Oil Painting Basics - The Key Foundations

What Are the Basics of Oil Painting?

The key foundations or basics are pieces of knowledge and technique that apply to all oil painting and if learned well will give a person a secure start to learning the art and making whatever oil paintings they wish to make.

Who Should Learn the Basics?

These are essential for all beginners, but experienced painters can also benefit from extra instruction in these areas, whether it be to simply fill in a few gaps or to gain more certainty.  

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of these foundations and the difference they can make to confidence and the quality of painting.

Lessons on the Basics

Please click on the listed key foundations to see more information on the lessons for each:

drawing

blending & value

colour mixing

Drawing

Drawing for Oil Painting

Drawing is often used as a form of preparatory work to a painting, either in the form of sketches, finished drawings or initial drawings on canvas.

Drawing, however, also has great value in developing painting skills.  It can build an awareness of structure, proportion and tone, all of which are essential to successful painting.  In the past I have finished a life drawing session and then returned to a painting I was working on and suddenly noticed things that possibly needed improvement. Both pencil and charcoal drawing have great value, but charcoal is particularly suited to working with tone and can be moved and manipulated in a similar way to paint.  It is, so to speak, a kind of 'dry paint'.

Drawing as an Art Form

Drawing is also a beautiful art form in itself, whether it be portraits, still life or the result of pure imagination.  I would therefore recommend learning drawing, not only as a support to painting, but also as an art form in itself.

Drawing Lessons

The lessons on drawing can be taken as part of the oil painting lessons or as a separate and expanded sequence of lessons so as to concentrate on drawing entirely.  Both paths would include instruction on pencil and charcoal techniques.

View information on another key foundation:

blending & value

colour mixing

Blending & Value

Blending Lessons

 In these lessons you will learn how to 'blend' oil paint, which is a key skill whereby the paint is made to change gradually from one shade of paint to another on the canvas and is achieved through a variety of brush techniques. Being able to blend paint on the canvas is vital for realistic painting.

Lessons on Value

 'Value' (or tone) means the lightness or darkness of paint within a painting. Learn to recognise and recreate values for paintings.  (Values are also known as tones)

Use of Blends and Values

 It is through the use of blending and value that objects and spaces take on the illusion of appearing real within a painting.  This is because blending and value can be used to mimic the way in which light shines, falls and casts shadows in reality (which after all is what makes the real world visible to us).  The Italians referred to a bold use of this as 'Chiaroscuro'.

A use of blending and value is so basic to successful painting that it is difficult to imagine how anyone attempting to make oil paintings could survive without a firm grasp of these skills.  Learn to blend and use value and save countless days of wondering why your paintings don't 'look right'.  These lessons are a must for beginners, but those with some experience of oil painting can also benefit greatly from instruction in this area, as being able to blend and use values accurately is a common area of weakness and frustration.

view information on another key foundation:

colour mixing

drawing

Mixing Oil Paints - True Colour Mixing

Mixing Oil Paints for Paintings

Learning about and being in control of colour can make an enormous difference to your paintings.  This being the case, it is worth granting colour mixing the importance it deserves.  Very often however painters are in such a hurry to get the paint on the canvas that their “colour mixing” is reduced to grabbing some paints and hastily sloshing a few colours together with a brush or even attempting to mix the colours they want on the canvas itself.  Or simply, due to lack of understanding, painters rely on luck or “trial and error” to achieve the colours they need or resort to buying endless amounts of paints in the hope that that will equip themselves with the colours they will need.  Even if you bought a shops entire stock of oil paints, you still wouldn't have the colours you need.  They are only achieved by mixing paints.

Lessons on Colour Mixing 

Learn how to mix precise colours using only a basic range of paints.               .  

As with most of the key foundations these lessons are a must for all beginners, but instruction in this area can also be very beneficial for experienced painters, as this is another common area of frustration.