Nope! I’ve never been a fan of most long-term contracts (I’m looking at you Mobile Phone company). Life is unpredictable – you should have the freedom to pivot or simply change your mind.

If you don’t love the membership, then go to your account tab and cancel before your free 14-day trial is over. We’re pretty confident you’re going to love it, but we’re all unique and you may have something very specific in mind that you’re looking for. We fully understand that and have made it easy for you to cancel at any time!

This is a membership, like Netflix. If for any reason you need to cancel, it’s easy to do so, and you will continue to have access until your billed month is over. Once you reach the end of that month your access to the membership content will also end.
As long as you are a member however, you will have full access to all of the wonderful content available in the membership.

Most of our members prefer oil paint, but we have quite a few acrylic artists and even some watercolor enthusiasts, all of whom would happily give you raving reviews about their results. It’s hard to say confidently that this works for every artist or medium though, because that comes down to your painting and learning style more than anything else.

The principles and many of the techniques work across mediums. I began my career with pastels and watercolors, selling both professionally. Sure, there are techniques and materials that are designed specifically for those media, but much of what we do as artists crosses over from one style, approach, medium, etc. to another.

In fact, I now use watercolor for my underpainting washes and preliminary work and then paint oils on top. It is essentially mixed media but has all the characteristics of an oil painting. I even varnish and frame the paintings when finished exactly like I would with my traditional oil paintings. And I do it all on a lead or oil-primed canvas. Watercolor works amazingly well on surfaces meant for oil painting.

Yes, much of what I teach will translate over to other forms of painting. But, no, I don’t teach techniques specific to paints like watercolor or acrylic.

That’s where the 14-day free trial is useful. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, or the training isn’t what you were expecting, you can easily cancel and walk away without paying a dime. There’s no reason to pay for something that isn’t helpful!

Over 30 Years! Okay, I know, that’s the typical response we hear from artists. Seriously though, this Membership content and community have taken years to build and refine. We have had members from over a hundred different countries and diverse cultures become a part of the Master Oil Painting Community.

Teaching has been on my mind from the moment I started painting. It seems to be a natural extension of learning – when we learn something wonderful, we want to share it with others.

In 2006 I was too busy with my painting career to do more than 1 or 2 workshops a year. So, I began recording my painting process. The camcorders I used weren’t capturing the detail in a way I thought would be useful to anyone, so I waited, and experimented. Finally, in 2012, the videos I captured seemed worthwhile. So, I started sharing them on YouTube.

Multiple requests came to me for an online painting course, but I didn’t have any knowledge of how to do such a thing, and I definitely didn’t have the time. Then in 2015 I received a letter from a fellow named George. It sounds ridiculous, but his letter brought tears to my eyes. He wanted to learn to paint but was feeling lost and asked if I would please create a course that covered all of the basics from materials to starting and finishing a painting.

Kristie (my wife) and I prayed about it, and we felt prompted to put most of my painting time on hold for a bit and create a course. I thought it would take 2-3 months – does life ever work that way? Six months of 14–21-hour days later the Online Painting Course (originally called the 6 Week Course) was completed.

That was December of 2015. The response was remarkable – better than I ever imagined. But I felt like they needed more.

So, in October of 2016 the Master Oil Painting Membership was born. It began as a full-length painting training video library and expanded to include multiple live-events like the monthly critiques, book club, online painting workshops where we deep-dived into the videos, weekly lunch hangouts, and Q&A sessions.

Now, instead of 5-6 galleries at a time, I only have time to supply paintings for 1-2 galleries. I’ve been with the Broadmoor Galleries since 1995 and hope to be with them until either they or I no longer inhabit this beautiful earth – they are fantastic people who I love like family! They have also been extremely patient with me at times when I have been slow to get them paintings because of the time spent with Master Oil Painting.

Both are sincere passions.

I feel incredibly blessed to have become friends with so many remarkable artists around the world through our Master Oil Painting Community. I believe you will fall in love with these wonderful people just as Kristie and I have. They are the reason I am happy to devote so much time to teaching and growing the Membership!

So, how much time did it take?

You’ve probably heard the story about James McNeil Whistler who was commissioned to create a painting many years ago. He walked into his studio and walked out again 15 minutes later with the finished masterpiece.

“Did you just now paint that?” the customer asked.

“Yes.”

“There’s no way I’m going to pay that much money for something that only took you 15 minutes!” said the man angrily.”

The artist calmly replied, “You’re not. You’re paying for the years of hard work it took to make this painting possible.”

