Master essential art techniques as you progress from drawing to painting. Through a wealth of exercises and projects, professional artist and teacher Paul Taggart shows you the many effects that can be achieved.

Sketching with paint is an excellent introduction to the media and all that you can accomplish with it. These exercises will teach you as much about the techniques as they will about a subject. And you'll learn a great deal by just allowing things to happen. Best of all, you won't have to worry if a sketch is left unfinished or even if you've taken it too far. The goal is to look at and record something from which you can either master a new technique or be inspired to produce a more finished painting in the future.

Capture your impressions of a subject by painting a sketch rather than drawing it. This is a marvelous way to gather information for a more finished piece later as well as to learn about different types of paint and techniques you can use.

Watercolor is a fantastic medium to start with because you can make changes quickly and easily. The only rule is to keep the paint transparent. That way, the color is almost luminescent as it passes through and bounces back from the white paper beneath. Use crumpled plastic wrap to create an extraordinary textured background of dense ferns that will beautifully set off a dragonfly.

Try acrylics on an animal portrait, which will give you practice at reproducing fur. While some parts of the coat require sharp individual features, others need to be kept soft and fluid. Consider also movement and depth along with variations of texture and color. Wet-on-wet acrylic painting offers all these properties.

Oil painting is unequalled when you want to convey sunlight, shadow, depth, and texture. Here you'll work with a traditional method, in which the paint layers
rare built up. This will give you a better understanding of what function they perform. Painting a stone wall will familiarize you with color mixing and the effects of sunlight.

Find out about mixed media by combining acrylics and soft pastels on a composition of a girl and a foal. The acrylic underpainting provides strong, bright colors and texture. The pastel layer lends softness. Once you begin to remove the pastel, you'll see the acrylic detail and can then choose which areas to reveal and which to leave soft.

Working with paint in this way is as exciting as it is important to anything you might create later.