Mastering Oil Painting Techniques: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

Oil paintings possess a timeless allure, captivating both artists and enthusiasts across generations. Renowned for their vibrant colors and remarkable versatility, this cherished medium has been employed for centuries to craft enduring masterpieces. Whether meticulously hand-painted on canvas or intricately detailed on panel, oil paintings uniquely capture stories, emotions, and moments in time.

A Historical Perspective

While oil painting gained widespread recognition during the Renaissance, its origins can be traced much further back. Evidence suggests that oil-based paints were utilized in Afghanistan as early as the 7th century. However, it wasn't until the 15th century that European artists, such as Jan van Eyck, began to refine the medium, producing luminous and richly detailed works.

Essential Materials and Preparation

To embark on your oil painting journey, gather the following basic supplies:

Oil Paints: A selection of colors to start with.
Brushes: An assortment of sizes and shapes.
Primed Canvas or Panel: The surface on which you will paint.
Palette: For mixing colors. Glass palettes are great because they clean easily with a window scraper.
Palette Knife: Useful for mixing paints and applying impasto.
Linseed Oil or Other Medium: To adjust the consistency of the paint.
Protective Gear: Wearing gloves and applying Artguard to your hands can be helpful.
Ventilation: Ensure good ventilation, especially when using solvents. Open all your windows when it’s warm enough to do so! Many towns have a household hazardous waste day where you can dispose of solvents.

Choosing Your Colors

When starting, select a simple palette of primary colors. Begin with 2 blues, 2 yellows, and 2 reds plus white. You can always add more colors later; sometimes having too many colors can overcomplicate the mixing process. The strength of individual paint colors varies tremendously. Cadmium red is a very powerful color whereas yellow ochre isn’t by comparison.

Understanding Paint Composition

Oil paint comprises pigments suspended in a drying oil, typically linseed or walnut oil. Each pigment has unique characteristics that affect opacity and drying time, adding variety to the artist’s palette. Brushes vary in size and shape, influencing the style of strokes, while the canvas or panel serves as the basic support.

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Fundamental Oil Painting Techniques

Here are essential techniques for beginners to explore:

1. Glazing

Glazing involves applying thin, translucent layers of paint to create depth. By adding layer upon layer, the colours appear to have been blended together by way of illusion, rather than the process of blending them on canvas. When glazing with oil paint, work from dark to light and be careful of transparency when working with this technique, otherwise you may end up with muddy colours. Glazing can be used to change the value, hue, chroma, and even the texture of a surface. Because it is applied in thin and semi-transparent layers, the effect you can get is quite beautiful. The colors are not combined physically, but optically. Light is able to travel down to the opaque layer below, reflects back, and then refracts the layers of glazing above. Keep in mind that with each successive layer, you also need to use more medium to adhere to the ‘fat over lean’ principle.

You can use this oil painting technique for working on finer details, enhancing warm or cool areas, and - most importantly - creating deeper contrasts and shadows. I find this technique most useful when painting skintones. It’s very effective for achieving that luminous quality. Vermeer is one of the most well-known masters of this technique.

2. Impasto

Impasto involves applying thick layers of paint to add texture. Not only great for achieving texture, impasto, or risen paint, can also help reduce the cost of oil paints. By mixing impasto with your oils, you will use less paint and also be able to control how textured you want the desired look to be achieved. By using a brush, you can achieve a Van Gough style look with choppy strokes to create dimension as well as texture and still maintain control over where the impasto is placed, as opposed to applying it with a knife. For a successful impasto application, paint must be applied to the surface in thick layers. You can use a palette knife or any stiff brush to do so. The thick and buttery consistency of oil paint lends well to this style of application. You can already produce the impasto effect with paints straight out of the tube. But there are also mediums available that can add extra body to your paints or help them dry faster. The speeding up of the drying process will be quite useful since oil paints dry slowly.

