Step by step oil painting for beginners, this post will help you tou create an oil painting from scratch. How to do it. A unique guide for beginners about oil painting canvas, colour, painting and tools.
As someone who has been painting for many years, I have prepared a guide for anyone who wants to add joy to their life by learning oil painting.
As one of the most popular art forms, you can create wonders with durable and lasting colours.
What is Oil Paint?
It is obtained by mixing powdered colour pigments with organic oil (usually linseed oil). Preservatives can also be added to increase the durability of the paint. Due to its organic components, it is known to be much healthier than water-based paints. Jan van Eyck is credited with the invention of painting by mixing oil with paint. But it is known that this art was done before. Although there is no clear information about who started it, it is accepted that it started in Italy in the early Renaissance (15th century).
What are the Necessary Materials?
Step by step oil painting for beginners, you’ll need;
Oil Painting
Brushes
Primed canvas
Pallet
Flax oil
Turpentine
Cleansing soap
Oil Painting
In the first stage, you can choose 12 oil paints of any brand. Marrie’s and Pebeo brands are generally recommended, but Monami and PonART paint quality is slightly below, but they are affordable and you can choose according to your budget as there is no noticeable quality difference. Since we do a lot of decolourisation, keep a maximum of white colour on hand. Always have a spare white colour.
Brushes
Pay attention to brush quality. Brushes are divided into synthetic and organic.
Synthetic brushes – soft.
However, the bristles fall apart quickly, making painting difficult and short-lived.
Organic – Sable brushes – Soft.
It holds the paint well, it is of good quality.
Organic – Horse, pig hair brushes – Hard.
It is used for floor painting because it is hard and thick.
You can use hard and thick bristle brushes with large numbers for large surfaces, but you will have difficulty working in detail and it will distort the frame of the picture. For this, use soft, if possible organic (sable) brushes.
Since most of the brushes sold as a set are synthetic, they do not meet the expectations in terms of quality. For this reason, I recommend buying them separately.
Da Vinci is of high quality, but Pebeo can also fulfil your needs in the first stage.
In the picture, respectively:
There are round – flat – flat cut tip – cat’s tongue – fan – side cut tip – mop – flat thin tip brushes and floor brushes.
If possible, it will be useful to obtain all of these brushes, but if there will be no landscape and large-scale painting in the first stage, flat, round and cat’s tongue brushes will be sufficient. Get two each of flat, round and cat’s tongue brushes. It is very important to paint with clean brushes when working, so that you get the right colours on the canvas. Also, when painting in light colours, the dark colours left on the brush will not spoil the colour of the paint and you will not waste too much time cleaning it.
Canvas
Get 100% cotton – linen canvas or canvas textured painting paper. Make sure that these cloths are primed, if possible get the ones with 3 layers of primer. There must be a non-permeable coating between the oil paint and the surface, otherwise the surface will absorb the oil of the paint and we will spend a lot of paint and give a faded image.
Stay away from multi-purpose art books! They need to be made of high weight cloth to hold oil paint, so only buy materials that are suitable for oil painting.
Pallet
You can use wood, plastic, glass or disposable paper pallets. Oil painting is a hobby that requires cleaning at the end of the process. For this reason, if you do not want to waste time cleaning the pallet, you can work on the glass surface and wipe the surface with a cloth soaked in turpentine when the painting is finished. Or there are disposable paper palettes to get rid of this trouble completely.
Flax Oil
We thin the paint with flax oil for easy application of the paint. If we work only by applying paint to the cloth, there is no permeability between the paints and the paints remain in layers.
Turpentine is also used as resin among the mediums, i.e. thinners, but it causes the paint to disperse too much on the cloth and gives a pale appearance. The paint may also crack after the process is finished.
Linseed oil also increases the vibrancy of the paint.
Turpentine
Turpentine is the liquid substance – resin of the tree. It is a paint solvent obtained by separation method from the tree. It has a colourless structure and a pungent smell, the smell of pine turpentine will be pleasant, but I recommend you to get odourless turpentine so that you are not exposed to odour for a long time.
