Knowledge List of Oil Painting

Oil Painting Materials and Supplies

from:oilpaintings

Get acquainted with an artist's tools of the trade here. For tips about using these oil painting materials, read the article Oil Painting Tips and Techniques.
The Canvas
Canvas is the most popular surface used in oil painting. It is traditionally made from linen, but since it is relatively expensive, cotton will also do. The canvas is commonly prepared for painting in several steps, which can be done at home for better bargain buy: first, the canvas is stretched across a wooden frame called the stretcher (or strainer), and is tacked or stapled tightly to it. Next, the artist usually applies a ground (see Oil Painting Tips and Techniques ) to protect the canvas from chemical reactions with the paint. Gesso, which is calcium sulfate mixed with animal glue, is commonly used as the ground for the canvas. It must be stressed here that a canvas, whether it is of the stretched type or the board type, must be primed prior to oil painting or else the paint will eat away at the substrate. Other surfaces that can be used in oil painting include wooden panels, linoleum, pressed wood, and cardboard.
The Brushes
Brushes are made up of natural or synthetic hairs gathered up in a metal band, called the ferrule, which can either be aluminum, nickel, copper, or nickel-plated steel. Using a brush is the most popular way to apply paint (or ink) onto a surface, as well as prepare paints by mixing them on a palette. They can be either stiff or soft, and both have their pros and cons. Oil paint brushes are usually sable of bristle. Since turpentine can easily damage synthetic bristles, these types of brushes are not suitable for oil paintings. The different types of brushes include: Round, Flat, Bright, Filbert, Fan, Angle, Mop, Rigger.
The Paints
Oil paintings are named after the type of paint used: a slow-drying paint containing organic oils. The most popular oils include linseed oil as well as oil from poppies, walnuts, and soy beans, which are cheaper substitutes. Pigments in oil paints may be either mineral salts (lead, zinc, titanium, cadmium), earth types (sienna, umber), or synthetic types. Oil paint is considered relatively more complex to use than acrylic or tempera; it is water-resistant and uses toxic solvents like turpentine or benzene. Likewise, the pigments are notably toxic in nature (lead, cadmium). In addition, linseed oil is known to ignite spontaneously. Your options for buying oil paints include: fast-drying oils in tubes, water-mixable oils in tubes and pans or blocks, and oil bars, which come in stick form but are not oil pastels. Paints labeled with "hue" (e.g., cadmium red hue) at the end are artificial ones — they are prone to fading, don't keep their color during mixing, and get muddy easily.
The Palette
A palette is simply a thin piece of board, usually with a thumb hole, which holds oil paints that an artist mixes together.
The Palette Knife
A palette knife consists of a flexible steel blade with no sharpened cutting edge. A symmetric palette knife with a rounded tip is usually for mixing oil paints on a palette, while an asymmetric knife has a pointed tip and used is for painting on the canvas. Certain oil painting techniques make use of palette knives.
The Thinner
Thinners dilute oil paint, most often to clean your brushes and palette. The most common substance for thinners is turpentine; it keeps oil paints oily but usually has a strong odor. Using mineral spirits also keeps oil paints watery. These materials must be handled with care in a well-ventilated area. It is advised not to use paper, plastic, or styrofoam cups as containers for mediums and thinners.
The Mediums
Mediums also dilute color in your oils, like thinners. Some make oil paints dry faster, increase gloss or transparency, or even reduce overdone thinning. Check the label for what the medium you're buying actually does. The most popular medium out there is linseed oil. While there are arguments about whether or not linseed oil actually causes certain light-colored paints such as white, including blue, to noticeably yellow over time, using poppyseed oil for these hues makes for a safe alternative. Again, as mentioned above: it is advised not to use paper, plastic, or styrofoam cups as containers for mediums and thinners. Mediums include oils (e.g., linseed, walnut, poppy, sunflower, lavander, clover), varnishes (Dammar, Mastic), balsam (e.g., Larch, Venetian, and Strasbourg turpentines, Canada and Copaiva balsam, rectified turpentine), and driers (cobalt, turpentine).

