Hello, Delicious Tea

first of all, thank u for your kind words, i am so glad u like my art!

Regarding learning to paint and where to start: Here is a link to my teacher's website, all of the information is presented in video format, just watch all of the videos in order and you will have all the information you need to get started painting realism in oil.

Regarding things coming out "right": It is very rare for me to feel that I've executed something perfectly as I first envisioned it, in fact, usually by the end stages of a painting I feel disappointed and disgusted by whatever I've done. This is a very common feeling for artists, I advise you not to take it to heart. There's a few reasons why this happens:

Once you've stared at something long enough you'll almost certainly get sick of it. I literally can't bear to look at my apple painting right now because it pisses me off to much.

Right before a painting gets started it's a non-existent object of pure potential. It is 100% perfect in its non-existence and also has infinite different paths to its completion. The second you make a single move towards its fabrication you slash its potential, and the possible choices in the work dwindle down to 0% at the very end, the emotional effect of which can feel devastating, especially if you were particularly attached to your initial non-object. If you, the reader, do not feel this way then I am happy for you, but if you do relate to what I've just written then I want to tell you that this is a normal part of art making. The shittiest painting ever made is 100% better than the best painting ever imagined and not fabricated.

Allow me to tell you this: It is actually a good thing for the potential of a work and all of the creative options within it to be destroyed. In fact, I advise you to go out of your way to destroy these as soon as possible. "Potential" can only exist in the vacuum before fabrication, therefore it has no actual value. Choices must also be eliminated until only a single one remains, that is the condition that will allow the execution of a work to take place. Art can only happen within the exoskeleton of limitation and imperfection.

Now regarding effort: Do not fear difficulty. Difficulty and strain are not the signs of failure, they are the signs of your own progress. When I was less experienced I had a perception of art making, that the goal was to be able to make something without strain, but I have come to know something different now that I have made it pretty far into my intermediacy: The feeling of difficulty has remained constant in my practice but my abilities have increased. In other words painting feels just as hard as it ever did [if not harder] but I am able to do much more technically advanced work now. Here are some visual examples to illustrate my point:

All of these paintings took the same amount of effort and were roughly equivalent in difficulty, the difference between all of them is my cumulative technical ability.

Prayer Plant - 2017: The challenge in this painting was learning basic paint handling. I was not attempting to paint realism yet but I knew I want going to go in that direction. I took a few years just using whatever colours and not focusing that hard on things looking any particular way because just handling the paint was hard enough.

Tea Pot - 2019: This is the second realist study I did, focusing on accurate drawing and colour mixing. You can see I chose something monochromatic and symmetrical to paint to minimize the difficulty of learning the new realism skills.

Red Onion and Shallot - 2025: Learning more about red and purple.

Painting all of these felt equally difficult, but the skills acquired in each execution carry over into the next work. It's all just as hard but much more becomes possible to achieve.