Beginners Oil Painting Tips and Advice – Thinking While Painting
Oil painting is a mainly right brain activity but the left brain is by no means idle. A good question to ask is: What sort of brain activity goes not the act of painting?
Here are some answers:
The Drawing Phase – In this phase you create a drawing on your canvas. During this effort you should be preoccupied with all the technical issues that make a good drawing.
Is this shape right? Is this angle too shallow? Is this object in the right place? Is this line too short or too long? Is this what I intend to convey to my audience? In other words, be preoccupied with concepts such as accuracy, seeing, comparing, judging, etc.
You must learn to draw well so you don’t get constantly distracted by your lack of skill.
The Block-in Phase – This is the phase where you color the large shapes in your drawing. Here you must keep in mind not to deform, enlarge (this is particularly easy to do), or crimp these shapes which were already correctly established in the Drawing Phase.
Be busy judging colors in terms of hue, value, and intensity. At the same time, think about how you will mix these colors on your palette. Which tube colors will you use? To do this well, you need to learn a few things about color mixing. During this phase, I recommend using fairly thin paint.
Squinting is a great help, particularly for discerning values. To identify hues, avoid staring at them for too long. It’s better to have a quick look, preferably with your peripheral vision. Also, restrain yourself from painting details.
The Shaping Phase – This phase involves the modeling of the shapes so they look like the real objects. Here you should revert back to the drawing mode. That is, think angles, lengths, curves, and position.
Also, refine the values, hues, and intensities. Stand back regularly and judge your work from a distance. Also, in this phase we use thicker paint.
Keep in mind that at the end of this phase your painting should be more or less finished.
The Detail Phase – This is the final phase where you add in the details. This is the icing on the cake phase where you can dream and let your individual talent come to the fore.
Be in a delicate and soft mood. Think of hints, lost edges, accents, etc. Use thin paint for delicate lines or thick paint for highlights. Be discrete and measured. Don’t overdo it.
The purpose of this article was to give you an idea of the sort of thinking patterns that go into the painting process. Painting is a mentally demanding activity and requires very much a multi-tasking approach. For many people, this takes some getting used to. At first, you may want to write lists of the various things to keep in mind while creating your masterpiece. Later on, all this will become second nature. As always, practice makes perfect.No shortcuts here.
Oh yes, and above all, don’t forget to sign your painting!
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Beginners Oil Painting Tips – The Detail Phase
The fourth and final phase of the basic oil painting process is the detail phase. This is the time to incorporate all the details like small decorations, fine textures, and highlights.
At the end of the first phase we are left with a complete drawing of the scene we wish to paint. The purpose of the second phase is to take the drawing and transform it into a series of large colored shapes. These large shapes must have the correct geometry and color. The third phase, i.e., the shaping phase, consists of modeling and refining the large colored shapes we produced in the second phase.
By the end of the shaping phase we should have more or less a finished painting. There are is no white canvas left and all objects and subjects should be drawn and colored correctly. So all that is left to do is adding the details.
Details include things like small twigs, pupils, eye lashes, small lines and curves, and highlights on a cheek or piece of clothing. In short, anything that cannot be done with a large brush.
Some details will require the use of thinned-out paint. For example, when adding thin lines or curves for hair or grass, we can get good results by using thing paint. However, in these situations you should always be aware of the so-called fat-over-lean rule of oil painting.
The fat-over-lean rule of oil painting states that you should always paint fat over lean. The words fat and lean refer to the amount of oil contained in the paint. So, in principal, when applying layers of oil paint on top of each other on your canvas, you should always apply a fatter layer on top of a leaner layer. If you put a lean layer on top of a wet fat layer changes are that, after some time, the lean layer will start to show cracks.
Other details may require the use of thick paint often right out of the tube. This is the case with heavy highlights and very intense accents such as red reflection on a roof of a house.
The reason details are better added at the very end as a fourth phase is that they are usually quite small and need to be placed very precisely. Therefore, it is better to start with painting large general shapes and then to progressively add refinements until the entire scene is correctly reproduced on your canvas.