We use turpentine for brush cleaning while painting.
You can use it by putting 2/3 of turpentine and 1/3 of water in a container. When changing the colour on the brush, you can dip it into this container and then clean the remaining paint on the brush with a cloth. Remember, if you paint with a paint-free brush, you can reflect the colours you want.
Thinner is also used for paint cleaning, but since it is an odorous, flammable and highly volatile substance obtained from petroleum, it may have harmful effects in continuous inhalation. It also irritates the skin, it is essential to work with gloves. Do not prefer thinner as it may cause such health problems.
Cleansing Soap
Use turpentine to get rid of the paint on the brushes after the painting is finished. Turpentine dissolves most of the paint on the brush, but there will still be paint left on the brush, so lather it well with any soap and rinse it. Then, with a dry cloth, remove the moisture without disturbing the shape of the brush and let it dry until we do our next painting.
COLOUR SCIENCE
We express ourselves with colours while painting. Therefore, choosing the right colour will be the most important part of our composition. So how do we get the right colour? It will not be easy for beginners to get the right colour mixtures, but you will learn by trial and error. My advice to you; be familiar with colours. And in time, it will be easier to get the right colours.
First of all, try to get the colours you want with basic colours, get to know the colours!
There are basically three main colours. These are: Red, yellow and blue. We can get all colours with primary colours and black and white mixtures.
NOW WE START: HOW TO DRAW & PAINT?
1. Create a reference image. It will be more useful to open the picture on the computer screen to see the details better. If you have difficulty finding a picture, you can download photos for free on pixabay.
2. Divide the picture into equal parts and draw a picture on the canvas for each square. Your drawing does not need to be very good, so you can achieve equal dimensions.
If you are using Photoshop, you can take advantage of the grid feature. Or it will add a grid to the image you upload via Art Tutor.
3. Staining: Firstly, we mix a paint (usually brown) with turpentine and stain the entire canvas, this will provide a smooth surface that is easy to work with and will cover the whites on the canvas.
4. Underpainting Tecnique: We complete the drawing with paint. This will show you how the shading of the painting will be, in which parts you will use dark colours and in which parts you will use light colours. In other words, it will create a mathematical formula and allow you to adjust the contrast of the painting.
You can see both of these methods in detail in the videos below.
As you can see, it is both easier and more fun to colour the pictures we have completed drawing.
Watch lots of videos. You don’t have to do it while watching, you will learn new information in every video.
Top 10 list of useful Youtube channels
Step by step oil painting for beginners, these Youtube channels may help you.
- A complete guide for beginners Lena Danya
- Improve your practice MazArtStudio
- Great colours with illustrations Happy D. Artist
- Do landscape painting KevinOilPainting
- Daria Callie for wonderful portraits
- Find out the details Alpay Efe
- Still life techniques Sarah Sedwick
- Like a course Oil Painting 4U
- You can only paint with a spatula: Paintings by Dusan
- And who made us love painting in our childhood: Bob Ross
Each canvas hides a happy little tree. – Bob Ross
AFTER THE PAINTING IS FINISHED
After the painting is finished, let it dry in a ventilated room out of direct sunlight. Drying time may take 3-12 days depending on the paint layer.
Do not throw away the paint left on the palette! You can keep it in a container by adding water to it, it will not dry because you cut its contact with air. Or, if you are going to continue in 2-3 days, you can continue painting by opening the paint with turpentine or linen oil.
If you apply varnish after the painting is completely dry, you will get a more vivid image. For this, the painting must be completely dry, otherwise cracks will occur in the painting. Gently remove the dust on the dried picture with a dry cloth. We do this fun process after completely freeing it from dust:
I hope “Step by step oil painting for beginners” has been useful to you on this journey. You can write to me from the contact section for your questions and comments.
Enjoy your day.