My top 3 pieces of art content. Written & Video (Done by Doug Swinton)

Here are my top 3 art posts from Doug Swinton. I was watching the iconic TV show... Friends the other day and an episode showed all the past episodes and the funniest moments with Joey Tribbiani. This got me thinking... We should have a blog post that goes back to all the best written and video posts my dad (Doug Swinton) and I have done. - Rion Swinton.

Here are my top 3 written posts I feel had the most value in them:

Written posts:

1: 7 Ways To Give Your Painting Dimension

This article can take your paintings from beginner to advanced levels when you practise all 7 steps. This post explains how you can use Value, Temperature, Chroma, Perspective, and Texture to give dimension to your painting.

PS. Number 3 is about Chroma. Doug has a Chroma & Value Colours guide chart that could help you understand and mix the correct colour. -> https://www.swintonsart.com/product-page/chroma-value-colour-guide

See the post here -> https://www.swintonsart.com/post/7-ways-to-give-your-painting-dimension

2: 10 Painting Rules & When To Break Them

This post not only gives you the rules you should stick to but also when and how to break them once you understand them.

See the post here -> https://www.swintonsart.com/post/10-painting-rules-when-to-break-them

3: 7 Benefits of Painting with a Limited Palette

This is a question I get asked a lot when artists are looking for colours to buy or deciding to go with professional-grade or student-grade paint. They want to know what colours to buy so they can then use colour theory to make any colour they need to paint with.

See the post here -> https://www.swintonsart.com/post/7-benefits-of-painting-with-a-limited-palette

It is more beneficial to get professional-grade paint and stick with the same palette every time... This way you will have the best results from using top-grade paint, you won't have to spend a crazy amount of money because you won't have 60 million colours you're using and you will learn to use the colours you have chosen to work with because you stick with those colours and don't deviate.

___________________________________

Video Posts:

Doug and I have done hundreds of video posts on social media all about painting. Out of around 300 posts, I have found these 3 to have the most impact and value.

1: Horizontal lines go away from you... Vertical lines come towards you.

See how to make your paintings more believable with this 60-second video.

See video here ->

Or view the original video on TikTok here -> https://www.tiktok.com/@swintons/video/7255288736005573894?lang=en

(A side note... This video generated over 6 million views and gained us over 100,000 followers across all platforms with ONE video.

2: Concave vs Convex.

When Doug showed me this concept I was blown away. It's so noticeable and yet you will never see it unless you know what you're looking for. Walt Disney knew this best. Concave lines show weakness and convex lines show strength. When you have a concave line in a painting and want your painting to turn out bold you can paint a bunch of convex lines while creating the entire shape to be perceived as a concave line and it will strengthen your painting.

Or view the original video on Facebook here-> https://www.facebook.com/watch/?mibextid=wwXIfr&v=1340584266458722&rdid=C1kvT2ahmAjULWcP

3: Re-shape your brush with sugar water.

This is another question I get asked a lot when working at Swinton's. "How do I get my brush back to shape?". This is a great question as brushes are expensive. There are cleaners out there that will de-gunk your paintbrush but how do you get it back to "shape"? Well, it turns out that if you steam your brush, dip it in sugar water, shape it with your hand then leave it to dry it will re-shape your brush. Even better... If it's a flat brush you can use a playing card and a paper clip to shape it back to flat again.

Some brushes are too far gone and this will not work for those ones however for the majority of them it will.

View the original video on Instagram here-> https://www.instagram.com/reel/CidlE9bvoEO/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

After this video, we decided to recreate it in a faster and funnier style. See version 2 of the video below.

See version 2 of the video here -> https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0JvU1itZXX/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

___________________________________

I hope you all enjoyed and got something out of this. Doug has been teaching a crazy amount lately and even on a normal week it's hard to get that guy out of the studio... So I decided to give him a month off of writing posts so he could concentrate on teaching and painting.

Love you, Dad!

Your friend in art,

Rion.

Bonus content! If you're looking for a challenge to kick your year off right and up your painting game. Check out this video exercise from last year. Many students and artists were excited to take this challenge and tried, although only two went through with it and completed it! Congrats to you two!