When you start painting then stick to landscapes

When most people learn to paint then they think that painting a person would be a lot easier than a landscape as the focus is a lot narrower and it is a subject they know a lot about. The problem though is that painting facial expressions is really difficult as you need to make them express the emotion you want, and getting the proportion of the features and the posture right is a real pain!

Personally I think you are much better off buying some landscape tutorial books and starting to try some simple landscapes instead. Landscapes don’t have to be complex, start off basic with just the sky and some hills, then add in detail and features as your progress with new paintings, until you have the skills to produce the complex pieces. Even a very basic landscape can be beautiful due to the rich colors used and the obvious subject matter, and it will also give you a sense of accomplishment as you can show off your work as you are doing it.

They also give you valuable experience on working with depth in your paintings, as there will be lots of features in your landscape when you progress, like a gate in the foreground and animals grazing on a hill, then you get to practice working on the shapes and proportions so they look right. You also get a chance to work with light as you need to show the effect the sun has on the different features of your painting. This means you will never get bored with painting landscapes! You will learn something new every time you try one.