Oil Painting Techniques

Oil paints have been most artists' first choice for hundreds of years, with good reason.

The colors are gorgeous, you can do anything with them and they last forever. Oil paint is slow drying so you can remove what you don’t like while it’s wet or you can paint over it when it’s dry. Oil paint is easy to use once you learn the basics.

Traditional oil painting techniques often begin with the artist sketching the figure onto the canvas with charcoal or a "clean", which is thinned paint. Oil paint can be mixed with turpentine or artist grade mineral spirits or other solvents to create a thinner, faster drying paint. Then the artist builds the figure in layers.

A basic rule of oil paint application is 'fat over lean.' This means that each additional layer of paint should be a bit oilier than the layer below, to allow proper drying. As a painting gets additional layers, the paint must get oilier (leaner to fatter) or the final painting will crack and peel.

There are many other painting media that can be used in oil painting, including cold wax, resins, and varnishes. These additional media can aid the painter in adjusting the translucency of the paint, the sheen of the paint, the density or 'body' of the paint, and the ability of the paint to hold or conceal the brushstroke. These variables are closely related to the expressive capacity of oil paint.When looking at original oil paintings, the various traits of oil paint allow one to sense the choices the artist made as they applied the paint. For the viewer, the paint is still, but for the artist, the oil paint is a liquid or semi-liquid and must be moved 'onto' the painting

Traditionally, paint was transferred to the painting surface using paint brushes, but there are other methods, including using palette knives, rags, etc. Oil paint remains wet longer than many other types of artists' materials, enabling the artist to change the color, texture or form of the figure. At times, the painter might even remove an entire layer of paint and begin anew. This can be done with a rag and some turpentine for a certain time while the paint is wet, but after a while, the hardened layer must be scraped. Scraping may also be used to smooth a portrait before scumbling and glazing. Many oil paintings reveal evidence of scraping on close inspection, particularly when the surface itself is examined. Oil paint dries by oxidation, not evaporation, and is usually dry to the touch in a day to two weeks. It is generally dry enough to be varnished in six months to a year. Art conservators do not consider an oil painting completely dry until it is 60 to 80 years old.

Oil Painting Basics are crucial to creating a painting that works,
include five critical items that are:

COMPOSITION is HOW you put your picture together, where you place the different items in the picture. The arrangement of forms, lines, values and other elements in the artwork. It is very important to plan your composition ahead of time before you start the actual painting. Your main objective in composing the composition is to get your viewer to focus on your focal point or center of interest. This is done by "leading" the eye around the picture in different ways to your focal point. >> more

COLOR is what it is all about. Color is what makes or breaks a painting. You must have harmony in your color usage. You will learn all about color and its terminology by clicking on the COLOR link. >> more

VALUES or shading is how you get the 3-Dimension look in your painting. This is what gives you your "depth" illusion. One way of getting this depth is by overlapping objects in your picture. I will be showing you many ways to achieve this by using different values in the painting.

TEXTURE is what you do when you paint from thin to thick paint with oils. You can use thicker paint in the more important areas of your painting to give your painting a textured look.

EDGES are where two paint colors meet in a painting. You will learn to soften these edges. There are hard and soft edges in a painting. Hard edges are used mostly around the center of interest or focal point.

Current Category: Painting Tips & Techniques >> Oil Techniques & Tips Oil painting tips for professional results         Painting with Oil                 Acrylic Painting Techmiques & Tips       Watercolors Techmiques       Colors Mixing Techniques & Tips