OIL PAINTING TECHNIQUES

INTRODUCTION

Oil painting appeared  first in the fifteenth century, and done by Northern
Europe painter. Since than, artists have developed and expanded on  techniques
of oil paintings.
Like all other paints, oil paint are made up of three ingredients, such as binder,
pigment and solvent. First ingredient is pigment which gives  colour and is in the
powder form. Second ingredient is binder is linseed oil in oil paint. Third
ingredient is the solvent which could be a variety of things, but mostly used is
turpentine oil or mineral spirits. The properties of the ingredients affect the
painting very much as variation of these three ingredients will help you create
different textures.Creating the texture of your choice will be simplified if you
know the ingredients. It means you will know for a particular texture you want,
which ingredient to add more and which to use in minimal amount.

SURFACES

Surfaces on which we do oil paintings highly varies. An artist have different
choices to paint or on which surface to work.Some of the surfaces are wood,
paper and canvas which is mostly used. The surface chosen doesn’t matter but
it is always good to prepare the surface with  coat of acrylic primer-like gesso.
Coating surface with gesso creates an acceptable surface for painting with oil
paint. There are also paper and canvas which is pre-primed with gesso, you can
buy them also. Surface texture affects the final look of painting an artist want to
achieve. Masonite wood produces a very smooth and complex details in a final
look of the oil painting. It creates easy build-up of the material creating 3-D
effect also called impasto effects, we will go through different textures also later.
On canvas more paint is required to create build-up details. Surfaces selected by
artists should reflect the subject matter and style chosen to paint.

BRUSHES

There is a huge variety of brushes used for oil painting, stiff hog bristle brushes
are the most commonly used ones. Because oil paint is thick in nature and the
bristle brush can hold it's form and stiffness. Brushes are of different variety of
sizes and shapes . bright brushes have shorter fibers while Flat brushes have
longer fibers that are squared at end. Filbert brushes are flat and also rounded
at the tip.  Round brushes have pointed tip. Fan brushes have an appearance
just like there name, they are flat and "fan" out at the tip. Palette knives are also
widely used for oil painting to apply and mix paint.

TECHNIQUES

As the oil paint uses an oil binder, so it takes a while to dry off completely. This
can be both an advantage or  disadvantage. It’s advantage is when an artist want
some time to work on his/her art piece or got some work and have to postpone
the painting work. It can be done easily as, oil paint gives time to dry.
But the disadvantage is when new layer of paint artist want to apply, right after
the paint in completely new color.

Impasto

Impasto is a painting technique in which we create a three-dimensional texture by building up thick layers of oil paint. This can be accomplished quickly with oil paint when we use a palette knife.

Underpainting

An underpainting is monochromatic painting in which we keep on adding subsequent layers of paint until we get the effect.  These subsequent layers of the paint creates complex colors and values.

Scumbling

In this technique we put an opaque layer of color over a previous dried layer of color. Then use solvent, a brush, or knife to remove the top layer of paint revealing the color underneath.