Lewis Meda Art

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Lewis Meda Art

patreon.com/lewismeda for my online painting and drawing course! Currently just £9.99 a month!

01/06/2026

A burnt umber pickout is one of the most effective ways to establish shape, value, and edge before introducing colour.

By resolving these fundamentals first, the underpainting becomes a sophisticated blueprint for the painting, allowing you to focus on colour and temperature with much greater confidence.

The full demonstration will be available on my Patrron this week. Follow the link in my bio to learn more.

29/05/2026

I dont consider the use of a projector cheating.

ONLY if you know how to draw already.

If you already know how to draw, a projector can be used as a tool to reach deadlines faster, or streamline the process for a more complex piece.

However, if you don't know how to draw, a projector becomes a crutch.

Sometimes, tools break. Or they fail in some way. In this commission, my projector was clearly having a bad day, and projected the painting too narrow.

So I had to widen everything in the painting.

If I didn't already know how to draw, not only would I probably have messed up the correction, but I probably wouldn't have even noticed anything was wrong!

Use projectors as a tool, not as a crutch.

27/05/2026

One of the biggest mistakes painters make is overrendering the face.

Too many sharp edges, too much texture, and too much information can instantly make a subject look older and less natural. Especially with younger faces, subtlety matters.

Sometimes the best painting decision is simplifying what you see - not adding more.

Full demonstration available on my Patreon.
Follow the link in my bio to learn more.

25/05/2026

Burnt umber pickouts are the painters equivalent of learning scales on a piano.

At first they can feel restrictive, even boring. Most students want to jump straight into colour. But removing colour forces you to focus on the essentials: value, shape, and edge.

And when those foundations are strong colour becomes infinitely more enjoyable later on.

The "boring" work is often what unlocks the fun stuff.

22/05/2026

Stop copying. Start interpreting.

Painting is part what you see, part what you know, and part what you wish you saw.

In order to not only paint what we SEE.

We have to KNOW a lot,

In order to paint what we WISH we saw.

That's why artists study the skull.

You need to know and understand the cheekbones, brow ridge, jaw bone, nasal bone.. in order to know WHY certain shapes are there, and how they're formed!

Then you can design with intention, rather than mindlessly copy.

This full demonstration will be available on my Patreon this week!

Follow the link in my bio to learn more!!

20/05/2026

The next time you paint a portrait, do me a favour..

Put those 30 different flesh tones you spent hours mixing to one side and replace them with one..

Burnt Umber.

This will show you that in almost every case, your problem isn't colour.. it's value, shape, and edge.

Got a problem with likeness? It's shape design, not colour.

Got a problem with depth? It's value, not colour.

Does everything look too harsh or too soft? It's edge control, not colour.

Do a burnt umber pickout, and you'll realise what's truly important in painting.

This full demonstration will be available on my Patreon next week! Follow the link in my bio for many more demonstrations!

18/05/2026

In any good painting, there are three most important factors:

Value. Shape. Edge.

A burnt umber pickout allows you to focus on the essentials, as it's basically the closest you can get to drawing in paint.

You can use this as an underpainting and paint in colour over the top. It allows you to focus on the fundamentals without the added difficulty of colour. Then, you can allow the safety net of the burnt umber pickout to guide your colour choices.

This demonstration will be available in full on my Patreon this week! Follow the link in my bio to learn more.

15/05/2026

A recent commission I did of a mother and her daughter. I really enjoyed painting this, and it's one of my favourite commissions I've done so far.

If you'd like your own commission, visit my website! Link in bio

10/05/2026

A portrait of my Grandad that I did as a birthday present for my Mum..

16x12" Oil on hardboard.

Happy birthday Mum! ❤️

If you'd like your own commission, visit lewismeda.com/commissions

08/05/2026

If everything stands out in a painting, nothing does.

There should be only one centre of interest in a painting. In most portraiture, it's the eyes. Everything else should be subservient to the centre of interest.

A lot of the time, especially if im doing a commission for someone, I'll be given photo reference that has no clear centre of interest.

But that's our job as artists!

We need to use our ability to control value and edge in order to direct the viewers eye through the painting.

Areas of the painting we want to lead the viewers eye away from, we make softer and compress the values to reduce contrast.

Anything we want to lead the eye towards, we sharpen and increase the contrast within that area.

Address

Fareham

Website

http://lewismeda.com/

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