Useful resources for learning to paint

Tubomix helps you mix your colours. For everything else — drawing, composing, painting light — here are free sites we like. They are not linked to Tubomix.

Learn to paint

Will Kemp Art School — Free step-by-step lessons in acrylic and oil, with a strong focus on mixing colours and painting values.
Draw Paint Academy — Clear articles on colour theory, colour mixing, values and composition, illustrated with master paintings.
Marco Bucci — Short videos on colour, light and how to see them, by a painter who explains simply.
Proko — Drawing and painting courses; many lessons are free on their YouTube channel.
Gurney Journey — The daily blog of James Gurney, author of “Color and Light”: painting outdoors, gouache, colour in practice.
Muddy Colors — Illustrators and painters share their methods, materials and work in progress.

Colour and pigments

Handprint — colour — Bruce MacEvoy’s deep guide to colour vision and colour mixing, written for painters.
Handprint — watercolour pigments — Pigment by pigment: how each one behaves, mixes and lasts, with tests of many brands.
Just Paint — Technical articles by the chemists of Golden Artist Colors: mixing, glazing, drying, lightfastness.
ColourLex — The history of each pigment and where it appears in famous paintings.
Pigments through the Ages — How painters’ colours were made, from ancient earths to modern pigments.
The Color of Art — A database of pigments by Colour Index code (PB29, PY35…), with the paints that contain them.
Wikipédia — Pigment — The French Wikipedia article on pigments: families, history, uses.

Paintings to study

Louvre — collections — The Louvre’s whole collection online, with large images.
Paris Musées — The collections of the fourteen museums of the City of Paris; many images are free to download.
POP — plateforme ouverte du patrimoine — The French Ministry of Culture’s catalogue of works held in French museums.
Rijksmuseum — Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch masters in very high resolution, free to download.
Google Arts & Culture — Zoom into paintings from museums all over the world, down to the brushstroke.

Advice from paint makers

Gamblin — Oil painting: colour, mediums and how to paint safely without solvents.
Royal Talens — Tips and tutorials for beginners in acrylic, oil, watercolour and gouache.
Pébéo — The French paint maker’s ideas and techniques.

Talk with other painters

WetCanvas — One of the oldest forums for painters, for all media and all levels.
r/painting — Share a painting, ask for advice, see what others make.

Learn a language

Kardamone — Learn English, German, Spanish, Italian and other European languages with flashcards and spaced repetition, from level A1 to C2.

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