Scott W. Prior: Painting the Urban Landscape

Here Are Some of the Techniques You'll Discover

• How to break tried-and-true painting rules — and why you should do it...
• Scott's secret brushwork technique to keep your lines thin and sharp...
• Why you should never paint your focal point first
• The color you should use in your first paint layer, the same way you use salt in your cooking
• How to use every part of your brush to give your painting depth and complexity
• Where to place the slight changes that can have a huge impact on your final results
• The exact colors and brushes Scott uses to paint urban scenes that come alive before your eyes
• How Scott developed his own voice in a world filled with copycats and generic, "me-too" artists
• The surprising role that this common, yet easily overlooked, object plays in bringing your painting to life

Sound difficult? It's not!

If you've ever wanted to take the energy and complexity that is the urban landscape and infuse it into a painting

with all of its rich and inspiring details

in a way that is straightforward and gives you complete confidence in your ability to succeed with any urban scene

then there's no better teacher than the bad boy of the art world, Scott W. Prior.

Over the years Scott has developed his own unique process for capturing the life of urban scenes on canvas. He paints the same streets he grew up on.

This process is clear enough to apply on your own, but flexible enough to fit your personal painting style.

It's something that anyone can learn, even if

you've never painted an urban scene before

or you've tried and been overwhelmed in the process.

An urban scene is unlike any other. The speed of a city means your scene is constantly changing. No one is sitting still waiting for your paint to dry.

There's an energy infused into the scene by people, cars, and bicycles rushing by

• massive towers of steel and glass rising up from all angles
• an entire palette of colors dancing before your eyes.

Painting an urban landscape is an exciting challenge to take on, and there's a deep satisfaction that comes with capturing these scenes on canvas.

Scott Prior has nailed down a process for doing so, but until recently, he's only taught that process in local classes or in expensive one-on-one lessons (lessons that those who could afford it were happy to pay for).However, we were able to convince Scott to come into our studio and reveal his techniques for painting urban landscapes.

You don't need to be an experienced painter to learn how to do this.

And you don't have to have talent to paint. That comes from training.

In fact, in the words of our publisher, B. Eric Rhoads, if you can follow a recipe and bake a cake, you can learn to paint. Because painting is a process.

This training is right for you if:

• You love the energy of a city and want to learn to capture it in a painting
• You're a beginner or intermediate painter ready to take a course that will dramatically improve your painting technique
• You're an advanced painter who has painted urban landscapes before, but struggled to paint them in a convincing way

About the Artist: Scott W. Prior

Most people don't picture the typical artist as a tough-guy wrestler from the inner city.

Yet every time Scott W. Prior got laid up with wrestling injuries in high school, his mom would take the art supplies from the attic and encourage him to paint to pass the time it took to heal his wounded body (and ego).

His friends would mock him for being an artist. "Some tough guy," they'd say.

At the end of high school, Scott was accepted to San Diego State University, where he bounced around majors, trying to figure out where he fit in.

He tried everything from nutrition and physical therapy to business and radio communications

...but no matter what he tried, Scott could not find a path that felt right to him.

And so he did what most any college kid would do he partied.

In fact, he partied so much, and so hard, that he got kicked out of school.

He was back at home, unsure of what to do next. His mother handed him some art supplies and encouraged him to pick up painting again.

Before he knew it, he was attending the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, studying under such revered artists as Craig Nelson, Bill Maughan, and Huihan Liu.

From Waiting Tables to Fine Artist

When he graduated from the Academy of Art, Scott had big expectations for his career. He'd learned from the best in the business, after all.

And yet the art world isn't always about how good you are at painting, and Scott struggled to find his footing.

In fact, for a period of time, he was doing jobs like waiting tables just to get by.

And then, on a whim, he applied to become a member of the California Art Club.

Most artists apply year after year to become part of this exclusive group, but Scott made it in on the first try.

Since then, he's been a prominent member of the American fine art scene, but he's become known as the "bad boy of fine art" because he never plays by the rules in life or in painting. Instead, Scott makes his own rules.

"Scott Relishes the Immediate, Take-It-as-It-Is, Gritty Reality of Contemporary Art. There Is a Muscular Directness and a Tough-Guy Feel to His Work."