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Art Lessons from Artyfactory

Artyfactory's free art lessons share the knowledge, understanding and experience of art to improve your artistic skills and to increase your enjoyment in creating artworks.

Our lessons on drawing and painting trees take two different approaches to the subject. The drawing lessons focus on observational skills, while the painting lessons are more a product of the imagination.

Aboriginal art is the longest continuous artistic tradition in the world, stretching back generation after generation for over thirty millennia. These lessons teach us about the styles, stories and symbols of this enduring Australian art form and use that knowledge to create our own drawings and paintings.

Our lessons on African masks teach you about the different styles of masks. We explain who makes them, how they are made and where they come from. You can also design your own African mask by following our illustrated lesson with simple step by step instructions. In addition we supply free African Mask clip art to help with your mask drawings.

Our Ancient Egyptian art lessons teach you about Egyptian gods, Egyptian crowns, and Egyptian hieroglyphics. We invite you to try our painting lesson on how to create the time-worn effect of an ancient Egyptian portrait. We also host a lesson on how to design an ancient Egyptian cartouche using our simplified hieroglyphic alphabet.

Our pencil portrait lessons teach you how to draw a portrait by explaining and illustrating each stage of the drawing process. We begin by exploring the basic proportions of a head. We then look at the technique used to draw each of the features of the face. Finally we take you through the entire process of drawing a portrait from a basic line study to a finished tonal drawing.

Our charcoal portrait lessons guide you through various step by step tutorials that illustrate a classical approach to drawing with charcoal and chalk. These include individual lessons on how to draw the face, eyes, nose, mouth and hair. We also explore different portrait lighting setups and explain the materials and techniques you need for charcoal drawing.

Our color pencil portrait lessons lead you from the first tentative marks that you make on the paper, gradually building up the layers of line, tone, color, pattern and texture to complete a complex and skilful portrait. We also focus on the individual features of the face, explaining and resolving any difficulties you may encounter when drawing the eyes, nose, mouth, skin, hair and clothes.

Our acrylic portrait lesson uses the image of Robert Burns to demonstrate some of the skills and techniques involved in painting with acrylics. Each stage of this portrait, from its commission to its completion, is carefully explained and clearly illustrated to help you understand this detailed approach to painting with acrylics.

Our lessons on how to draw animals explore different techniques for drawing and painting a variety of creatures. Each lesson presents an illustrated step by step tutorial that demonstrates the drawing process from start to finish.

Still Life is the best subject in art for both learning and teaching the skills of drawing and painting. Using a range of different media, our still life lessons teach you how to look at an object and see it like an artist - with a conscious awareness of its outline, shape, proportions, tone, color, texture and form.

Our Pop art portrait lessons offers you the choice of two projects. Our 'Pop Art Portrait Lesson Plan' is a single art project for the individual student. Our 'Pop Art Group Project' is a collaborative lesson for a group of up to 20 individuals. Both these lessons provide free templates to help you draw iconic Pop art portraits and apply the bold and colorful techniques of this popular art style from the 1960's.

Our Chuck Close art lesson is a group projects for up to 20 students. It begins as a lesson on color and ends up as a large scale portrait that was inspired by the paintings of the American artist, Chuck Close.

Aerial perspective, which is also called 'atmospheric perspective', is the effect that the atmosphere has on the tone and color of a landscape when it is viewed over a distance. It is a very effective tool for landscape painting and is a less complicated technique to learn than linear perspective.

Perspective drawing is a technique used to represent three-dimensional images on a two-dimensional picture plane. In our series of lessons on perspective drawing we explain the various methods of constructing an image with perspective and demonstrate how these are used by artists and illustrators.

Our pen and ink drawing lessons illustrate two different approaches to drawing with pen, ink and color wash. The first approach explores a detailed drawing technique, while the second uses a bolder and more expressive technique.

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