Also, details are often meant to be accents of intense color which requires thick paint and therefore, according to the fat-over-lean rule, are best put on last.
Finally, with the benefit of an almost finished painting it becomes much easier to judge if the added details are artistically well-distributed. For example, it is almost always the case that a focal point area will have more detail than other areas. For comparison purposes it is a good thing to have at your disposal a general overview of the entire painting.
Learn more about how to draw with pencil.
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How to Draw with Pencil Fundamentals – The Line
The line is one of the most basic entities used in drawing. The straight line has two fundamental properties:
Length – Naturally, the length of a straight line is the distance between its beginning point and its end point.
Direction – A straight line also has a direction. Its direction is determined by the angle it makes with a horizontal or vertical line.
So, when you want to draw a straight line you need to think about two things: length and direction.
A pencil artist seldom uses a ruler to draw a straight line. Lines are drawn free-hand. And this takes quite a bit of practice. In the end you should be able to draw straight lines and parallel lines fairly easily.
The idea here is to swing your arm from the elbow as opposed to from the wrist. You can use your wrist for tiny lines or other small details. But generally you keep your wrist and lower arm fixed as one unit and you rotate your elbow as you draw the line. This movement happens quite fast. Also, hold your pencil any way you want, i.e., the way you are used to it.
To measure the length of a line you can use the following procedure:
First, you choose a Basic Length Unit. It is the length of a line segment that is not too long and not too short relative to a scene.
We will choose two such basic units:
1. Life Unit – First, we choose a basic length unit for the real scene you want to draw. For a large life scene you can do this by holding a pencil at arm’s length with locked elbow. Then, with one eye closed, you can measure a basic unit (not too long and not too short) with your pencil using your thumb as a marker. Draw this line segment on a separate piece of paper.
2. Paper Unit – Now, you also need a basic length for your actual drawing. This is because the size of the real scene will usually be different from the one you will render on your paper. Again, use your pencil to choose a basic length unit suitable for the size of your paper and call it the “Paper Unit”. Draw it next to the Life Unit.
Now we are ready to use these two basic units. We use the Life Unit to measure any length on the real composition. We express these lengths in terms of the number of Life Units. For example, you will speak of this table leg being about half a Life Unit or this hat sits 1.5 Life Units to the left of that umbrella. Don’t forget to make the measurements always in the same manner, i.e., at arm’s length, with locked elbow, and with one eye closed.
Next, you take your Paper Unit and multiply it by the ratio you just obtained with your Life Unit. For example, on your paper the table leg will measure 0.5 times the Paper Unit or the hat will sit 1.5 Paper Units to the left of the umbrella. That’s all there is to it.
Then there remains the technique to measure angles:
Angles are measured relative to the horizontal and the vertical. If you work on rectangular paper you can use its vertical and horizontal edges as a reference. The angle you observe in your life composition will be the same on your paper. No ratio involved here.
Again, you can use your pencil but this time align it horizontally (or vertically) and estimate the angle a particular line makes with your horizontal or vertical. This technique requires some practice but after awhile you’ll get a feel for angles. After you’ve drawn the line you can check of the length as well as the angle seem right to you. It is remarkable how quickly the eye gets trained to detect incorrect proportions and angles. But it does take some time and practice.
Note that curved lines can be considered as a linkage of small straight lines so that the same techniques can also be applied in an approximate manner to these curved lines.
Feel interested to learn the skill of oil painting? Read beginners oil painting here.
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Beginners Oil Painting Tips – About Brushstrokes and Such
A question: Is there a secret way to hold a brush so every stroke is a stroke of genius?
Best is to hold the brush towards the end of the handle. This gives you a little more space and a better view of your canvas.
If you want more control (e.g., to paint details), you should hold the brush closer to the head. Other than that, there are no secrets. Just experiment and find your own way.
Brush-holding and brushstrokes brings up the question of style and technique: How do you develop style and technique? The answer is: Just practice and further don’t worry about it.