How to Develop a Personal Painting Style

FROM:portraityourlife

Part of being an artist is having an identifiable style, that special ‘something’ that enables someone to look at a painting and know that it’s by you, regardless of what the subject of the painting is. A particular painting style is something a gallery will want to see in your work. So how do you develop this, or is it something you automatically have? Do you have to stick to that style forever, or can you change it? And how do you decide what your painting style is, given all the options there are? Here are a range of helpful comments and tips on developing a painting style from the Painting Forum to help answer these questions.
"I’d say it's something you painting from the photo. After all, you don't take a class and then claim that whatever was covered in the class is your style.
You develop your styles as you go through your life as an artist. I'd like to think you can have many different styles if you want to, and those will likely change as you grow as an artist. I read so much of people starting out in something like realism and ending up in impressionism or even expressionism because they got tired of reality. I used to love abstraction. Right now I think I'm a semi-impressionistic realist. Who knows where I'll be next.” –BFJ
"I think it's something you develop over time unconsciously or consciously. Galleries apparently like to see a distinctive style of whatever sort, then, when the artist tends to move away from that oil protrail, they can be pushed into keeping doing it because the gallery or whoever has created a market for that particular thing. It is possible to paint what you like, but if you're intending to make a living out of doing it, then you'll have to balance what you want to do against what others want to see and own. Art is a business like any other, you have to provide a product that people want to buy, not something they want to run screaming from ( a bit of an exaggeration but you get my point). When your fan base or customer base is large enough or wealthy enough, you can paint more or less what you choose to, because you'll have created a classicality.” –Taffetta
"My friends and clients find it a little bit disturbing when I change styles, that's why I try to maintain one style consistently. The good thing about it is that the longer I explore my style, the better I seem to get at mastering its own intricacies and challenges. For example: How can I remain loosely impressionistic and at the same time render something recognizable, interesting and appealing. This has forced me to look closely at the most essential elements and it always amazes me how much there is to learn in this regard; sometimes it feels like I'm on a voyage because so many things have happened along the way. Maybe that's why my style didn't start emerging until I had done almost 100 paintings. In my view, the only thing that will bring out your style is to keep on painting; at one point your imagination and experience will merge into a copy point very much your own.” --Victor
"There are so many different styles I’d like to paint. I think that we should just paint whatever we want and choose the style that you are best at to sell. Who knows, maybe once you are established maybe you can paint whatever you want!” –Stacyharrison
"The ideas can be overwhelming. If any one of my subjects sold better than another I might at least be able to do some quick emulsion stuff but it's not that simple. I think I'll just keep on doing what I'm doing and see how it all works out on it's own.” –Ruthie
"I went through this creation tone where I didn't know what to say or what to think. Part of the challenge is defining your work (who you are) and that involves study (I know...as if you didn't have enough already). However, you can learn a lot about yourself (your style) by studying the works of other artists and art in general. If I were you, I would look up Odilon Redon, William Blake and the writings of artist Giorgio Morandi on the spiritual in art.” –Victor
"The best way to develop a style is to do a lot of painting. Certain themes will occur over and over, perhaps favorite colors or shading will begin creeping into your work. Just like handwriting, unless you happen to be a robot, you will develop a style. Whatever you do, do not try to copy anyone else's. To do so is a disservice to the art world. Too much art tries to copy someone else's. Life is too short to not be original!" -Eric

Advantages of Oil Paints and Painting
 

By: Tom White
from:celebritypainting

Painting artists have been using oil paints for hundreds of years. Actually, they have been seen from as early as 13th century in England, where they used oil paints for simple decoration. In the early years, however, many artists preferred to use paints called tempera instead on using oil paints as they were able to dry faster than oil paint. In the 15th century, Flemish artists came up with the idea of mixing oil paint and tempera. Nevertheless, it was not until the 17th century that pure oil paints became a more usual art medium.
Oil painting dries slowly than any other forms of paint because they are made of small particles of pigments that are balanced in a drying oil. While some of the artists might find this slow drying quality troublesome, most artists believe oil paints to be a required type of art media that must be taught to every art student. This is partly because of the many oil painting reproduction, which have been developed using oil paints.
There are several advantages of using oil paints, aside from its robust quality. Oil paints could as well be left open for a long duration. In fact, oil paints could regularly be left opened to air for up to several weeks without drying. This characteristic makes it possible for an artist to work on a painting over different sessions with no fear of the painting drying up too early. Of course, this attribute could be seemed at as a disadvantage by some artists, because it takes few weeks for the project to be completed and the slow drying process could make it difficult to move on to the next stage of the project.
Oil paints are as well outstanding for blending with surrounding paint. When blended on canvas, oil paints are able of creating artistic brush strokes and other blends, which are not possible with other forms of paint. For some artists, though, this advantage to oil paints could be viewed as a disadvantage, as it is possible to by chance blend colors while painting that were not meant to be blended.