3. Alla Prima (Wet-on-Wet)

Also known as wet-on-wet technique, Alla Prima is Italian for “first attempt.” Sounds fancy, but this oil painting technique simply allows you to work quickly, which means you won’t have to sit around waiting for the oil to dry before starting on your next layer. You also won’t need to rely on a particular brush to achieve the desired effect. Many artists struggle with thick opaque paint. The main way to learn is to practice. To help your practice, a key is to push your long bristled Flat brush forward into a pile of paint so that you load plenty of paint on the edge of your brush. Then hold the brush parallel to the painting and with a light touch pull the brush so that the pile of paint lays on top of the previous layer without disturbing (mixing or blending together) that previous layer of paint. If it doesn’t work on the first pass, don’t mess with the first pass. Reload your brush and try it all over again until the stroke works. Sometimes it can take me 4 or 5 tries to get one brushstroke to look the way I want it to.

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4. Scumbling

Favoured by the Impressionists, Scumbling is an oil painting technique that is ideal for beginners. It's a simple way to add depth and shadow to your oil painting. Grab a stiff bristled brush and a small amount of pigment to dab the paint on the canvas. Both the dabbing and the stiff bristles will leave you with the colour underneath exposed. With scumbling you want the underlying color/layer to show through, so you work with it instead of simply covering it up. Oils are the perfect medium for this oil painting technique.

5. Underpainting

This oil painting technique involves adding in various layers of paint to establish the tone of the painting. For instance, using a cool tone colour can balance out a warm tone and vice versa, this can add tone and harmony to the work. Rather than facing an intimidating, stark white canvas, underpainting involves building multiple layers onto the canvas. Compared to imprimatura, underpainting doesn’t have to be restricted to a single layer. You can have a few layers just for the underpainting. This is where you can do all the preliminary painting planning that you want to do. From setting the tonal values to shading, and even the brushwork. Artists who do very detailed underpaintings find that it greatly aids their painting process.

6. Grisaille

Calling all lovers of monochrome, the Grisaille technique will express the light and shadow of your work as it optimises neutrals and greys to show the light. Grisaille will save you spending money on paint as it uses mostly black and white to achieve the greys and is a great way to learn how to add shadow and light to your works. You can work dark to light such as Joe has here, using black first and utilising the white pigment to blend in shadows. This technique usually follows underpainting or is the first step to starting your painting (if you’d like to forego the underpainting).

7. Palette Knife Technique

No brush? No problem, the palette knife oil technique allows you to add paint using a knife. This adds a choppy texture to your work which can help show off shadow and depth in a more abstract way. You can create broken lines or thinner lines by adding paint to the edge of the brush, or remove paint by using the edge of the knife.

8. Sfumato

Sfumato translated into English, means soft. This oil technique of tonal blending will give your work a light, soft transition between tones such as lights and darks. The word sfumato originates from the Italian word sfumare meaning: to soften, to shade, to tone down, or to fade away. Along with the word fumo meaning smoke or fume. This technique is used to soften the transition between colors, from their tones to their values. One of the most famous users of this technique is Leonardo da Vinci. To him, sfumato is "without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane".

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9. S'graffito

S'graffito is Italian for “to scratch” and is a fun way to remove oil paint from your canvas and add in texture. Build up your layers and remove each layer underneath by using a knife or sharp object such as a toothpick or a nail but be careful to not cut the canvas.

10. Banding

To blend out your oils into a gradual transition, you could find applying your colours in a band using a knife or paint scraper to be easier.

11. Fat Over Lean

When layering with oils, you might find that some oils crack. This can happen when you’re working too quickly and not allowing the underlay to dry before the second layer has been applied. To avoid cracking, the fat over lean technique is helpful. Fat refers to paint with a higher amount of oil added, whilst lean refers to pigments with lower amounts. Add more oil to each layer but make sure that each layer has dried before doing so. Fat paint refers to how much oil is present. By adding an oil medium to your paint, you are making it fatter. The reason for painting fat over thin is that the layers on top must dry slower than the layers on the bottom of your canvas. A simple way of tackling this is to have a process for painting. Start with very lean paint (paint plus solvent). Then add layers that are slightly fatter (paint plus a mix of solvent and oil medium). This is a similar principle to the fat over lean rule, in that it is based on the drying time of oil paint. So in theory, your first layers should be very thin, almost glazes of paint.