Your style is in your brain while technique building is a matter practice. The manner in which you become fluent in these techniques actually becomes a part of your unique style.
You can also learn a lot from the masters. Don’t copy their moves but, in time, give them your own twist.
Hold the brushes in different ways, put the paint down in different ways, and observe what happens and repeat what works for you.
A brushstroke generally implies four separate actions:
Cleaning the Brush – The main thing to remember here is to always pull your brush, never push it. This reduces wear and also shapes the hairs of the brush.
Shaping the Brush – If you clean a brush correctly it should be shaped and ready to go. However, for delicate work (e.g., thin lines) you can chisel-shape the brush. That is, you hold the brush at a 45 degree angle to your horizontal palette, push down on it, and then slightly forward. The brush tip should now have a straight chisel-like edge.
Loading the Brush – Now you can load the brush with paint in several ways. Shovel-loading a brush means lowering it onto your palette and pushing it at a low angle into a pile of paint. The paint is only on one side of the brush.
To tip-load a brush, you first smooth out the front of the paint pile. Then, you pull a chisel-shaped in a slight arch across the front edge of the pile. The result is a thin line of paint at the very tip of the brush.
If accuracy is of no concern you can pull-load your brush. Pull a brush at an angle through the upper layer of the paint pile. The more paint you want the deeper you should go into the pile. The brush-to-palette angle determines how far down the brush will be covered with paint.
Body-loading is a form of pull-loading but with a small brush-to-palette angle at a thin paint pile. The goal is to cover the entire brush head with paint.
Application of the Paint – A shovel-loaded brush makes precise strokes of varying thicknesses and almost functions as a writing tool.
A tip-loaded brush can be held perpendicular to the canvas and, while lightly touching the canvas, create very thin lines.
A pull-loaded brush is useful to create run of the mill strokes that don’t require too much precision.
A body-loaded brush is good for applying impasto strokes and heavy highlights. Impasto is a painting style in which the paint is laid-on very thickly.
Much more can be said about this but just remember, the ease with which you apply brushstrokes depends on how you load your brush.
Learn also how to draw with pencil.
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In this article I will detail the tube colors of a starter palette for beginning artists – sort of beginners oil painting palette guide. These are in fact the colors I personally use most often. Here is the proposed 6-color palette:
1. Lemon Yellow
2. Cadmium Yellow
3. Cadmium Red
4. Permanent Rose (Alizarin Crimson)
5. French Ultramarine
6. Phthalo Blue
7. Titanium White
8. Ivory Black
Note that White and Black are generally not classified as colors.
A color is often known by different names depending on the manufacturer. For example, Permanent Rose is more or less the same as Alizarin Crimson.
The above palette has the capacity to produce very clean secondary colors, i.e., colors that are a mixture of just two tube colors.
Notice that there are two versions of each primary color (yellow, red, and blue). One is a cool version (i.e., leaning towards the blues and greens) and the other is a warm version (i.e., leaning towards the reds and yellows).
First learn to completely understand how the six colors together with black and white interact in their numerous mixtures.
Here are some of the more important properties of the palette colors.
Lemmon Yellow – Lemmon Yellow is a cool, greenish leaning, and opaque yellow. Opaque means solid or not-transparent. This yellow is a medium-to-slow drier with medium to low tinting strength. Low tinting strength means that you need to add a lot of this paint to see its effect in a mixture. Its greenish bias makes it an ideal yellow to use with Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) to produce very clean secondary greens.
Cadmium Yellow – Cadmium Yellow is a warm, orange leaning, and opaque yellow. This yellow is a medium-to-slow drier and has a high tinting strength. Its orange bias makes it an ideal yellow to use with Cadmium Red to produce very clean secondary oranges.
Cadmium Red – Cadmium Red is a warm, orange leaning, and opaque red. This red is a slow drier and has a high tinting strength.
Permanent Rose – Permanent Rose is a cool, violet leaning, and transparent red. This red is a medium-to-slow drier and has a medium tinting strength. Its violet bias makes it an ideal red to use with French Ultramarine to produce very clean secondary violet.
