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What is painting demos?
Painting demos, published at paintingdemos.com under the name ARTiful, is a project-based art instruction site that teaches painting, drawing, printmaking and mixed-media techniques through step-by-step tutorials. Its emphasis is on showing the process, so the value is in following along rather than browsing finished gallery work.
What you'll find there
The catalog leans toward hands-on experiments and reusable techniques rather than a single medium:
- Mixed media and collage: gelli printing with an oil pastel resist, small collage paintings, acrylic skins, painting over life drawings.
- Watercolor: negative painting for flower still lifes, a rainy cityscape tutorial, painting trees and leaves, making watercolor paintings pop with pastels.
- Drawing and sketchbooks: cross-hatching portraits, facial proportions, life drawing methods, customizing a sketchbook into an art journal.
- Printmaking and paper craft: lino printing with alternative carving materials, hand-printed cards, mini six-page books from one sheet of paper.
- Pattern and decoration: zentangle and mandala cards, spirograph texture, zentangle patterns added to paintings and portraits.
- Surfaces and materials: painting on stone paper, mounting yupo paper on board, masking fluid tips, Dorland's wax medium on watercolor.
Who it suits
It fits self-directed hobbyists who want a technique demonstrated end to end, and art teachers looking for classroom-ready ideas such as postcards, cards or folded books. If you need a structured curriculum with graded exercises, this reads more like a workshop archive: useful, varied, but organized by project rather than by skill level.
How to approach it
Pick one tutorial that matches materials you already own, and work through it once as written before adapting it. The site's real strength shows up when you treat each demo as a technique to borrow — for example, taking the negative-painting method from a flower still life and applying it to a portrait, or using spirograph texture in a different composition.
A practical next step: choose a medium you already have on hand, complete one tutorial exactly as shown, then repeat the same technique on a subject of your own. That second pass is where the demo turns into a skill. If you want to compare approaches, The Virtual Instructor and Will Kemp Art School cover similar ground with a more course-like structure.
What art techniques and tutorials are available on painting demos?
painting demos is a mixed-media and painting tutorial site built around short, technique-focused demonstrations. Its range leans toward exploratory studio practice rather than a single medium: acrylics, watercolor, charcoal, pastels, ink, oil pastels, lino printing and collage all appear, often combined in the same project.
Technique areas covered
- Printmaking and surface work: gelli printing with an oil pastel resist, alternative carving materials for lino printing, handprinted cards, ink resist technique, masking fluid tips.
- Mixed media and collage: painting over life drawings, acrylic skins, painting flowers from an abstract background, mixed media on yupo paper, adding pastels over watercolor.
- Drawing fundamentals: facial proportions, cross-hatching portraits, a charcoal portrait step by step, an overview of life drawing methods.
- Painting approaches: negative painting for still life and flowers, dry brushing for portraits, painting flowers from imagination, watercolor cityscapes, painting on stone paper.
- Sketchbooks and paper crafts: turning a sketchbook into an art journal, mini six-page books from one sheet, origami paper with patterns, sketching ideas for home.
- Decorative and pattern work: zentangle and mandala cards, zentangle patterns added to paintings and portraits, spirograph texture, monochrome painting, mounting yupo paper on board instead of framing.
Who it suits
The mix favors intermediate hobbyists who already own basic supplies and want to try a new medium without committing to a long course. A watercolor painter curious about pastels, or someone with a stack of unfinished life drawings, will find the "rework what you have" projects more immediately useful than a beginner seeking a structured curriculum. Beginners can still follow the step-by-step pieces, but should expect to gather materials per project rather than work through a graded sequence.
How to choose a starting point
Pick by the problem you want to solve rather than by medium alone:
| If your goal is… | Look for… |
|---|---|
| Fixing flat or muddy paintings | Negative painting, dry brushing, pastels over watercolor |
| Using up existing drawings | Painting over life drawings, reworking in mixed media |
| Testing a new medium cheaply | Oil pastels, acrylic inks, lino carving alternatives |
| Making gifts or cards | Handprinted Christmas cards, zentangle cards, mini books |
A practical next step: choose one technique you can complete in a single sitting, such as the ink resist or masking fluid exercises, and run it on scrap paper before applying it to a finished piece. That keeps the experiment separate from work you care about, which is the main trade-off with technique-hopping sites — breadth of ideas comes at the cost of depth on any one method.