12. Dry Brush

Similar to the scumbling technique, the dry brush technique involves brushing with a dry brush to show tones of light and dark, to create a smoke effect. When using oil, check that your brush is free from oil or any pigment for the best result, as oil will take longer to dry than its watercolour or acrylic mates.

13. Adding Dry Mediums

For a more interesting affect, add dry mediums to your oil before it dries. Think mediums such as sand, gravel, paper, torn hessian or even glass beads, as you can create an interesting effect. This application is fun and helps build texture and adds dimension to your work.

Additional Techniques to Explore

Imprimatura: Also known as adding a toned ground to the surface. Not everyone includes this step in their painting process. It also releases you from the pressure of having to ensure that your layers are opaque enough to cover the stark whiteness of your surface. Allowing the imprimatura to show through can also be another effect that you might like to play around with. It comes from the Italian for ‘first paint layer’. Often, the initial stain of colour painted on a ground is left visible in areas of the finished painting. Rubens, Singer Sargent & Anders Zorn used this technique in their paintings.
Blocking In: For example, a deep brown for the nearby mountains, a grayish blue for the farther ones, pale blue for the sky, etc. It would usually be just one color for each section, at this point you’re just ‘blocking in’. So no need to add details or do blending just yet.
Gradient Blending: Is just a specific kind of blending where you create smooth transitions between colors or show subtle value changes. You need to be patient and more precise when using this technique as abrupt shifting in colors and values may look out of place, unless it is meant to be exactly so.
S'graffito: Is a fun way to remove oil paint from your canvas and add in texture. Build up your layers and remove each layer underneath by using a knife or sharp object such as a toothpick or a nail but be careful to not cut the canvas.
Chiaroscuro: Another Italian term, chiaro meaning light and curo meaning dark, chiaroscuro means ‘light-dark’. To achieve this, your painting must have a strong contrast between light and dark. This allows you to portray volume and three-dimensionality to the figures and objects in your paintings quite successfully. A more pronounced version of this is called ‘tenebrism’ where the contrast between light and shadow are quite extreme. Unlike chiaroscuro where some areas of the painting are under shadow but with imperceptibly visible forms, with tenebrism some or more often rather a lot of areas of the painting are in black or in complete darkness. This gives the painting a very dramatic effect where the contrast between light and dark is extremely high.

Brushwork Techniques

Brush techniques are tougher than they seem, it takes a lot to develop diverse techniques. A simple way of improving your painting technique is to take the largest brush you are comfortable using, and up-sizing it. A large brush has such influence on your painting and forces you to be decisive and efficient with your strokes. When you first look at paintbrushes you will probably see a lot of choices like filberts, brights, rounds, or flats. Flats and Brights have a squared-off edge. Flats are longer than Brights and have more spring which is great for layering impasto paint. Filberts are like used Flats - the corners of the square edge have been worn down and are now rounded. Egberts are extra-long filberts and are fun to use for bravura tree foliage.

Palette and Color Mixing Tips

Glass Palettes: Glass palettes are great because they clean easily with a window scraper.
Limited Palette: Using a limited palette will help focus your painting and create harmony. Anders Zorn was known to use a very limited palette of Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red Medium, Ivory Black plus White. The Ivory Black was used by Anders Zorn as a very dark blue and the Cadmium Red and Yellow Ochre made up all three of the primary colors.
Mixing Colors: Using taped-off one-inch squares, mix each of your colors with another color on your palette and then with white to increasingly lighten the values.

