Happy New Year! 🎉🥳 I'm starting 2026 the right way, out here in Australia, painting plein air at Mount White, overlooking the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales. This is YOUR year. 2026 is the year you finally: - Understand values and create depth in your paintings - Stop guessing and start following a system - Create professional-quality work you're proud to display or sell - Paint with confidence instead of doubt I've got a lot planned for 2026: new painting courses, including acrylic and gouache content, artwork I mainly paint in oils, and plenty of free tips coming your way. Make this the year you commit to your art. Happy painting! Sam P.S. Want structured training to make 2026 your breakthrough year? Check out Sam's Art School for weekly live classes, the "Improve Your Painting in 7 Days" course, and a complete framework: https://www.skool.com/samuel-earp-online-art-school/about

So here's a thing I can't say enough of. Always buy the best artist quality oil colour you can afford. Student oil paint is made using chemicals not pigments. It smells, it fades, the colours have no strength and all of that plus more makes painting so much harder and painful to do. I've been painting in oils for 5 decades, trust me, you don't need quantity you need quality. These 6 colours with give you great results and will put the pleasure back into painting without burning a hole in your pocket. 1, Titanium White 2, Cadmium Lemon 3, Cadmium Orange 4, French Ultramarine Blue 5, Burnt Sienna 6, Ivory Black A great addition to these 6 colours would be; Naples Yellow. Alizarin Crimson, and Sap Green Titanium White and Ivory Black mixed together will give you lots of cool greys. Add a little orange to give you warm greys. Adding small amounts of grey will reduce the chroma of any colour. Cadmium Lemon and Ivory Black will give you a nice green. Add Sap Green to increase the chroma. Add more Cadmium Lemon or French Ultramarine Blue to alter the hew. Adding Cadmium Orange to any green mix will make a warmer green. Cadmium Lemon and French Ultramarine Blue will give you a wide selection of high chroma greens. Add Cadmium Orange or Burnt Sienna to warm these greens up Cadmium Orange will control the chroma of French Ultramarine Blue. Adding Naples Yellow will to this blue mix will change the hew of the blue to a more sky blue colour and with Titanium White make a great low horizon sky colour. Add Naples Yellow to Titanium White for a warmer white. Add a small amount of Cadmium Orange to this mix for great natural cloud colours. French Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna make a transparent black. This mix when you add a small amount of solvent will give you a transparent stain to map out or draw your image onto the canvas with. Add more Burnt Sienna to this mix and it gives you a warm classical Imprimatura coloured stain to use as an underpainting. Ideal for starting paintings of forests, still life and portraits. Add less Burnt Sienna or more French Ultramarine Blue to this Imprimatura mix for painting seascapes and skies.

It's a big discovery that acrylics get better and better after layer after layer. But the question is how to know when to stop. Any kind guidance please...

Hey Artists ✨ Special limited time offer for art lovers! Join my VIP art email list today and I'll send you a complimentary digital seascape print as my welcome gift to you! Perfect for printing and framing at home! As a VIP member, you'll also enjoy: • First look at my new landscape paintings • Early access to available prints • Exclusive art collector offers • Behind-the-scenes peeks at my creative process Click the link below to join and claim your free print! ⬇️ https://go.samuelearp.com/free-print Happy painting Sam 😊 P.S. Just launched! Visit my new print store to discover beautiful landscape prints ready to ship to your home: https://samuelearpfineart.com/collections/prints

We have a broad mix of ages and experience levels in this group, so I'm curious, how long have you been creating for?