How to Paint Like Salvador Dali

Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dali has created some of the world's most memorable works of art. Although he was also well versed in other artistic disciplines, such as sculpting and writing, most people probably best remember Salvador Dali for his dream-like paintings. As Salvador Dali himself once said, "The two greatest strokes of luck that can happen to a painter are (1) to be Spanish, (2) to be called Dali."

Instructions

1. Get a different perspective on your surroundings. Dali was known to actually stand on his head for periods of time in order to induce hallucinations that would inspire his paintings.

2. Embrace chaos. Dali believed that chaos was integral to creativity. He once said, "You have to systematically create confusion--it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life."

3. Study Sigmund Freud. Much of Dali's artwork (and that of the surrealist movement as a whole) reflect Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis of dreams, the unconscious and symbolism.

4. Use symbolism. One of Dali's most famous paintings, "The Persistence of Memory," features images of clocks draped over tree branches, as though they were the consistency of pizza dough. This symbolized Dali's perception of time as something flexible rather than rigid. Other symbols that appeared in Dali's paintings include fried eggs, which symbolized his supposed pre-birth memories from the womb, and crutches, which he said symbolized "a support for inadequacy."

5. Alternate between smooth and choppy brush strokes within the same painting. Dali would use long brush strokes on certain objects in his paintings to give them the appearance of a smooth surface. In contrast, he would also paint certain objects in the same painting with short, distinct brush strokes to create a rough or hard surface.