How can I learn to paint flowers from imagination using the tutorials on painting demos?
Yes—paintingdemos.com is a practical fit for this goal because it treats "flowers from imagination" as a repeatable process rather than a single finished painting. Its tutorial list includes Painting flowers from imagination: 3 Paintings for the Anonymous Art Show, Painting flowers from imagination for the Anonymous Art Show, a step by step painting tutorial, Painting flowers in mixed media from an abstract background, and How to Paint Poppies and Roses in Watercolor and Mixed Media. Together these cover the two skills imagination painting depends on: building a flower from simple shapes and keeping it loose enough to invent variations.
A sensible learning sequence
- Start with the step-by-step flower-from-imagination tutorial. Work through it once exactly as shown so you can see how the artist moves from an idea to a finished bloom.
- Repeat the same tutorial with different colors and petal counts. Change only one variable at a time; this is where imagination practice begins.
- Move to the "abstract background" tutorial. This teaches you to let an existing surface suggest flowers instead of planning every petal—useful when you have no reference.
- Try the poppies-and-roses watercolor and mixed media tutorial to compare how two different flower types are constructed in the same medium.
- Use the supporting technique posts—Negative painting technique for a flower still life, How to paint mixed media flowers on yupo paper: Orange Blossoms, and How to make your watercolor paintings pop with pastels—when a specific step stalls you.
What to expect from the site
The tutorials are demonstration-led, with a strong mixed-media and watercolor bias: oil pastel resist, acrylic inks, yupo paper, pastels, masking fluid, negative painting, and zentangle patterns all appear. That breadth is the main advantage for imagination work, because invention is easier when you have several techniques to combine. The trade-off is that the site is not a structured course—you choose your own path from a long list of posts, and production quality and depth vary between them.
A concrete practice routine
Pick one tutorial and paint the same flower three times: once copying the demo, once from memory the next day, and once changing one thing (a different flower type, palette, or background). Keep the three versions side by side. The differences will show you which parts you actually understand and which you are only reproducing.
If you want a second source for flower construction and color mixing, The Virtual Instructor offers structured drawing and painting lessons, and Artists Network publishes free demonstrations across watercolor and acrylic. Neither replaces the imagination-specific angle here, but both can fill gaps in fundamentals.
What mixed media painting projects can I try with the step-by-step guides on painting demos?
The site is built around mixed media experiments you can follow from a materials list through to a finished piece. Its projects tend to combine two or more mediums in one artwork, so they suit people who already have a basic watercolor, acrylic or drawing kit and want to push it further.
Project types covered
- Watercolor plus dry media: adding soft pastels to a watercolor painting to increase contrast and depth, and combining watercolor with ink resist techniques.
- Acrylic and collage: painting flowers on yupo paper, working from an abstract background into recognizable forms, and using acrylic skins as collage elements.
- Printmaking and pattern: gelli printing with an oil pastel resist, testing alternative carving materials for lino printing, and hand-printed cards.
- Sketchbook and journal work: turning a sketchbook into an art journal, making mini six-page books from a single sheet, and reworking life drawings with mixed media.
- Decorative and pattern-based painting: adding zentangle patterns to portraits and trees, spirograph texture for postcards, and mandala-inspired cards.
How to choose
If you are new to mixed media, start with a project that keeps one familiar medium as the base — a watercolor painting finished with pastels, or acrylics over an abstract underpainting. Projects involving masking fluid, yupo paper or carving materials introduce more variables at once and are better once you are comfortable with the base medium.
A practical next step: pick one finished piece you already like, such as a life drawing or a watercolor study, and find the guide on the site that reworks that same starting point. Reworking something existing lowers the stakes and lets you judge the new technique on its own. For broader technique references alongside these guides, The Virtual Instructor and Art is Fun cover comparable mixed media and watercolor methods.
How do I use oil pastels or masking fluid effectively in my paintings based on painting demos?
Oil pastels and masking fluid do very different jobs, so the effective approach depends on which effect you want: rich, waxy colour that sits on the surface, or clean reserved whites and crisp edges that paint can't cross.
Oil pastels: build up, then blend or resist
On painting demos, oil pastels are treated as an under-estimated medium worth exploring on their own, and they also appear in a mixed-media resist technique with Gelli printing. The practical lesson is that oil pastels are not just a drawing tool — their waxiness makes them useful for resisting water-based paint.
