A direct approach

Every painting’s varying subject matter and scale offers us distinct opportunities and challenges. Before I start any project, I like to consider what I want to convey, what opportunities and challeng

SOMETIMES MAKING LIFE SIMPLER FOR YOURSELF and avoiding overthinking a process gets you further. In painting terms, using flat colours does exactly that and it may even prove to hold the key to more c

I STRUGGLED INTO MY LAYERS, picked up my light sketching kit and off I went up into the hills behind where I live. I wasn’t the first to arrive; halfway up the hill I could already hear the cries of e

This sunny landscape of oak trees in Chatsworth Park in Derbyshire is a wonderfully inspiring view, masses of Autumnal foliage back-lit by the warm sunshine. But how can we recreate that warmth with t

When painting from a reference photo, it’s fair to say that composition is already there for you. But when we paint in the great outdoors, it suddenly becomes very difficult. You have a wide periphera

Capturing the immediacy of fighting and the writhing bodies of soldiers, as well as keeping narrative clarity, proved enormously difficult for painters depicting battles before the advent of photography. Michael Hall reveals how they rose to the challenge