#25 How To Start An Oil Painting | Oil Painting Tutorial

Hi everybody, back for another episode with me. Starting a bigger panel today, 30 x 30 inches. My agent has asked me for a picture similar to one I did a few weeks ago. So I'll put the image I'm going to paint up on the screen now, and it's the same spot as the last one I did but the colours are slightly different, the light's coming in from a different direction. We'll get started on that now. So the first step is to sketch it out and then we're going to block it in, in acrylic. So it's coming up to the end of this, blocking in now, and I'm not trying to be too accurate. Obviously you want everything in roughly the right place but with regard to the colours it's just about getting a background on there so that you've got a bed to work on. The colours that I'm using are pretty limited, I mean I haven't actually got a terribly good selection of acrylic paints and I do need to buy some more. Ivory black, that's cadmium yellow medium, burnt umber, that's sap green, that is dioxin purple, cobalt blue and titanium white. So it doesn't have to be too accurate, it doesn't have to be too close to the colours in the actual photograph, but that's done now and pretty much dry so I'm going to get working on the oil. Also, in some of the comments I keep getting people ask me what types of paints I use. I'm just using, these are pretty rubbish actually, they're quite watery but it doesn't really matter what make you use, I think these are probably just the cheapest ones I could find in the shop but anything will do really with regards to the acrylics. So first things first, this is probably the least interesting day of the painting, I think anyway. I'm not keen on blocking in, I find it a bit laborious, especially on a big picture like this. The sky, generally I tend to make those up, the sky in the photograph is just plain, there's nothing in it at all, just to give you an idea, I don't know whether you can see that. Nothing in that, so I don't want a plain sky, I want a little bit of interest in it, so I'm going to just put in a hint of clouds, nothing too much and then of course when I come to do the reflection of the sky in the water, I then have to replicate that below. So let's move on to oil, obviously the first colour that I always put down when I'm working on the sky, in fact most of the time when I'm working on anything come to that, is the white, because it's used, or I use it in almost every aspect, I use it every day, there's not a day that I don't mix with white. Second one I do is black, not too much, I'm going to use less black than white, Ivory black. Now this is Winsor and Newton and I use the alkyd based oil, it's called Griffin. So we've got Sap Green, Permanent Sap Green, in fact I don't know why I've done that, because I'm doing the sky, I'm working ahead of myself here onto the trees, so I won't worry about that, we might get a chance to use that a bit later. Ok, Cerulean Blue Hue, I'm going to use some Magenta as well, just to warm up some sections of the sky. Last thing, a little bit of Burnt Umber as well, ok, and maybe a bit of French Ultramarine, just a little bit, not too much, Liquin, just to help it flow, ok, so, my brush of choice, I don't know what manufacturer it is, in fact it's probably just a crappy old brush that I've bought in a set, and I'm going to use that, it's fairly soft, in fact it is quite a soft brush, and that's what you need, to blend it you need something soft, probably if I had something bigger I'd be using that, but that's the biggest brush I've got that isn't rock hard. Ok, so let's start mixing, I'm going to use a bit of Liquin, go straight in with the white, and then a touch of the Cerulean Blue, not too much, and a little bit of that Magenta. Right, let's put it on and see how close we are, well it's lighter than what's there, but I think, I don't mind that at the bottom. When you're doing it, don't worry about going over that, those tops of those trees there, being a quicker drying oil paint, by the time we get down to those trees to work on it, it should be ok, so still using the same colour, and I tend to blend it a little bit as I go. Ok, maybe a little bit more over here, and now as I move up I'm just going to add a little bit more colour in with that white, so as you can see that, that's a little bit nearer the original acrylic colour underneath, so I'm not worried about blending it at the moment with the lighter colour below. As you can see there's an obvious line there between the two, I'll blend that in a second. Now I just start to blend. As you can see I'm going over the tree line there, that really doesn't matter too much. Mix a bit more, so I've thrown a bit more white, a bit more of the cerulean blue, I might just throw in a little bit of that ultramarine as well now, a bit more, a bit more mauve, see how we are colour wise, a bit lighter, and a bit more, a bit more of both of the blues, and then again a bit more of that mauve. That's a bit better, a touch more blue. So what you're looking for is a fairly even transition of colour as you move up. Going a little bit darker each time, let's try that. Pretty smooth. Okay so I'm going to need a little bit more white, I've had quite a lot more white, and I'm carrying on mixing so I need to go that bit darker. Let's see, that might not be quite dark enough, a bit too warm as well now, so this cerulean is a cooler blue, so if I need to cool it down a bit I'll use maybe a bit more of that and less of the other one. very light cloud moving across the sky there, it doesn't need to be too detailed. I'm just going to blend it in as I go, just a hint, a hint of something going on up here, a bit of a windy day. So that'll be fine and I can add to that as I go, so just wipe the excess paint off that brush like that and then just give it a little bit of a blend. So although that sky is now on there, it's probably not quite finished but it's in a position now where I can get started on the trees and I'll probably come back to that and I'll add a bit more detail, a bit more cloud on there but that'll be nearer the end if it needs it. For years and years I've painted my pictures from reference photographs that I've printed out on the printer but one of the things I love about using a tablet is you have the ability to do that which makes life a lot, lot easier.