What “Improving” Actually Means
Painting is a bundle of separate skills: seeing and judging values, mixing colour, drawing and proportion, handling paint, and making decisions about composition. Most people feel they are “not improving” because they paint a lot without noticing which of these skills is holding them back.
The habits below are common advice among teachers and working painters. None of them is a guarantee, and they work best when you pick one or two rather than trying everything at once.
Practise With a Purpose
Painting many canvases is not the same as practising. Deliberate practice means choosing one thing to work on in a session, such as edges, value range or colour mixing, and then judging the result against that goal only.
A few ways to do this:
- Name one question before you start (“Can I keep my darkest shadow simple?”).
- Isolate your weak area. If your portraits feel flat, practise values. If your colours look muddy, practise mixing on a scrap surface.
- Write one sentence afterwards about what worked and what did not.
Work Small and Finish Things
Small studies, often 30 to 60 minutes each, let you test an idea without the pressure of a large piece. Sketchbook work counts too; see how to get better at sketching. You get more attempts in the same time, and each attempt teaches you something about decisions, not just technique.
Finishing matters too. Many creative people are enthusiastic starters, and a pile of unfinished canvases gives you little feedback. A small finished painting shows you the whole process, including the awkward middle stage you have to push through.
Limit Your Palette
Using fewer colours removes many decisions and makes mixing easier to understand. See mixing colors in watercolor or oil painting color theory for how that looks in practice. Will Kemp Art School, for example, suggests starting with a single colour such as ultramarine blue plus white and adding colours slowly. Simple limited sets might be:
- One blue, one red, one yellow and white (a basic mixing set), or
- One dark colour plus white, to focus entirely on value.
Once you can make a painting work with three or four colours, adding more feels like a choice rather than a crutch.
Copy a Master Study
Copying a small section of a painting by an artist you admire is a long-standing way to learn. You see how they simplify shapes, place light and dark, and handle edges. Keep it a study: choose a small area, work at a modest size and ask what the artist decided, rather than aiming for a perfect replica. If you share a copy, label it clearly as a study after the original artist.
Learn Values First
Value, the lightness or darkness of a colour, is widely treated as the backbone of a convincing painting. A painting with sound values can often still work with imperfect colour, but the reverse is harder. For medium-specific guidance, see value in watercolor painting and value in oil painting.
Try this exercise:
- Pick a simple subject, such as a cup or a piece of fruit.
- Paint it in one dark colour (burnt umber or a dark blue) plus white.
- Aim for three or four clear value steps: light, middle, dark and a darkest accent.
- Squint at your reference and your painting to check that they match.
Review Your Own Work
Look at paintings from a few weeks ago next to today’s. Take a photo, turn it to greyscale to check values, or view the painting in a mirror or upside down. Fresh eyes spot drawing errors and muddy areas you stopped noticing. Keep a short list of recurring issues and use it to choose your next practice goal.
Build a Routine You Can Keep
Regular short sessions usually beat occasional marathons. Even 15 to 20 minutes can be enough for a small study or a sketchbook page. If you have trouble starting, a structured prompt can help; see what daily painting challenges are and how to start one. Set a minimum you can do on a bad day and treat anything more as a bonus.
Loosen Up and Experiment
Technical practice and play support each other. Open-ended sessions can reduce perfectionism and show you what paint does when you are not controlling it. Three directions worth trying:
- Intuitive painting, where you respond to marks on the page instead of following a plan.
- Texture art, which makes you think about surface and tools, not only colour.
- Making paint from plants, which shows how pigment, water and binder interact.
Rules of Thumb You May Hear
Searches often turn up “rules” such as 70/30, 80/20 or the 50% rule. These are informal guidelines, not laws, and different teachers use them differently. A common idea behind them is that one element (a colour, a value or a type of shape) should dominate while a smaller share provides contrast, so a painting does not feel evenly split and static. Composition in watercolor painting discusses the 70/30 idea in more detail. Treat any ratio as a starting point to test and adjust by eye.
Another frequent question is what baking soda does in paint. Some crafters add it to acrylic to thicken paint or build texture, but results vary by brand and amount, and it can change how the paint dries and looks. Test on a scrap surface first. It is a craft shortcut rather than a standard painting material.
A Simple Four-Week Plan
- Week 1: One dark colour plus white, three small value studies.
- Week 2: A three-colour palette plus white, two small still lifes.
- Week 3: One small master study, followed by a short written review.
- Week 4: A loose, intuitive session, then compare it with week 1.
Adjust the plan to your schedule. The point is to repeat a cycle of trying, finishing and reviewing.
FAQ
How long does it take to see improvement? It varies with how often you practise and how focused the practice is. Many people notice changes after a few weeks of regular, targeted work, but skills like drawing and colour judgment keep developing over years.
Should I paint from photos or from life? Both are useful. Life gives a better sense of colour and depth, while photos are convenient for quick studies. Mixing the two is a reasonable approach.
What if I am not enjoying it? Reduce the pressure. Shorter sessions, a smaller size or a playful exercise can bring the enjoyment back.