Anthony O'Keefe Portrait and Equine Artist

I’m amazed to see it is two years since I last wrote a blog; and what a two years that has been. I am now a self employed artist, own a Post Office and run art workshops. I’m “living my dream” to use that much overused phrase. I started the Workshops in November 2016 as I was convinced that with …

There have been loads of books written about composition that all aspects of visual arts from painting to interior design and films but I find it best to stick to some simple guidelines to help me produce the painting I want and is pleasing to the eye. I say guidelines as they are just that, not rules, and can be …

We all receive critiques, it’s part of exhibiting our work, it’s important that we treat them as fuel to enhance our work and develop as an artist. To be able to judge the value of the critique we need to understand what type it is and then to treat accordingly. I classify critiques into three groups; objective, subjective and self-criticism. …

Greys are one of the most important “colours” in painting which when used correctly add realistic variation in tone and warmth. My favourite grey was shown to me at Art Umbrian in Italy by a wonderful artist Freda Anderson I find it to be the most versatile of greys and I use it in every painting I produce, some of them …

I’m sure most people have experienced the problem of starting a piece of work only to discover that a slightly different composition would have been better. The way I get over this is by painting a watercolour sketch of the composition in the middle of a sheet. I can then play around with the boundaries until I achieve what I …

The advantage of underpainting is that you can quickly get the features in the right place and produce the right structure and tonal balance. It is monochrome so you do not need to be concerned with colour at this stage. I use Terra-Verta for my underpainting of flesh which is easy to use and cools down the finished painting where …

Everyone will have their own opinion on this subject. For me the best technical painting book I’ve ever read and always re-read, is “Alla Prima ii” by Richard Schmid, I’d reccomend it to all artists whatever their stage. Alla Prima is not a technique I use but the amount and standard of advice within the book is astounding, and crosses …

The thing to remember when using photographs as references for your paintings is that the camera does not see the world in the same way as you and I. If you want to paint pictures that captures the way we see the world you need to understand and compensate for these failings. In my opinion the main failings and a …

Rather than starting off with “my pallet is..” I thought I’d jump right into the deep end and share how I get the effect of contours. In my paintings that would normally be muscles and features. Unless I’m playing around I do not use a lot of paint on my canvases, instead I build up very thin layers letting each …

Reading a book called “Show Your Work” by Austin Kleon has inspired me to share the tips I’ve gained that help my paintings come alive. Being a self taught artist most of these tips have been learnt by trial and error, there maybe other ways to get the same results, but the ones I’m going to share work for me. …