Fortunately, we’ve managed to keep the cost of the Membership low. But now you know a little about the work that went into creating it all. Plus, we have no plans to slow down – we’re going to continue expanding the art training content you have access to through the Membership.

Probably not.

Actually, it’s a pretty safe guarantee that this training by itself will not make you a professional artist anytime soon. Professional artists spend thousands of hours in front of their easel, reading books, attending workshops, and using training resources like this one. Nothing can ever replace good old-fashioned hard work and time in the studio.

However, this training is packed full of helpful hints, techniques, and tips that will shave time off your journey to becoming a professional artist and make the trip more enjoyable!

That’s a great question. The way I teach and how I paint might not be the best fit for you. That’s why I love the 14-day trial you’ve chosen. You can decide for yourself how helpful the material will be for you.

But, since you asked, you’re probably wanting to know a little more about my art background – my street cred.

1983 was the year I sold my first painting (a pastel) in a professional gallery. I was 17 years old and a junior in High School. Even through art school and then over the last 30+ years I continued to sell my paintings through multiple galleries: New Horizons Gallery in Fairbanks, Ak; The Hole in the Wall Gallery in Ennis, MT; the Outlaw Inn Gallery in Kalispell, Mt; the Mockingbird Gallery in Sisters, OR; Mountain Trails Gallery in Jackson Hole, WY; Joe Wade Fine Arts in Santa Fe, NM; Turner Art Gallery in Cherry Creek, CO; Pam Driscol Gallery in Aspen, CO; Breckinridge Gallery, in Breckinridge, CO; Meyer Galleries in Santa Fe, NM; Greenhouse Galleries in San Antonio, TX; Galerie Kornye West in Fort Worth, TX; Willow Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ; Biltmore Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ; Mark White Gallery (I think that was the name) in Tucson, AZ; Sigmans Gallery in Indianapolis, IN; and last but not least, Castle Gallery in Fort Wayne, IN.

1991 was the year I went full-time as a professional artist – painting, sculpting, and teaching an occasional workshop. I’ve been in multiple national juried shows, won the Congressional Art Award, and have my work in collections around the world from Switzerland to Saudi Arabia, and all over the United States and Canada.

Painting is primarily how I’ve made a living. I did go back to school to complete an MFA degree in painting after 10 years of full-time painting (I thought it would give me more opportunities to teach) but continued to supply my galleries the entire time.

I’ve had years of classical training from both art school and world-class instructors in figure, landscape, wildlife, and floral painting and sculpting. My work has been shown in multiple art magazines like Southwest Art, and I’ve now instructed over 35,000 artists through our online training.

I’ve been around the block and love to share what I’ve learned.

One more quick story might be helpful. When I created my first full-length art training video in 2012, I pondered how best to approach it. So many videos contained bits of the painting process, but were seldom of work the artists would sell in a gallery.

A couple years before that first video I purchased a DVD by an outstanding artist for around $200. The duration of the video was 10 hours.

I loved the refined natural looking edge work of the people in his market scenes – the ones I had seen in person in shows and galleries. The description stated that I would get to see the entire process from start to finish. That was exciting – it wasn’t going to be just a demo. I would get to see how he created those beautiful edges and skin tones (even though I rarely paint people, I’m always eager to learn new approaches and techniques).

It took 2 years before I got around to watching the tutorial, but I finally decided to block off some time and see what I could learn. As the DVD approached the 10-hour mark, he still wasn’t to the ‘finishing touches’ stage and I got a little trepidatious. He then told his viewers he was going to take the piece back to his studio to put on the final refinements. What? He never showed us how he finished the painting, which was the whole reason I bought the DVD in the first place.

That was the proverbial straw that guided the editing of my videos. My viewers would see every brushstroke! And the paintings would be the same ones I sell through my galleries.

Then I thought ‘Be real, Bill, nobody wants to sit through upwards of 30-100 hours of an art tutorial (that’s how long some of the taping was). That meant I needed to cut something out.

Kristie and I spend hundreds of hours editing out all the fluff. Every cough, brush cleaning, paint replenishing, and any other unnecessary moment. You see only the painting process and the color mixing. Only the good stuff!

Yes, some of the videos are still over 7 hours long, but it’s all painting and techniques. And there are more than 40 of those videos now in the Member Library.

I’m an eternal student myself – I love to learn from other artists. I believe all artists should spend their lives in pursuit of ever-expanding knowledge, understanding, and skill.

That’s how I also approach teaching. I give you everything I’ve got – I hold nothing back. When I learn something new, I share it with you!