Important Considerations for Oil Painting

Health and Safety

Solvents: Ventilation is important if you are using a solvent. Open all your windows when it’s warm enough to do so! Many towns have a household hazardous waste day where you can dispose of solvents.
Toxicity: The oil paints themselves as they come out of the tube (if you get professional-grade) are composed of oil (usually linseed, walnut, poppyseed, or safflower) and pigment (inorganic pigments like iron oxides and Ultramarine Blue, or synthetic organic pigments like Phthalo and Quinacridone hues). You may have read that oil paints contain chemicals that can be absorbed through your skin. That is NOT true! At least not any more than gum arabic or acrylic polymer emulsion - the binders for watercolor and acrylic paint. Of course, you don’t want to eat any of the paints whether oil paint, watercolor, or acrylic, but getting them on your skin is not going to harm you or get into your bloodstream. The only exception to the bloodstream issue is if you use Turpentine. Turpentine can be absorbed through your skin and it will carry the pigments with it into your body. Keep in mind that solvents are not necessary for oil painting. Most of my paintings have been finished without the use of harmful solvents. I did use Gamsol mineral spirits for many years, but it will not absorb through your skin like Turpentine. The fumes are harmful, especially to solvent sensitive artists, so I now stay away from mineral spirits as well. Gamblin states that it is the safest solvent available to artists. I used it for the initial washes on my paintings for more than a decade without noticing any negative effects - both in my studio and while painting outdoors.

“Fat Over Lean” Rule

“Fat over Lean” is the way you want to build up an oil painting. Rub a layer of oil medium between layers with a cotton rag, it will even out all the colors and bring them to the surface. Oil paintings are often built up using multiple layers in order to take advantage of opaque and transparent paint.

Brush Care

To clean my brushes, I use Turpenoid Natural which is non-toxic. It will completely remove the color from my paintbrushes without the need for soap and water. A solvent like Turpenoid Natural is entirely safe to use in your studio and it conditions your paintbrushes to help them keep their shape and last much longer than using soap and water. Another option that I just heard about is Bristle Magic Brush Cleaner which cleans and conditions like Turpenoid Natural - the drawback is you have to wash out the cleaner with soap and water before painting which is not necessary with Turpenoid Natural. They are both non-toxic. Some artists have turned to water-mixable oils to speed up cleaning. My recommendation - stick with traditional oils. Traditional oils cure with a harder paint film than water-mixable, they are more buttery to paint with, they dry just as fast or faster in some cases, and cleanup with Turpenoid Natural means never needing to use soap and water.

Maintaining Your Oil Paintings

Maintaining oil paintings requires careful attention. To preserve your masterpiece:

Protect the painting from direct sunlight and high humidity to prevent fading and cracking.
Dust regularly with a soft, dry cloth.
Avoid using water or chemicals.

Oil Painting Terminology

Alkyd mediums: (Pronounced: al-kid) Alkyd is a synthetic resin that can be added to oil paint to speed up the drying time of the paints. They are usually soy-based oils that have been polmerized by heat.
Alla Prima: (Pronounced: ah-luh pree-ma) this is an Italian phrase that describes a painting created entirely in one sitting, it translates as ‘at the first’. Usually, there isn’t any underpainting to the piece and is created in one go.
Chiaroscuro: (Pronounced: key-ARE-oh-SCURE-oh) an Italian word literally meaning “light-dark”.
Craquelure: (Pronounced: krak-loo r) this is the term used to describe the tiny cracks and fine lines covering the surface of old oil paintings. They are caused by the shrinking and movement of the ground and the oil paint surface.
Grisaille: (Pronounced: griz-zai) is a monochromatic oil painting often used in underpaintings or as a black & white portrait painting technique.
Impasto: the texture created in a painted surface by the movement of the brush. Impasto usually implies thick, heavy brushwork, but the term also refers to the crisp, delicate textures found in smoother paint surfaces.
Imprimatura: (Pronounced: im-pree-muh-tur-uh) an initial stain of oil colour painted on a white ground which provides you with a transparent toned ground.
Mahl stick: (Pronounced: mar-hl) a wooden stick used to lean on when painting fine details.
Plein air: (Pronounced: plen-air) a painting created outside rather than in a studio. The term comes from the French ‘en plein air’ meaning ‘in the open air’.
Sfumato: (Pronounced: sfoo-mah-toe) from the Italian
Liquore: (Pronounced: lee/KWOH/reh) - liqueur
Cuore: (Pronounced: KWOH / reh) - heart

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