While Shively took many painting trips abroad, he created the vast majority of his works locally. His favorite haunts included Morro Bay, Point Lobos, Rincon and other sites along the California coast. The Ventura County foothills, backcountry, valleys, local landmarks and sycamores also provided subject matter. His work was in high demand, and from 1932 to 1985 Shively sold nearly 1,000 paintings. When notice of the exhibit went out to the public, Jennifer Heighton, executive director of the museum, viewed numerous paintings held in private collections throughout Ventura County.

Home business opportunity: No experience required. No work involved. Earn $2000 in one week! It’s easy to spot these kinds of scams because they’re full of too good to be true promises. And, exclamation points, too. What job will earn you that much money in a week without having to have experience and NOT  having to work at all? None. Nada. Zilch!

2. Too friendly email

I mean the intro part of the email. If an email from someone you don’t know starts with “Hello my friend”, “Dear friend”, and they weren’t filtered by your spam box, consider these emails not so trustworthy. This method of scamming is known as phishing or fishing for details or information that will put your financial security in danger.

3. Money Matters

It promises that you can make money online. But you have to pay that upfront, one-time fee first for some training materials. Shady!

4. Assembled Jobs

If a home based business opportunity requires you to assemble furniture or stuff envelops, these are generic but often overlooked signs of a true blue scam.

5. Country Representative Job Offer

Coupled with sign no. 2, if an email offers you a job as a payment receiver requiring you to deposit a check on their behalf or anything similar to that job description, you’re doomed if you reply.

6. Job Offer that Requires Your Picture to Get Hired

Unless you are applying as a model, which is not a form of online money making venture, someone who’s looking for, say, a virtual assistant and asks that she sends a picture is offering something suspicious. Lots of free job listing sites have these types of job posts. Be very, very careful.

7. Employer has no online presence.

If you are trying to win an online job but when you researched about the online presence of your would-be employer and there’s no trace of his name or his company, ask your employer about his company or his business first.

8. Presence of Pressure Tactics.

If the online business opportunity tells you that you will get a chance to win a anti-scam book if you sign up now or you can avail of an early bird discount, walk! Unless they’re coaching or consultancy services which are not direct ways to earn money online, you should not be subjected to these kinds of pressuring if the opportunity will really make you money.

9. Request from Employer or Sponsor that You Keep the Offer a Secret

Coupled with scam sign no. 2 and 5, if the email sender asks you to keep your transactions confidential just for any reason at all, red flag, red flag, red flag! They don’t want you to inform others that you are about to get scammed, of course.

10. Emails from Someone in Nigeria

Although many Nigerians who use Internet scamming as past time, have already figured out that lots of Westerners already know that they should not trust any email from someone in Nigeria, there are still those who are gullible enough to fall for these frauds.

Educate your friends and family who love to use the Internet. They can still be too busy checking their emails or MySpace pages to know these signs.

It will cover general information on different types of painting such as landscape, portrait, and still life, to learning the elements of putting a painting together and how to do this.

 It will cover the basic art materials you will need and give you insider tips on what works best in terms of supplies. It will teach you different painting techniques or ways to apply the paint for interesting effects.

I would like to share a few thoughts on my beliefs about creating art.

I believe there is no “one way” to create art. When you create it; it is YOUR way. I don’t want to tell you to paint like me, I want to help you to find YOUR WAY to paint.

Learning to be an artist takes a life-time. You never stop learning to get better and the more you do your art; the better it will get. You will see the improvements as time goes by. Just keep some of your older works and look at them again and you will see the obvious improvements and growth you have achieved.

I believe art should have an underlying purpose – not just be a visual candy. Some examples of these are causing an emotional reaction from the viewer. Another under-lying purpose could be giving someone a deja-vu experience. The art should do one of two things either touch the heart or the head. You should get excited about it and feel like you have really accomplished your purpose. “If you are not going to get a thrill, how can you give someone else one? You must feel the beauty of the thing before you start.” by Charles Hawthorne

When you lose track of time working on your art you are actually experiencing the “creative” process. I believe you will actually go into a different state of consciousness thereby forgetting about time and the real world. I do this and have heard that many artist have this experience. It has to do with the “right brain” and how you go with your art experience. “Art comes into being in that abstract interval between a thought and reality, and no one – not even the artist who created it – can re-measure the influences that caused it.” by Edgar Payne

It will take time and patience to work your art and at times you may be annoyed or frustrated in the early stages of a painting. Try not to get discouraged as you WILL improve and get better. It will take time. Give yourself a break and don’t expect a masterpiece right away. At this time (as always), look at subject as ONLY masses of VALUE, COLOR, EDGES in the proper place in the painting (COMPOSITION) and the appropriate paint quality for this stage of the painting. Learning to paint is a skill that you have to practice in order to get better. Sort of like riding a bicycle. When you first tried to ride a bike you probably fell off a few times but after you kept trying you eventually got the hang of it.

I believe that if you really want to learn to paint; you will and with your efforts you will gain skills and knowledge along the way. Becoming an artist takes motivation and desire to learn and get better at your art. You need to continually practice your art and learn by taking course work and reading about art. I hope my website can give you more knowledge and skills in becoming a better artist.

