The Painters Palette

Talking about all things art related.

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Art Block?

© 2019 Pricilla Cordova

We’ve all had the confidence and raced to our sketchbooks, pulling out our materials and then when you sit down, you see the blank page and just stare. All that confidence has gone away and you’re left with one question, “what do I make?” Art block, is it. It’s when you don’t know what to make or lose motivation to make art. Some artist go months being in an art block whilst other solve it quickly. The best way to describe it is like falling down the hole in Alice in Wonderland and never coming out.

One of the things to do is drawing what you see, making still lifes. Take yourself back to audition days and grab random items in your house and place them on a table with a source of light. Now simply draw or paint what you see. Another one of my favorites is to use a prompt generator. It’ll give you completely random prompts of any category you choose from and you have to make it. Do the prompt that it gives you without backing out. Although it may be challenging, it is possible to get out of a art block. Draw something now!!

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Have You Tried Procreate?

© 2020 Pricilla Cordova

Procreate is an app created by Apple in 2011 on the iPad. For $12.99, you can unlock everything you need to make digital art. You can make custom canvas sizes, import endless brushes, use masks, and apply effects and etc.

I made the piece above in Procreate only using the airbrush. Additionally, you can see a Timelapse of how you made your piece and show it off to anyone! The ease of sharing your artworks is at your disposal by exporting in various formats (png, jpeg, pdf,etc). For anyone who doesn’t like carrying around a lot of materials, Procreate is for you. Now, you can make art from anywhere and anytime.

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Linocut Process

© 2019 Pricilla Cordova

Linocut is the process of carving onto a material and essentially making a stamp. One that you may know on the top of your head is The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai.

© 1831 Hokusai

Different materials can be used for linocut such as woodblocks, japanese vinyl, Speedy-Carve, Essdee Softcut, and the most popular, traditional linoleum. In the first image, I used traditional linoleum.

If you'd like to try yourself try following this video, where it teaches you step-by-step how to make your first linoleum carving! Let your creativity take its course and make something cool. Just a tip, if you want to get an ombre effect, you can place two block printing inks and roll them together.

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How to Make Art with a Limited Palette

© 2019 Pricilla Cordova Many believe that you need endless colors to make a complete artwork. However that is not the case. Anyone can make a nice piece of artwork with a limited palette.

When making a limited palette, I always suggest three colors: one for lighting, shadows, and a base color. Additionally, it gives one more wiggle room when creating their piece. For example, with my piece above, I used orange as a mid tone color and yellow as a highlight. I even decided to add subtle tones of white to show lighting. The purple was used as negative space to show darker parts of the subject.

If you have trouble trying to find colors, you can always look up “three colored palettes” on Pinterest or even use coolors.co that gives you endless inspiration.

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Try Out Gold Leaf

© 2019 Pricilla Cordova

Gold leaf has been around for over 8,000 years, originating in Turkey. Gold leaf can be used on almost anything ranging from pottery to any artwork. It usually comes in a set of multiple sheets that you peel off. To apply it, you first put the gold leaf adhesive onto the area of your choice. Then peel the backing off the gold leaf sheet and put the gold leaf over the adhesive area. Once placed, grab a big makeup brush and dust away the remaining gold leaf. Finally, you’re left with a beautiful pop to your work. Next time you think about making something, try using gold leaf!