A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners to Learn How to Start with Oil Paintings

The oil painting has versatility and artistic effects. Inthe 15th century, the European artist Jan Van Eyck experimented with and discovered oil painting techniques. Eventually, oil paintings replaced tempera paintings due to the brightness and richness of their colors. Oil pigments come in tubes and artists feel free to move outdoors to create their artwork.

Oil paintings also provide flexibility to adjust their translucence, sheen, and thickness. This is the reason most painting artist from Gold Coast prefer oil paintings.

What is oil painting?

Oil painting is an artwork produced using oil paints on a canvas. Oil paints are a mixture of pigment, binder, and thinner. The pigment is the colour element whereas the binder is the drying oilthat holds the pigments to be paintedon the canvas.A thinner is usually used to add more fluid to the mixture. Different oil paints have different drying times and colour textures.

Lana Zueva is an oil painting artist from Russia. Her works include portraits, landscapes, still life, animals, and much more art forms. She is the award winner of the Gold Coast Show 2021 and offers commission works for her customers. You can log on to her website for buying oil paintings, anything like Lana Zueva achievments to suit your home décor.

How to start with oil paintings?

You may need a palette of oil paints, canvas, palette knife, easel, paper towels, and a set of painting brushes to start with your oil paintings. You can use different layers of colour to build a unique composition.

You may follow below prime rules of oil paintings to make the most of your artwork –

  1. Fat over lean –An oil paint with moredrying oil (or the binder) will be fatter and slower to dry. In case the top layer dries faster than the layers below, the paint will crack. Hence, you must ensure that the top layers of your painting are fatter than the lower layers.
  2. Thick over thin –Usually, thick paint will dry slower than thin paint. The top layer of your paintingsmust be thicker than the bottom so that it dries slower and avoids cracking.
  3. Faster or slow drying – If a fast-drying coating is used on a slow drying layer, then there are chances that your painting may crack. A slow-drying bottom layer will pull and twist the fast-drying top layers to create cracks. It is best to use fast-drying colours as bottom layers.

There are online shops from where you can purchase oil paintings for your reference. Here are a few oil painting tips for beginners –

  • Start with small paintings to learn different techniques and experiment with colours quickly.
  • Choose a well-ventilated area to keep your palettes and supplies.
  • Buy an affordable set of brushes, canvas, limited painting palette, and oil paints to start learning.
  • Understand the rules of layering and colour mixing.
  • Regularly clean your brush after finishing your artwork and keep paint tubes out of reach of small kids and pets.
  • Use the palette knife as an ideal thing for mixing colours and painting to get a much cleaner, crisper colour, andunclogged artwork.