Fallen tree

As a matter of interest, Darren - are you painting these into a liquid white on the canvas, in (for instance) the Bob Ross/William Alexander method? There are some suggestions in the odd touch here and there that you might be. If you enjoy that, carry on, but could I make two suggestions to you - one, try painting on a 'dry' canvas, i.e. without the liquid white (if you are indeed using that), building up your painting from dark to light; and two, I also have an impression that you're working from somebody else's photographs - or even from their painting demonstrations; you'll make quicker progress if you go out with your camera and sketchbook, choosing your own subjects and looking at the way banks abut rivers, the way reflections are cast, the peculiar shapes deciduous tree branches make. I'm not saying you're not making progress in your first year of teaching yourself to paint, because you are: but some of your paintings are a bit on the dark side, and I think that MAY come from the method you've been using.

Hi Robert. Thanks for the info and when the weather is better I was planning on going out and taking pictures of different things. A lot of my first stuff was used with a medium and I looked at some work from a guy on you tube. But after the first year that was in January I'm slowly changing the way I paint as I hope you will see with some of my work as it's progressed. I'm thinking of taking a course on oil painting but people are telling me no I will find my own way. Any advice is greatly appreciated

If it's a good course, I should take it: to be absolutely frank, I would avoid the Bob Ross Instructors, because they teach only one method, and when you seek to try others, they can't help you. While you undoubtedly WILL find your own way, there's nothing like a bit of help while you're trying to get there. I completely understand about the weather - if you want to paint puddles, floods, mud, and rivers bursting their banks, it's probably perfect.... But I'd much rather stay indoors at the moment. Was the guy on YouTube Jason Bowen, I wonder .... he's a lovely man, and you can learn from him: but he is one of the Bob Ross devotees, and to be quite honest I think that holds him back rather than helps him. Still - each to their own. It depends so much on what you want to do - if what you want is just to have fun with paint, well the Rosses, the Jasons, the Darryl Crows are OK; if you want to become what I would call a real painter, though, they can't tell you how to be one, because they aren't themselves. (By 'real painter', I mean someone really interested in paint, as opposed to a hobbyist who just wants a few pretty pictures to give away as presents: nothing wrong with the latter, but if that's not you at all, you need to immerse yourself in wider influences.)