While every kind of painting entails a learning curve, oil painting appears especially overwhelming. The good Custom oil painting news is a few practical oil painting techniques for beginners can make the transition far more seamless. Here are great ideas for cool oil paintings that can assist you in painting confidently, change your process radically, and breathe new life into your art piece.
3 rules of oil painting that you must know
Following these oil painting rules is significant when you paint with oils. They are slow drying over fast drying, thick over thin, and fat over lean. In other words, you need to apply each layer slower drying, thicker, and progressively more flexible than the one underneath. By doing so, you prevent the layers from cracking when you paint. And to do so, you should increase the quantity of paint color on your paintbrush with each subsequent layer.
After getting the hang of the mentioned rules, you can begin applying them with different oil painting styles to be addressed right in the next section. Please ensure you prepare quality oil paints that deliver desired results at an affordable price such as those from M. Graham and Winsor & Newton. Oil paints boast a long tradition in art history and are known as one of the most favorable mediums still in use nowadays. They are crucial. And particularly when you progress, you will definitely find yourself extra interested in investing in the artist-quality paint sets and varnishes that protect your oil paintings from dust and dirt, for example, Satin developed without any hazardous solvents.
8 cool oil painting techniques for beginners
- Chiaroscuro
‘Light-dark’ is the meaning of this Italian word. Chiaroscuro implies the balance existing between dark and light aspects of your artwork. It came from the Renaissance period when painters would create a significant contrast between darker and lighter in their art pieces for a more 3D illusion. The prolific, innovative Dutch Golden Age painter Rembrandt was one of those using the approach to create a lot of dramatic portraits. When you use this oil painting style, we recommend beginning with a lamp or any other light focus, and from there, working outwards.
- Scumbling
It is a fantastic way for newbies to add more texture to their piece of art, In essence, this technique involves applying thin paint layers onto the canvas leveraging a dry, hardened paint brush. The outcome is the image without a smooth finish. There is certain underpainting still noticeable. The English Romantic painter, watercolorist, and printmaker J. M. W. Turner was an avid fan of the scumbling technique.
- Alla Prima
If you are in a hurry, consider opting for Alla Prima as a welcome oil painting style to pick up when working with M. Graham oil paints or other comparable ones. These oil colors make the consistency looser, which I genuinely like for my Alla Prima paintings. Their workable viscosity and slower drying time have helped me attain the professional results I wish.
Essentially, the Alla Prima technique means painting in layers and at the same not allowing the base layer to fully dry. It is also referred to as wet on wet painting technique liked by Joaquín Sorolla, Monet, Van Gogh, Sargent, and many other experienced artists. The approach enabled them to finish masterpieces in one sitting.
- Underpainting
Newbies to oil painting may find painting colors onto a completely blank canvas daunting. Underpainting helps get rid of that fear because it refers to sketching out an approximate idea of the composition in a super-thin paint layer and blocking off some color tones and parts you will place later as you work. Giotto di Bondone and Jan van Eyck are among those who like using this oil painting style.
- Impasto
You may need somewhat more practice when choosing to use this oil painting technique, Impasto work was one of the main features in a lot of Vincent Willem van Gogh’s art pieces. The influential Dutch Post-Impressionist painter’s brushwork indeed emulates fantastic movement and activity in his works of art. This thick oil painting style refers to applying deliberate strokes of thick paint to the canvas. Each mark of your brush remains noticeable in your completed painting. Painters using this style tend to blend paint colors right on their canvas, helping attract attention to the painting’s more striking parts. You can use the palette knife as an alternative to your brush to paint thicker strokes.
One practical tip for beginners who use this technique is to paint thicker paint in your piece’s foreground first, followed by thinning out the paint with care when the background lessens. This way helps create the illusion of distance, possibly improved by applying more blobs of paint to your painting’s close-up parts.
- Glazing
Glazing is another brilliant technique for newbies to learn. It involves using transparent layers painted on top of an opaque base layer on your canvas. When you paint each new color layer, it alters the hue of the layer applied previously and the finish looks glossy. Doing so likewise results in a multi-faceted appearance. Now and then, you can also apply this glazing method over a thin layer of paint to create more shine. The famous Dutch Baroque Period painter Johannes Vermeer used the techniques in plenty of his art pieces.
One pro tip for cool oil paintings is leveraging Dammar varnish in your work’s last layers as part of the glazing liquid. That is because it tends to genuinely go on fantastically and boasts an impressive translucent quality as you first paint it. Using this effective traditional natural varnish in the final glaze assists in making the medium lean. Likewise, it does a great job of saturating the color. As you blend the linseed oil with the Dammar in the glaze medium, the linseed oil’s flexibility balances out the Dammar’s brittleness. Please note that a good varnish like those from the most reliable brands makes a difference compared to low-quality ones that can even ruin your painting.
- Grisaille
The French term Gris means ‘gray’. It involves using a sort of gray, white, and black to paint in monochrome, showing different parts of light and dark. Oil painting novices are recommended to practice with these duller colors before making progress with bolder colors that are likely unpredictable when applied on your canvas. Should you plan to give this approach a try, we suggest using it for underpainting before a piece gets glazed over. The technique is indeed good for a fantastic effect in the underpainting.
- Blocking In
Blocking in is one of the great canvas oil painting ideas. It means physically blocking in various colors and shapes that you intend to use on the canvas before you start painting. The technique helps generate a plan that guides you through the overall composition and paint color options and enables you to handle details. Ultimately, you will not need to worry about them while working on your piece.
By using this painting style, you will have a better idea of where your work becomes headed. Newbies will first make use of larger paintbrushes and thinned paint to paint their major colors’ toned-down versions. After that, you can enhance your colors’ intensity and apply more layers along the way.
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