Painting Blog for Beginners, our first for 2023. This month in the spirit of the overwhelming success of ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’, we had to look at the life and artwork of Paul Henry, another artist who helped make the Irish cottage and our western landscape a national and international sensation. An incredible feat for a man who was later described as having red-green colour blindness [1]. This wasn’t public knowledge and was only revealed by his doctor at a retrospective exhibition of his work in 1973, some 15 years after his death and it was understood b ..read more

Welcome to this month’s Oil Painting Blog for Beginners. Last month, I promised to write another blog on the history of landscape painting and its artists. However, after seeing The Mary and Ben Dunne Collection – An exhibition of Exceptional Irish Art in Gormley’s art gallery, I’ve decided to dedicate the next few blogs to some of our famous Irish artists. So, this month, we are taking a very high-level look at one of my favourite Irish artists – Roderic O’Conor. Roderic O’Conor (1860 – 1940) * Self Portrait (1903) National Gallery of Ireland Bequeathed, Mr W Wallace Anderson (1929 ..read more

Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to September’s Oil Painting Blog. We are delighted to be back after such an amazing Summer. We have a jam-packed series of blogs ready and waiting to be released to you each month as we roll on into the Autumn / Winter including a fabulous Christmas edition. This month we are going to begin on a gentle note to ease you all back in again with a 4 Key Point Introduction to the History of Landscape Painting – A Beginner’s Guide. * Key Point 1 – The History of Landscape Painting – When it all Began – An Introduction Landscape painting is a relatively new develo ..read more

Cubism Introduction Welcome to this month’s Oil Painting Blog. * Last month, we looked at Post-Impressionism and artists such as Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cezanne. This month, we will be focusing on another key artist movement – Cubism. I think this is a natural progression, given that, it is often said that the work of Cezanne set the stage for Cubism. In 1907, a year after his death, a landmark retrospective of his artwork was held at the Salon d’Automne, this proved to have a lasting impact on many influential artists of that time. These artists would go on to echo Cezanne’s train of though ..read more

Welcome, to this month’s Oil Painting Blog! So, Easter has come and gone, and now we are heading for the May and June Bank Holidays. I don’t know about you, but this year is flying! I’m looking forward to the first two weeks in May, as, according to the local plant nurseries, we should, be able to put the new seedlings out to harden. Hopefully, by then, I will get my kitchen back. For us here at the studio, the beekeeping season kicked off at the weekend. We carried out an inspection, started the spring feed and transferred a 6 framed nuc (half a hive) into a full 12 framed national hive ..read more