- For resist effects: draw or scribble oil pastel where you want the paper or underlayer to show through, then paint over with watercolour, acrylic ink or thin acrylic. The paint will bead or skip on the waxy marks.
- For blending: work pastel into the surface with fingers, a tortillon or a stiff brush, building in layers rather than trying to cover everything at once.
- For mixed media: combine pastel with collage, ink or acrylic, but expect later water-based layers to sit unevenly over pastel marks — that unevenness is often the point.
A useful decision rule: if you want luminous, controllable colour, use pastel at the end. If you want texture and surprise, use it underneath.
Masking fluid: reserve, paint, then remove
The site includes a set of masking fluid tips, which is the best starting point if you are new to it. Masking fluid is a liquid resist: you paint it on, let it dry, paint over it, then rub it away to reveal clean paper.
- Apply with an old brush, a colour shaper or a silicone tip — not your best brush, since the fluid can ruin bristles.
- Let it dry completely before painting over it; damp fluid smears and clogs.
- Remove it only after the paint is fully dry, or you risk tearing the paper or dragging wet pigment.
- Use it for fine lines, highlights, snow, whiskers, stamens and the thin stems in flower paintings — areas that are hard to paint around by hand.
Which one to reach for
| Goal | Oil pastel | Masking fluid |
|---|---|---|
| Keep an area free of water-based paint | Yes, as a waxy resist | Yes, as a peelable resist |
| Add rich colour and texture | Yes, especially at the end | No |
| Crisp, clean edges and fine lines | Limited | Yes |
| Risk to tools or paper | Low | Can damage brushes; can tear paper if removed too soon |
For a first attempt, try a small painting: mask a few fine stems or highlight shapes, paint freely over the whole sheet, let it dry, then remove the mask. In a separate study, lay down oil pastel marks and brush watercolour over them to see how much the wax resists. Comparing the two side by side will tell you quickly which belongs in your own work.
What are some creative sketchbook and art journal ideas I can find on painting demos?
Painting Demos (ARTiful) is a technique-first art blog rather than a prompt list. Its sketchbook and art-journal content leans toward mixed media experiments, so it suits people who already keep a sketchbook and want to fill pages with something more structured than random doodling.
Sketchbook-specific ideas on the site
- Sketchbook inspiration: what to draw in a sketchbook — a starting point if blank pages stall you.
- Customizing your sketchbook into an art journal — turning a store-bought sketchbook into a journal with your own covers, dividers or page treatments.
- Ideas for sketching at home — subject matter you can find without leaving the house.
- Cross hatching portraits and portrait drawing: basic proportions of the face — drawing exercises that build a page around one skill.
- Organized chaos: reworking life drawings in mixed media — a way to rescue old or unfinished drawings instead of starting fresh.
Art-journal and paper-craft crossovers
Several posts sit between journaling and paper craft, which is useful if you want pages that are part collage, part painting:
- How to make mini 6-page books from one sheet of paper — a fold-and-cut structure you can use as a small journal or zine.
- Make your own origami paper with patterns and short meditation — pairs pattern-making with a quiet, repetitive activity.
- Bauhaus-inspired postcards and how to make paper collage cards — small-format collage you could paste into a journal.
- Zentangle and mandala-inspired Christmas cards, plus zentangle trees and adding zentangle patterns to paintings — pattern work that transfers easily to journal pages.
Technique pages worth testing in a journal
If your journal is where you try media rather than record finished work, these are the most transferable:
- Oil pastels as an underestimated medium, and gelli printing with an oil pastel resist.
- Ink resist technique and masking fluid tips.
- Dry brushing for mixed media portraits.
- Negative painting, shown in a flower still life.
- Painting on stone paper with acrylics and alcohol inks, and mounting yupo paper on board.
A practical way to choose: pick one technique page, then apply it to a single journal spread rather than a finished piece. If you like working on loose sheets or unusual surfaces, start with the yupo, stone paper and acrylic-skin posts. If you prefer drawing-based pages, start with the life-drawing rework and cross-hatching portrait posts. For a broader mix of guided lessons, The Virtual Instructor covers drawing and painting fundamentals, while Artists Network publishes sketchbook and journal prompts alongside technique articles.
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