Decorative Painting is a diverse art form that utilizes a variety of techniques and media to decorate functional and non-functional surfaces.Contemporary decorative painting is a teachable art form because of the systematic method that is employed. The use of either patterns or freehand designs allows a high degree of success without academic training or inherent drawing ability.

Approached with creativity, discipline and craftsmanship, contemporary decorative painting offers numerous opportunities for artistic self expression and creative satisfaction. The scope of contemporary decorative painting is boundless, incorporating styles and techniques of the past, adapting these to the trends and materials of the present, while at the same time developing the decorative art heritage of the future.

Decorative Painting is one of the many ways of expressing your artistic accomplishments with paint. It starts out as a craft, taught by a step-by-step approach. However, Decorative Painting is a readily learned technique. You do not have to have previous academic training or drawing skills to learn how to decorative paint. Though in many Decorative Painting books it will show you that through exercises and disciplined practices, even those who claim a total lack of creativity can learn to paint. We carry many different Decorative Painting books from:

• decorative painting on wooden or tin plates
• decorative painting on gourds
• decorative painting on teapots to decorative painting on mailboxes
• decorative painting on clocks
• decorative painting on Christmas ornaments.

There is no ending as to what you can do with decorative painting!

Tole painting is the term that has been used historically for decorative painting on tin surfaces, especially in New England and by the Pennsylvania Germans.

Today, in addition to tole painting and folk art styles of many countries such as Norway, Sweden, Germany, Russia, England and Mexico, contemporary decorative painting includes facets of Early American Decorative Painting such as stenciling, bronzing, gold leafing, country painting, theorem and graining.