Oil Painting

Another thing that was keeping me busy in my time away from posting was taking an oil painting class. I have always wanted to learn how to oil paint. I knew it was something I would eventually learn as soon as I saw some of my first Victorian and Renaissance-age paintings. Oil painters seemed to be able to portray and express themselves through realism that was remarkably convincing. The soft look they have compared to acrylics only adds to the realistic quality of the image.

I've seen Bob Ross and maybe a couple other people work with oils, but I had never oil painted before.

Oil painting is very different from other kinds of paints. They are not water soluble like watercolors or acrylics, so you cannot use water to thin them out. Certain chemicals like turpentine or additives like liquin have to be used. They also take much longer to dry. Depending on the overall mixture of thinners, paint, and additives, some oil paintings can take years before they're completely dry. I didn't cake on a lot of paint or add much to it, so these all dried fairly quickly. The two on bristol board dried enough to touch within a day or so. The rest that are on canvas panels took about a week to completely dry - maybe a week and a half tops.

A picture from my Instagram: my first two oil paintings. The paint bucket on the box was the first. Both were direct observation studies of different still life setups.
They're also both on bristol board, which surprisingly holds oil paint much better than watercolors.

This was my first oil painting on canvas. Not a stretched canvas, but a panel.

I made the artistic decision to make the shadow apart of the subject of the painting rather than cropping more of it out. I felt like it made the scene more dramatic, which is helpful when you're working with random motionless objects.

The still life we worked from.

The key was realizing and drawing out the green that was in the vase and the deer's fur. There isn't even a lot of it, but you'd be surprised how much of a difference that little bit of paint made.

Getting this thing made bringing the painted panels back-and-forth between my class and home much easier. It's an ezPORT panel carrier, made by EASyL. They're mostly used by artists involved in plein air painting, which is something else I'd like to get into. It's a fancy French term for direct observation painting outside, usually in oils with nature being the subject. I've also purchased a collapsable stool and portable easel to further that endeavor.

For our next still life we were allowed to set up our own using objects from home. This was around October of last year, so my mother had Halloween costumes and decorations out. I had also recently watched the movie Pirates of the Caribbean. The idea grew from there.

First there's the drawing of your subject. Then you start the underpainting which lays out the tonal values. You're pretty much making a monochromatic painting at this point. That means you use only one color that you make darker or lighter by adding black or white. Think of it like a black and white photograph with a color filter over it. After you've established your values, you move on and add color where it's needed. Since your values are already in place, it gives you a little less to worry about while you make sure your color palette is on point.

I wanted to try using color pencil for the drawing this time. I had seen one of my classmates using one. Since it was lighter than graphite, it was easier to cover up using less paint. He must have been using a particular kind of pencil, because my Prismacolor decided not to work the same way. The oils in the paint smudged the colored pencil around and mixed with the paint. It made for a cool effect, but I would have to correct it if I was going to convey the image realistically.

Finished underpainting.

It's going to be called Commodore even though it's a deceased pirate in the painting. The naval title is said a lot in Pirates of the Caribbean, and the hat reminds me of a particular scene were it's said. It's fun to say. Try it.

If you're really young, you might not recognize a rocking horse. Some Walmarts and other stores still have larger motorized versions. Basically it was your horse if you wanted to be a cowboy or a princess with a pony and were too young or broke for riding lessons and a horse.

If you think the subject is hard to pull off by itself, that's not even the half of it. The entire time we were in the class we were not allowed to use black in any way, shape, or form. There was not to be a spec of black paint on our panels. We had to substitute combinations of blues and browns with reds mixed in. We were told many of the master painters of the Renaissance and past ages, when oil painting was at its peak, also took this approach rather than using black. Not in all, but most cases. It made sense. We often think of shadows and certain clothing or objects as being mostly or completely black, when this is realistically not the case. When you're outside on a clear, sunny day, many of the shadows you'll see will probably contain some amount of blue because of the reflected light coming from the blue sky above them.

My teacher told me that he thought my underpainting for this particular painting was too light. Traditionally one would use a darker color like burnt umber or burnt sepia (which is what I did for the two prior to this one). Since I had already done this, and I wanted to make sure I wouldn't go in too dark right away, I wanted to use a lighter color. I would be going over it again in another color to darken the values, but I wanted to establish them lightly. I was already far enough along in it and had explained my process to the teacher to were he didn't mind if I continued.

Although it was a challenge, this was pretty fun to paint, and I really like how it turned out. Not to toot my own horn or anything. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to pull it off. I'm probably going to call it Black Beauty, inspired by a book about a black horse with the same title.

For my last project I wanted to do a realistic painting of an animal. This was the only painting that did not have to be direct observation, so I was going to use a photo reference. I wasn't sure which one to do though. I went through all my old photographs of different trips I've been on and narrowed it down to three very different options: a black-tipped reef shark that was at Kentucky's Newport Aquarium, a juvenile bison I photographed at Big Bone Lick State Park, and a seagull I saw on one of many trips to Empire and the Lealanau Peninsula up north in Michigan. I didn't really mind which one I did. They would all make good paintings in my eyes, but I don't make everything just so I can look at it. I wanted to see what other people thought. I figured what best way to do that would be to make a little social poll of it. I uploaded the picture below to my Instagram and asked my followers as well as anyone searching the hashtags it's marked under which one they thought would make the best painting.

I asked my followers if I should come by land, sea, or air. I'm not sure they all understood the reference, but it's no big deal. I did change the phrasing slightly, and I don't have a whole lot of followers at the moment.

The shark was the winner, having a total of eleven votes. The seagull came in at second with seven votes, and the bison came in last with four votes.
I took votes from my Instagram comments on the picture I posted of the three contestant pictures above, and by word of mouth asking people around me. I was hoping for a bigger turnout of opinions, but I think I wasn't clear about the poll with how I worded the caption.

I learned from the mistake I had made starting Commodore. On this panel I used a coat of clear acrylic gesso after making the drawing in pencil so I can paint over any part of the drawing without having it smudge. A thing to remember about acrylic and oil paints: you can paint oils over acrylics, but not acrylics over oils. Of course it looks a little smudged right now from the gesso, but since it is dried and the drawn lines are still visible there shouldn't be a problem covering it.
I was reaching an extremely exhausted and stressed out point towards the end of the semester, which is why it was the least worked-on.

Like most of my work, I wasn't able to finish these within the time allotted, but now that I have some time to take a couple semesters off I'll be going back to finish all of these as well. I'm not about to let my few fans and followers down. It will be completed, it will look awesome, and I will make sure you get to see it.

If you get a chance to work with oil paints, don't hesitate! It's very fun and relaxing, and most people work faster than I do, so even though they take a while to dry, it's plenty worth it. If you're considering taking oil painting farther than a few tries, I'd suggest first practicing on different still lifes like our class did; testing out different surfaces and color arrangements.

Check in again for an in-depth look at my recent trip to the Big Apple!