Working with Oil Paints

Oil painting may seem intimidating at first, but if you take it step-by-step, it is actually pretty fun. For beginning oil painters, I suggest you buy a beginning oil paint set from a craft store. This set should contain some oil paints, a range of brushes (round and flat), a refined linseed oil bottle, a plastic palette, a plastic palette knife, a drawing pencil, a sharpener, and an eraser. You will also want to buy canvas to paint on.

Oil Painting Tips

When starting your oil painting, first lightly draw your subject on the canvas. If you make a mistake, you can easily erase and draw over it.

If you want a bold color, you can either use a color directly from the tube and keep the color pure, or you can mix colors together in your palette to produce new colors or hues.

To create texture, use the palette knife instead of the brush to apply the paint on the canvas. To do this, spread the paint on the canvas the way you would spread butter on bread. You can also use the palette knife to evenly mix colors on the palette. Remember to always clean your brushes and palette knife in warm soapy water and rinse well.

Use the tips of round brushes for the basic shapes in your painting, to paint smaller areas, and to add details. To apply or push around thick amounts of paint, use the flat/shader brush. You can also use the chisel edge of this brush for thin lines.

Oil Painting Techniques

To blend, brush two colors side by side, working back and forth without cleaning the brush, in short choppy strokes until you get the color you want.

You can also use the underpainting technique, where you use thinned paint over the main shapes and add details and other colors later. This is the equivalent of a rough draft.

For the glazing technique, you can apply thin layers of transparent paint on top of each other to modify the color. However, this takes some time, since each layer must be dry before applying a new layer.

The Alla Prima technique is when you do not mix many colors and use strong brush strokes. All Prima is the name for a painting finished in one sitting.

There is also the Impasto technique, which is when you apply thick layers of paint, and you can easily see marks and ridges left from the paint applicator. If there is too much paint, you can place absorbent paper over the area and use it to lift off the excess paint; this is known as tonking.

Reference

Oil Color Painting Guide for Beginners