Dehradun College of Art

“Sketching is almost everything. It is the painter's identity, his style, his conviction, and then colour is just a gift to the drawing.” Fernando Botero When you are a beginner to sketching, you might not feel comfortable with the pencil or the paper, but only practising can make you better at it. Many artists would advise to always keep a sketchbook at hand, but only filling the pages with doodles is not enough(although it is good for boosting your imagination and creative thinking) you also need to practise your skill and techniques. Some Tips which are sure to help in improving your sketching skills: Knowing what type of pencil to choose for a sketch is a basic skill for all artists. Their Hardness(H) or Blackness(B) is written on the top to signify the darkness of their colour. Pencil with harder core will lighter and vice versa. Hence a pencil a with a higher number next to H will mean it harder and thus lighter but for B the higher number means it is darker...

If you want to try playing with colours then acrylics are the way to go, they are cheaper than oil paints and also the easiest to master than other liquid mediums, but it still won’t be a cakewalk, you will need to practice with many different techniques and styles to find what works for you, along with some precautions to protect your supplies and get the best out of your paintings. Brushes To paint you need brushes, and you’ll need a variety of them for different tasks like detailed work or blending colours, for acrylics, it’s best if you stick to synthetic bristles because they’ll last longer compared to natural hair brushes and they’re also cheaper. And always clean your brushes with soap water when you’re done using them otherwise the paint will dry and ruin your brush. Paints There are many types and brands of paints with different names for the same colour, and they also have a different consistency and texture, experiment to see what works best f...

Most of the readers will be thinking ‘Everyone knows how to use it’ ‘It is for children’ ‘What is there to master?’ And they are not wrong since it is the cheapest of other mediums and everyone has used watercolour in school so you think you have mastered it, but let me tell you that there is more to it than that. Watercolours may be cheaper and easier to learn, but they are actually considered one of the hardest mediums to master because you cannot use white to cover your mistakes or paint light areas and a single drop of water can dilute the colour and ruin the detailed work that took hours to create. Here are some useful instruction on how to Master the Watercolours To paint solid shapes use ample amount of paint and make swift strokes, You can use the edge of flat brushes for making sharper lines and it works wonders for shadows or grasses, Don’t try to control it, improvise it. See how the colours interact and react with each other or the surface, experiment w...