Oil Painting Pt. 1

So for Christmas of the 2010 year. My mom bought me a 6 week Oil Paint Course through a new art center that has recently opened up. The Classes would take place for 2 hours every tuesday night for 6 weeks. For 6 week weeks I will attempt to come out of my own element and venture into a whole new Medium of art. For a few years now I have been wanting to try oil painting, but every time I would attempt it I would get discouraged and give up. Oil painting is very different than using acrylics of what I am accustomed to. I wasn't keen on the idea of my paints taking forever to dry. So I stuck to my acrylics.

Last week I had my first Oil Painting class. My teacher is a local artist that paint murals on the side of buildings and is well known for his charcoal and pencil sketches. My first class wasn't much of a painting class as it was a informational guide to materials and such...Which I think could have been handled better by a pan-flit or a paper packet. Once we had that all said and done he wanted us to find a subject to paint. This subject could be in a form of a picture or a still life.

*note* I do not own this picture found it on flicker I claim no rights to the picture.

Once we had our subject we were to sketch it out on our canvas as a guide. Now me I'm not big on sketching things on a canvas because the White Gesso on the canvas doesn't allow the pencil to erase well. It is also very hard to have different shading effects on a Canvas with Gesso on it.

So I decided to first sketch out my subject in a sketch book to see I if I like it from my own hand. Once I did that I sketched it out onto my canvas, but I only did the main outline of my picture to avoid having too much pencil on my canvas (I have read and been told that oil paints can mix with the lead from the pencils making the paint color darker than originally intended)

My Subject in a simple sketch

The Basic outline on my canvas

At my second class held this week we had to present our subject to our teacher and he would look at your sketch and offer some helpful advice. He had told me to draw my line on my dock out at an angle more to have a little more a deeper feel of depth perception. Once done I started to paint. While painting I got to chat with my fellow painters (some still sketching) and one of the girls next to me makes the comment that she shouldn't have sat next to me because she will never get anything done due to her watching me paint. I had a few other people say that they liked my work so far (to me though..still not convinced) So now I must try not to over work my painting.

I have tried not to touch my painting over the past few days and to not change what I have already done. But me being me...I failed at this. I ended up making things too dark and didn't like it at all...so thanks to the oils paints being wet I got the chance to scrape them off my canvas using a palette knife and start all over. So the picture you are about to see is the before I messed it up and started over. I added a pic of what I just did to it...no I promise I won't mess with it...I'm happy with it now...

Before I messed it up... The new and improved :)

Well so far what I have learned is to be light with a brush and with the paint. Also...change your bush direction to give off a different feel (clouds) My sky was done with vertical strokes so I make my clouds doing a horizontal motion with the brush. (you don't even have to use paint for this effect) !!

**When cleaning my brushed I tried to use this Pink Brush Soap...that says on the bottle you can use with oil painted brushes...ya well I think that's wrong because it didn't work. I ended up using a can of paint thinner or oil based paints my dad had. This pulled the paint from my brushes really quick. The down fall is that if has a bad fume so be careful. Also use a pair of rubber gloves if you are doing it by hand. I used a glass Prego Sauce Jar with about half a cup of paint thinner. If you have a lid keep it. Let the paint thinner sit for a while and all of the paint will settle to the bottom leaving the thinner on top...thus letting you able to use it again so that it doesn't go to waste!!!