Elaine Hall Art

16/09/2026

You can stare at a painting for an hour and not see what is wrong with it.

Your brain stops looking after a while. It starts seeing what you meant to paint instead of what is actually there.

These three checks break that. All of them take ten seconds and all of them work by making the painting unfamiliar again.

Squint. Turn it upside down. Look at it small on your phone. Stand back and see do you like it now.

I will go through all three properly in today’s substack with the painting here . The link is in my stories now and my bio of you miss my stories .

Which one are you going to try first?

14/09/2026

You are not painting an apple. You are painting the light landing on an apple.

That sounds like a word game until you try it. Most beginners paint what they know is there, so a red apple gets painted red all over with a bit of dark down one side. The eye reads it as a flat red shape.

What is actually in front of you is a lit side and a shadow side, and those two are different colours, not the same colour lighter and darker. The lit side takes the colour of the light. The shadow side takes whatever is bouncing into it.

Mix both piles before you touch the panel. Block the shape in with only those two. No blending, no detail. The form appears on its own.

Which of my two piles is the warmer one?

Link to workbook in my bio 😊

11/09/2026

Most beginners paint everything in the middle.

Not light enough, not dark enough, everything sitting in the same narrow band. That is why a painting looks flat even when the drawing is right.

The fix is dull and it works. Make a value scale. Nine steps, black to white, mixed by hand, no shortcuts. Do it once properly and your eye starts sorting everything you look at into steps instead of colours.

This is one sheet from the workbook. I filled it in this morning the same way I ask my students to, and I still get the middle three wrong first time.

Handbook and workbook are both at the link in my bio.

Where do your paintings usually sit, too light or too dark?

09/09/2026

For every beginner ever we have all run into the same problems and that’s why I have been creating this handbook and exercise pack. It’s to guide you through exercises to grow your creativity and support you on those first steps. It’s fully printable and comes with an exercise pack so you can practice everything you are learning .
Here is the link 😊⬇️

I’m Elaine Hall, an Irish artist, teacher and creator based in Co. Wicklow.I paint from the places, colours and everyday moments that catch my attention. My work is about energy, atmosphere and the freedom to respond to what I see rather than trying ...