French Ultramarine – French Ultramarine is a warm, violet leaning, and semi-transparent blue. This blue is a slow drier and has a high tinting strength. Its violet bias makes it an ideal blue to use with Permanent Rose to produce very clean secondary violets.
Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) – Phthalo Blue is a cool, green leaning, and transparent blue. This blue is a medium-to-slow drier and has a very high tinting strength. Its green bias makes it an ideal blue to use with Lemmon Yellow to produce very clean secondary greens.
Titanium White – Titanium White is an opaque white and covers up just about any color. There are other whites such as Flake White and Zinc White. As a beginning artist you may want to avoid using Zinc White because it tends to crack when applied thickly.
Ivory Black – Ivory Black is the cleanest of all the tube blacks and is extremely constructive in lots of mixtures. Other tube blacks include Lamp Black and Mars Black.
This simple palette is amazingly versatile and many minimal-minded professionals use nothing else.
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Beginners Oil Painting Tips – Know Your Oil Painting Brushes
Let us begin with the standard type of brushes used when painting with oils. Here they are.
The Flat – The flat brush has a flat ferrule, is square-ended, and has medium to long hairs. The ferrule of a bush is the metal sleeve used to join the bristles and handle of the brush.
The flat brush able to carry a lot of paint and can be handled fairly easily. It can be used to produce bold sweeping strokes or when used on its edge it can also draw fine lines.
The Filbert – The filbert brush has a thick, flat ferrule and is oval-shaped with medium to long hairs. It has long handles. It is a compromise between a flat and a round brush. With its soft rounded edges, the filbert brush is often used for blending and drawing. If used for the purpose of blending, natural hair is best because the wet hairs hold together better.
The Bright – The bright brush has a flat ferrule, short-length hairs, and is usually set in a long handle. The width and length of brush hair is about the same. The bright brush is suitable for short controlled strokes with thick or heavy color.
The Round – The round brush has a round ferrule, is round or has a pointed tip. It is used to produce fills, washes, and thick to thin lines. A pointed round is good for fine detail.
Then, there are also a number of special oil brushes that are used to accomplish specific tasks. Here are some of them.
The Fan – The fan brush has a flat ferrule and has hairs spread out in a half circle. It is used for soft blending, smoothing, textures, and specials effects. For soft blending, natural hair is best while synthetic works well for textural effects.
The One Stroke – The one stroke brush has a flat ferrule, is square-ended, and has medium to long length hairs. It has a short handle and can hold large amounts of paint. It is primarily used to paint block letters in one stroke hence its name.
The Sash – The sash has long handles and tapered bristles. Bristles are stiff hairs. The sash is perfect for detailed work on large paintings and decorative painting.
The Script and Liner – The script brush is a pointed, narrow brush with very long hair. Liner brushes have shorter hairs and are narrower. The script and liner brushed have round ferrules, short handles, and high paint carrying capacity. They are used for lettering, outlining, highlighting, and to produce long thin strokes.
The brushes as described above are really more than you need to start painting with oils. If you are a beginning artist it may be a good idea to try out the flats and the filberts first.
For example, learn how to paint with one filbert real well. See how far you can carry your paintings with just this one brush. You will be surprised, after a few months of practice, how versatile that filbert really is.
It is better to become an expert with one kind of brush than being half an expert with many.
Wanna become a pencil drawing expert? Learn how to draw with pencil.
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Beginners Oil Painting Tips – The Skill of Seeing Color
Color is the central component of painting. It is what makes it a unique art form. Therefore, it is essential that we develop the skill of seeing colors as they really are. Here are some tips to help you with this.
Prejudice – The first step in learning to see color correctly is to get rid of all built-in preconceived notions about color.
We must learn to approach the observation of each color as if we see it for the first time without prejudice.
Local Color – Each object has its own color which is sometimes called the object’s local color. It is the color of the object when seen in normal daylight.
Light – The local color of an object will be affected by the light that shines on it. We must realize that all surfaces are to some degree reflective. In other words, the local color of an object changes when subjected to light and we must be aware of those changes.
