There are three genres of painting that is very common and popular. Each of them poses different characteristics and depending on the artist can be able to have different effects on the viewer. Let us take a look at all three genres and see what the advices to make them look better are.

Portrait Paintings:
Here are some general advices when doing portrait paintings:

• Try to use the appropriate in preliminary work. Mediums such as pencils to make a detailed sketch can help. If you have accidentally put his left eye on his right eye you can still erase it. 
• Never make the face of the model full size. The model might look like a puffer fish. The normal limit is two thirds and the half-size is the safe choice.
• Try not to have a large canvas, because you will be obliged to fill that up. You might even make the body of the model more buff just to fit the canvass but it shall look unrealistic.
• Make sure that the lighting can help give strength and character to the face. If you are having a hard time, maybe putting on a full shadow effect can help so that you’ll only do shadings.
• The model should be close to you so that details of certain features in the face may not be lost.
• Try to make the triangle between the eyes and nose your reference point.

Landscape Paintings:
Here are some approaches that artist take when creating landscape paintings.
Amateur Approach:
• This approach is the direct approach when painting landscapes. This approach is the most popular one today because it excludes other oil painting techniques.
• Even though it says amateur approach doesn’t necessarily men it’s easy to do. In fact it’s quite difficult that you still need to get a short course or a how to book especially if you’re not really gifted in the arts.
• Gradually your skills will expand and will include the personality that commercial galleries look for.

Professional Approach:
• These are the guys who claim to be professional because they have degrees in art majors.
• They are trained and taught by their manuals to inhibit their personal expressions into their paintings.
• They are trained to appreciate painterly concerns more such as color harmony, tonal balance, emotive expressions, etc.
• They get their inspiration and ideas by touring galleries and then instilling what they have learned

Direct painting Approach:
• Lots of thought and planning is done before he makes his landscape to make sure it is successful.
• The artist first step is that he or she sketches for composition, the balance of shapes and points of interest tat are both negative and negative.
• Then he makes a tonal sketch where the painting is represented in three tones, light, intermediate and dark.
• The tonal sketch will then be covered by paint.
• Establish color harmony by doing a color sketch first or lay the main colors on the palette first.

Still Life Paintings:
Here are some suggestions to make your still life painting more realistic, that even some people might think it’s the real deal.

1. Don’t light all objects equally; choose an object that will be the center of interests.
2. Decide on the concept, give the object some mass and paint some shadows.
3. Create a distinctive shape for every different object. Don’t make all your different fruits look all like apples. If the grape and lemons you plan on making seems to look like an apple I think you have a problem.
4. The object can either be across looking shallow or into the canvass.
5. Start your painting with the center of interest.
6. for objects to be lighted, the surface in which they are on must also be lighted
7. Try to add other colors by using the monochrome to make the object more realistic and prevent dullness.
8. Decide and understand how you will be able to bring what you want pout of your subject.
9. Establish the ground plane because it is also important.
10. The darkest part in the picture is the line of shadow in the objects.

By being able to follow this tips on each genre you might also want to mix and match techniques from each genre to see if it works on the other. You may also want to try to draw the portrait of a famous person like a president for example and the background landscape is in Afghanistan. That painting may make some noise.