“A student first paints everything, then paints like the teacher, and finally like themselves.” - E. John Robinson

When I paint I don’t just paint what I see; I try to interpret what I see as artistically as possible. Here are some of the magical things I can do when I paint; I can make the colors as bright or as dull as I want; I can interpret the tones in sharp contrast or very vaguely, and I can enlarge or reduce the shapes I see. I don’t want my painting to look like a photograph – if I did I would simply take a picture with a camera. I want it to look like a painting. I can use the camera to give me a reference of the scene I am painting. When I paint I want to see the brush strokes – to be able to just “indicate” with a few brush strokes what you are seeing as an artist and then let the viewer interpret the image in their way – this is exciting for an artist!

You will learn the what, where, when, how and why of oil painting. For some interesting information on the history of Oil Painting go to Art History As you begin to paint; keep in mind that every-time you do a new painting you will learn and get better! Be sure and bookmark this page to check back on updates and new projects being done. Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoy oil painting for beginners!

2. The artist most often uses a brush to apply the paint. Brushes are made from a variety of fibers to create different effects. For example, brushes made with hog’s bristle might be used for bolder strokes and impasto textures. Fitch hair and mongoose hair brushes are fine and smooth, and thus answer well for portraits and detail work. Even more expensive are red sable brushes (weasel hair). The finest quality brushes are called kolinsky sable; these brush fibers are taken from the tail of the Siberian mink. This hair keeps a superfine point, has smooth handling, and good memory (it returns to its original point when lifted off the canvas); this is known to artists as a brush’s “snap.”

Most artists paint in layers, which is simply called “Indirect Painting”. The method was first perfected through an adaptation of the Egg tempera painting technique and was applied by the Flemish painters in Northern Europe with pigments ground in linseed oil. More recently, this approach has been called the “Mixed Technique” or “Mixed Method”. The first coat (also called “underpainting”) is laid down, often painted with egg tempera or turpentine-thinned paint. This layer helps to “tone” the canvas and to cover the white of the gesso. Many artists use this layer to sketch out the composition. This first layer can be adjusted before moving forward, an advantage over the ‘cartooning’ method used in Fresco technique. After this layer dries, the artist might then proceed by painting a “mosaic” of color swatches, working from darkest to lightest. The borders of the colors are blended together when the “mosaic” is completed. This mosaic layer is then left to dry before applying details.

3. Artists in later periods, such as the impressionist era, often used this Wet-on-wet method more widely, blending the wet paint on the canvas without following the Renaissance-era approach of layering and glazing. This method (Wet-on-wet method) is also called “Alla Prima.” This method was created due to the advent of painting outdoors instead of inside a studio. While outside, an artist did not have the time to let each layer of paint dry before adding a new layer. Several contemporary artists use a blend of both techniques, which can add bold color (wet-on-wet) as well as the depth of layers through glazing.

4. When the image is finished and has dried for up to a year, an artist often seals the work with a layer of varnish that is typically made from damar gum crystals dissolved in turpentine. Such varnishes can be removed without disturbing the oil painting itself, to enable cleaning and conservation. Some contemporary artists decide not to varnish their work, preferring that the surfaces remain varnish-free.

Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil — especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called ‘varnishes’ and were prized for their body and gloss. Other oils occasionally used include poppyseed oil, walnut oil, and safflower oil. These oils confer various properties to the oil paint, such as less yellowing or different drying times. Certain differences are also visible in the sheen of the paints depending on the oil. Painters often use different oils in the same painting depending on specific pigments and effects desired. The paints themselves also develop a particular consistency depending on the medium.

Although oil paint was first used for the Buddhist Paintings by Indian and Chinese painters in western Afghanistan sometime between the fifth and ninth centuries,^{[citation needed]} it did not gain popularity until the 15th century. Its practice may have migrated westward during the Middle Ages. Oil paint eventually became the principal medium used for creating artworks as its advantages became widely known. The transition began with Early Netherlandish painting in northern Europe, and by the height of the Renaissance oil painting techniques had almost completely replaced tempera paints in the majority of Europe.

In recent years, water soluble oil paint has come to prominence, to some extent replacing the usage of traditional oils. Water soluble paints contain an emulsifier which allows them to be thinned with water (rather than with paint thinner), and allows very fast drying times (1-3 days) when compared with traditional oils (1-3 weeks).

Oil Painting Tip 1:
Always lay your oil paints out on your palette in the same order so that, with time, you’ll be able to pick up a bit of a colour instinctively.

cheaper alternatives to these pigments, generally labelled hues.)

Oil Painting Tip 5:
Use linseed oil for an underpainting or in the bottom layers of any oil painting done wet-on-dry as it dries the most thoroughly of all the oils used as mediums.

Oil Painting Tip 6:
Avoid using linseed oil as a medium in whites and blues as it has a marked tendency to yellow, which is most notable with light colours. Poppy oil is recommended for light colours as it has the least tendency to yellow (although it does dry slower).

Oil Painting Tip 7:
Don’t dry your oil paintings in the dark. This may cause a thin film of oil to rise to the surface, yellowing it. (This can be removed by exposure to bright daylight.)

Oil Painting Tip 8:
If, as the paint on your palette dries it forms a lot of wrinkles, too much oil (medium) has been added.

Oil Painting Tip 9:
If you’re not sure whether a bottle of mineral or white spirits is suitable for oil painting, put a tiny quantity on a piece of paper and let it evaporate. If it evaporates without leaving any residue, stain, or smell, it should be fine.

Oil Painting Tip 10:
If you want to clean away a layer of oil painting or oil varnish, use alcohol, which is a powerful solvent.