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Beginners Oil Painting Tips – The Detail Phase

The fourth and final phase of the basic oil painting process is the detail phase. This is the time to incorporate all the details like small decorations, fine textures, and highlights.

At the end of the first phase we are left with a complete drawing of the scene we wish to paint. The purpose of the second phase is to take the drawing and transform it into a series of large colored shapes. These large shapes must have the correct geometry and color. The third phase, i.e., the shaping phase, consists of modeling and refining the large colored shapes we produced in the second phase.

By the end of the shaping phase we should have more or less a finished painting. There are is no white canvas left and all objects and subjects should be drawn and colored correctly.

Details include things like small twigs, pupils, eye lashes, small lines and curves, and highlights on a cheek or piece of clothing. In short, anything that cannot be done with a large brush.

Some details will require the use of thinned-out paint. For example, when adding thin lines or curves for hair or grass, we can get good results by using thing paint. However, in these situations you should always be aware of the so-called fat-over-lean rule of oil painting.

The fat-over-lean rule of oil painting states that you should always paint fat over lean. The words fat and lean refer to the amount of oil contained in the paint. When applying layers of oil paint on top of each other on your canvas, you should always apply a fatter layer on top of a leaner layer. If you put a lean layer on top of a wet fat layer changes are that, after some time, the lean layer will start to show cracks.

Other details may require the use of thick paint often right out of the tube. This is the case with heavy highlights and very intense accents such as red reflection on a roof of a house.

The reason details are better added at the very end as a fourth phase is that they are usually quite small and need to be placed very precisely. Therefore, it is better to start with painting large general shapes and then to progressively add refinements until the entire scene is correctly reproduced on your canvas. It then becomes much easier to place the details in their correct locations.

Also, details are often meant to be accents of intense color which requires thick paint and therefore, according to the fat-over-lean rule, are best put on last.

Finally, with the benefit of an almost finished painting it becomes much easier to judge if the added details are artistically well-distributed. For example, it is almost always the case that a focal point area will have more detail than other areas. For comparison purposes it is a good thing to have at your disposal a general overview of the entire painting.

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Beginners Oil Painting Tips and Advice – Thinking While Painting

Oil painting is a mainly right brain activity but the left brain is by no means idle. A good question to ask is: What sort of brain activity goes not the act of painting?

Here are some answers:

The Drawing Phase – In this phase you create a drawing on your canvas. During this effort you should be preoccupied with all the technical issues that make a good drawing.

You ask yourself questions like: Is this shape right? Is this angle too shallow? Is this object in the right place? Is this line too short or too long? Is this what I intend to convey to my audience? In other words, be preoccupied with concepts such as accuracy, seeing, comparing, judging, etc.

You must learn to draw well so you don’t get constantly distracted by your lack of skill.

The Block-in Phase – This is the phase where you color the large shapes in your drawing. Here you must keep in mind not to deform, enlarge (this is particularly easy to do), or crimp these shapes which were already correctly established in the Drawing Phase.

Be busy judging colors in terms of hue, value, and intensity. At the same time, think about how you will mix these colors on your palette. Which tube colors will you use? To do this well, you need to learn a few things about color mixing. During this phase, I recommend using fairly thin paint.

Squinting is a great help, particularly for discerning values. To identify hues, avoid staring at them for too long. It’s better to have a quick look, preferably with your peripheral vision. Also, restrain yourself from painting details.

The Shaping Phase – This phase involves the modeling of the shapes so they look like the real objects. Here you should revert back to the drawing mode. That is, think angles, lengths, curves, and position.

Also, refine the values, hues, and intensities. Force yourself to observe and to compare. Stand back regularly and judge your work from a distance. Also, in this phase we use thicker paint.

Keep in mind that at the end of this phase your painting should be more or less finished.

The Detail Phase – This is the final phase where you add in the details. This is the icing on the cake phase where you can dream and let your individual talent come to the fore.

Be in a delicate and soft mood. Think of hints, lost edges, accents, etc. Use thin paint for delicate lines or thick paint for highlights. Be discrete and measured. Don’t overdo it.

The purpose of this article was to give you an idea of the sort of thinking patterns that go into the painting process. Painting is a mentally demanding activity and requires very much a multi-tasking approach. For many people, this takes some getting used to. At first, you may want to write lists of the various things to keep in mind while creating your masterpiece. Later on, all this will become second nature. As always, practice makes perfect.No shortcuts here.

Oh yes, and above all, don’t forget to sign your painting!

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Tips on Oil Paintings – The Qualities of Color

Any color in existence has three qualities that completely determine the color:

1) Hue

2) Value

3) Intensity

We will now precisely explain what each quality means.

Hue – The hue of a color is simply the name of the color. For example, yellow, red, green-yellow, etc.

Temperature is really an element of hue. The warms colors are the yellows and the reds while the cool colors are the greens and the blues.

However, temperature is a relative term. For example although two different blues are both cool colors, one blue can be warmer than another blue.

For example French Ultramarine Blue leans towards the violet while Phthalo Blue leans towards green. Therefore French Ultramarine Blue is a warmer blue than Phthalo Blue although both blues are cool.

Value – Value refers to the lightness or darkness of the color. If you squint you will see that, for example, that yellow is lighter than blue. The value of a color is actually the most important property of a color in relation to painting.

Intensity – Intensity of a color refers to its brightness or dullness. The more saturated or the purer a color is the more intense it is. A color coming straight out of the tube is in its most intense state. Any mixture will dull the tube color and therefore make it less intense. It is however possible to make most mixtures more intense by adding a touch of one color or another.

Now, if you can nail down the hue, the value, and the intensity of a color you will have reproduced that color. Based on this observation we can outline a mental procedure to guide us with the mixing of colors.

Observe – First you observe the color. For example, is it a certain blue or is it red?

Select – Then you select the color on your palette that resembles the observed color the best.

Analyze – Of course, as you would expect, the pure tube color on your palette will rarely match the color you observed. Therefore, we now must identify how the two colors differ from each other. In this, we need to concentrate on three things: hue, value, and intensity. Does the color need to be adjusted in terms of hue? Does the value need to be adjusted? For example, does this blue need to be darkened or lightened?

Finally, does the intensity of the color need to be adjusted? For example, does the blue need to be brighter or duller? One, two, or all three of these qualities may need adjustment.

So, in this article we have looked at the three important qualities of color: hue, value, and intensity. We defined what they are and were able to extract a procedure that we can follow every time we wish to transfer an observed color to our canvas.

In the beginning you will make many mistakes and the going will be slow. It is generally hard to judge the three qualities of a color and it takes practice. This is particularly the case with judging values and intensities. Nevertheless, you need to practice this procedure every day and over and over again. However, one day it will become second nature just like riding a bicycle. Also, in the beginning don’t be too fussy but try over time to become better and better at it.

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