For example, let’s we have a perfectly red apple. That is, the local color of the entire apple is red. When a yellowish light shines on this apple sideways we will observe that the lit side takes on an orange undertone and that the side in the side receives a violet bias which is the complement of yellow. Note that the complementary color of a color is the color that lies opposite to it on the color wheel.
Harmony – A lit scene is naturally harmonized. The light that spreads over the scene has the effect of changing all the local colors in such a way that all colors become harmonized (i.e., simply put, the colors go together).
For example, the colors you observe in an actual landscape will always be in harmony. This is because the light source (the sun) drenches the entire scene. This is not the case when you put together an imagined scene in your studio. Indeed, it takes a bit of color theory knowledge to produce a harmonious painting.
Nomenclature – There is also the matter of nomenclature. People tend to use special names for certain colors such as lemon green, navy blue, etc. This is not the best way to go about describing colors.
A better way is to start with the three primary color names: red, yellow, and blue. Add to these the names of the three secondary colors: orange, green, and violet.
Then, a color that looks like red but has an orange bias is called orange-red. A color that is clearly yellow but has a green undertone is called green-yellow. Or, a green that has more yellow than blue in it is called a yellow-green. And so on.
Tertiary colors often have a clear secondary nature with a bit of a third color added. For example, we can speak of an orange-red with a touch of blue or white.
This way of thinking about color also aids us with color observation. When you see a color you can start by identifying the overall primary color. Then you can try to judge if there is a bias to that primary color. And finally, you can try to gauge if there are touches of additional colors visible in the mix.
In the end, as is the case with so much in painting, learning to observe colors correctly is a matter of practice and experience. The above tips, however, should help in this endeavor.
I am also giving useful tips about how to draw with pencil here.
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There are several reasons why the use of edges in oil paintings is important.
Degree of Hardness – Edges can be used to express the degree of hardness or softness of objects and subjects.
Degree of Roundness – Edges can also be used to reflect the degree of roundness and sharpness of objects and subjects.
Directional Indicator – Edges can be used to lead the viewer’s eye around the painting and ultimately to the focal point or area.
This can be done in such a manner that the viewer is hardly aware of the manipulation. In the West, people’s eyes enter a painting from the left. So, here is an opportunity to design your composition on the left as an invitation to enter your painting. From there, edges and forms can be used to lead and guide the viewer further into the painting and to the focal point.
Of course, you are always free to break these sorts of rules if you have an interesting reason to do so. Also, be aware that in the East people enter a painting from the right.
In real life most edges look soft because our eyes are constantly moving. An edge will only assume its sharpness if we specifically focus on it. Therefore, it is best to keep the edges soft in general unless you want to draw attention to a certain feature as is the case with the focal area.
The other situation in which to use a sharp edge is when you want to make a certain feature appear to advance. But, in general, avoid excessive use of hard edges because they work against the creation of realism. On the other hand, a painting totally devoid of hard edges tends to look uniteresting.
Then there are also lost edges. These edges are usually applied when two neighboring shapes have the same value.
The whole thing starts with a visible edge and when this edge enters an area of equal values it becomes invisible or gets lost. Further down, the edge reappears where the value start to divers again.
The eye has a natural tendency to fill in the lost edge. The use of lost edges is artistically very powerful and should be part of your repertoire of tricks. Allowing the colors of one form to work themselves into the neighboring planes of equal value is a delightful way to loosen up a painting and make it visually dynamic. Note that a painting for some reason, as it progresses, has a tendency to tighten up.
In conclusion, there are three types of edges: the soft edge, the hard edge, and the lost edge. Most of the edges are on the soft side. Hard edges should be used sparingly with the intent of attracting attention or to advance certain features. The lost edge is usually used where values of neighboring forms become equal. They serve as a way to loosen up a painting.
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Tip on Pencil Portrait Drawing – Montage
A montage is somewhat like a collage. On one piece of paper you put together any number of related subjects. However, instead of pasting them onto the paper you will draw them.
A montage is often used to tell a story about the person you are drawing. It includes references to well-known events that happened in the person’s life and that were special to him or her.
Here are a few tips on how to go about putting together a montage in your pencil portraits.
Subjects – Do not overdo it. The subject surrounded by a few references will do just fine. It is easy to end up with a crowded montage that contains too many subjects and objects.
Focal Point – Do not forget that the person who is being honored should remain the center of attention. Make sure you do not let the secondary drawings overwhelm the person you who is being honored. A viewer should first and foremost see the honoree.
One way to ensure that your subject remains the focal point is to place him or her right in the center of your drawing. In addition, make sure that you use a smaller scale for the surrounding subject and objects. Another tick is to draw the surrounding object somewhat lighter and also with less detail.
Values – It is also important that you create an overall unity in terms of values. Often you will use a variety of photographs to construct your montage. These photographs will usually have different intensities and different light source locations.
So, before you start your drawing pay some attention to where you will put your darkest darks and lightest lights so that the final product has a consistent value distribution. If the values are not consistent throughout your drawing you will end up with a funny looking result.
Sizes – The sizes of the subjects and objects in the different photographs will not be consistent either. So, some will have to be drawn larger than in the photograph and others will have to be drawn smaller.
Here is where the grid technique can be very helpful. By scaling the grid size your can fairly easily scale the subjects and objects as well. If the object is to be smaller on your drawing you can draw a scaled-down grid on drawing paper first as compared to the corresponding grid on your photograph. The same is true in reverse. You can easily increase the size of a subject or object by drawing a scaled-up grid on your drawing paper. This is the old grid trick which was used by many great masters of the past.
A montage can be a precious gift to the person who is being honored. Be forewarned however, that a montage can involved a lot of work. Therefore, make sure you make a careful estimate of the time you will spend so you can charge accordingly if this is part of how you make your living.
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Tip on Pencil Portrait Drawing – Cropping
Cropping is a presentation technique that displays a subject within the borders of your paper and often involves a truncation of some parts of the subject. For example, part of a hat or an arm may be truncated or cropped.
Cropping is a device that can be applied often to great dramatic effect. It usually brings the subject much closer to the viewer and makes the portrait much more intimate. As the viewer you almost feel like you are violated the subject space.
Here are a few ideas when applying the cropping technique on your pencil portraits drawings.
Balance – Cropping immediately presents you with a compositional puzzle. You must exercise good judgment in what to crop and what not. You must make sure that you preserve the balance in the drawing both from the perspective of shape and in terms of values. It is a good idea to stand back a little and judge your drawing from a distance.
You can usually determine by gut feeling whether or not you did a good job. If the result feels right then it generally is right. If not, you should try to determine what exactly is wrong.
Border – Sometimes it may be beneficial to the overall look of the finished product to use border tape or actually draw in a border. Border tape can be had in any art store and comes in many different colors and various widths. Border tape is generally only used for artwork of which you will make prints because with time the tape on the original will almost certainly loosen and maybe even ruin the picture.
Variant – An alternative to actual cropping is letting the drawing run all the way out to one or more of the edges of the paper. This often creates a triangular composition with pleasing results. It can also help you in balancing the values if there are no other alternatives to do so.
I regularly use this technique when the subject’s upper-body clothing is of interest. I usually draw the head life-size on a 16″ x 20″ ground. By letting the drawing run out to the bottom and side edges I am able to gain enough room to also draw the upper-body clothing.
Imagination – Cropping is an interesting compositional tool. It can also be used to lead the viewer’s attention in a particular direction off the page and force him or her to think about what is not drawn in that direction.
For example, part of the back of a horse-drawn cart could be cropped. A smiling good-looking gentleman could be sitting up-front in the cart gazing towards the unseen backseat of the cart. In this way, a viewer is invited to wonder what sort of person could be sitting in the back of the cart that can attract the rapt attention of such a fine gentleman.
Cropping is interesting and adds to the drama of the composition. It is something you must try at least once.
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