Oil Paint for Artists: Origins and Overview

Oil paint is a revered medium amongst many artists. We discover how its made, its place in historical past, and well-liked methods.

What’s oil paint?

All paint is designed to do the identical factor: get pigment (colour) to stay to a floor (canvas, board, paper, plaster). For hundreds of years, these pigments have been combined into oils. The commonest oil is linseed oil giving oil portray its distinctive colour, texture and tone. Different oils embrace poppy, sunflower, safflower, soya bean and walnut oils.

Over centuries, the oil paint method has been tweaked and perfected with cleaner oils and artificial pigments to forestall the dulling of colours.  

Historical past has proven us that oil portray is nice for just a few centuries or extra. There are many examples of nice works — far too many to call — from the final 500 years displaying how portray masters have used oil paint to create priceless work. There have been lots of of books written on artwork actions, artists, and even single work, which lavish reward on how oil portray methods have developed.

When was oil paint first used?

Oil work relationship again to the seventh century have been discovered, however the fifteenth century is widely known because the true beginning of oil portray.

If the fifteenth century is its beginning, Flemish painter Jan van Eyck is the daddy of oil portray. He created an oil paint method that rapidly changed egg tempera (pigment combined with egg yolk). The advantage of utilizing oil paint is that it slowed down the portray course of. Whereas egg tempera dried rapidly and gave work a really particular sheen, oil paint allowed artists to create work over a number of sittings. And artists discovered it straightforward to work over to create depth and make corrections.

Oil paint was mostly used on picket boards or panels in its early days. Within the seventeenth century, Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer started to make use of canvas stretched throughout a picket body, generally known as stretchers or strainers. These canvas stretchers are the most typical surfaces artists now use. Learn extra in our weblog Finest Surfaces for Oil Work.

What are the challenges of utilizing oil paint?

For a lot of, the challenges of oil paint embrace its odor, sluggish drying time, harmful solvents (white spirit and turpentine), and issue in cleansing brushes — all of that are sufficient to place individuals off. However there are many distinctive parts that make it worthwhile.

Oil portray methods

With greater than 500 years of historical past within the artwork world, oil painters have had loads of time to develop totally different strategies of working with oil paint. Many originate from Italy because of the Renaissance painters, like Leonardo da Vinci who championed them. Beneath are few you possibly can strive.

Moist on moist

Also referred to as alla prima, moist on moist is the strategy of making use of a brand new layer of oil paint on prime of a still-wet layer. It permits mixing, and a few mixing of colour straight on the floor. Artists apply this method to create a portray over a number of sittings, reasonably than leaving it to dry.

Impasto

One other Italian time period from these intelligent Renaissance painters, impasto means making a thick layer of paint. Utilizing a palette or portray knife (extra on this beneath), the artist smears the paint throughout the floor. The portray knife is used to dig into the floor to create texture and motion (rise up shut to grease work to see the way it has been performed). Vincent van Gogh was a grasp of utilizing impasto to create texture via his signature nicks within the paint to recommend motion.

Sgraffito

The Italians used the time period sgraffito to imply scratching into plaster and paint to create texture and aid — and extra importantly to point out the colour beneath the highest layer. Sgraffito is usually a sequence of skinny traces to create a picture or depth.

Dry brush/scumble

Gently dragging a dry brush with a tiny quantity of drying paint throughout a (ideally) dry portray, in a unique colour, creates a damaged floor. That is scumbling. You should utilize a brush or a knife. The bottom line is the consistency of the paint you might be making use of and the way a lot you apply.

Francis Bacon used white or yellow paints excessive of lots of his works to create the impact, a notable instance being Examine after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Harmless X. 

Palette knife vs. brushes

Oil paints are extremely various, and so are the strategies of making use of them. As a painter, you possibly can select from dozens of sorts of brushes and portray knives to create totally different results.

Brushes

There are dozens of various kinds of sizes and shapes of brushes for paint, however many have been designed for oil paint. The primary six shapes have totally different functions: flat, spherical,  brights, filberts, fan blenders and riggers. Flat and spherical brushes are the workhorses of your paintbrush assortment, whereas brights (quick flat brushes) are used for element, Filbert brushes (flat rounded bristles) are used to melt and blur edges. Fan brushes create comfortable flat backgrounds and riggers are skinny bristles for traces.

The various kinds of brushes are often comprised of totally different supplies. Historically, the bristles can come from animals, together with hogs, squirrels and goats. There’s a rising assortment of artificial vegan brushes with bristles comprised of nylon that create the identical impact.

Be taught extra on how to decide on the proper brush on your medium and portray fashion.

Palette knives

After we speak about palette knives, what we actually imply is portray knives (the palette knife is a flat spherical software used to combine paint). Historically these knives have a selected mini trowel-like form in a spread of sizes, however portray knives have developed to incorporate instruments nearer to family wallpaper scrapers and putty knives, good for creating impasto.

Be taught extra about portray knives and learn how to use them.

Painter’s palette

Artwork provide retailers will provide a spread of palettes, largely within the traditional oval with thumbhole design.

Historically fabricated from a skinny wooden board (however more and more accessible in plastics), the painter’s palette is designed to be held within the artist’s hand and relaxation on the artist’s arm. Historically the picket selection permits paint to construct up on the floor to create a patina of colours, whereas the plastic model could be cleaned. (Scrape off extra paint and scrub with a material soaked in white spirit or turpentine).

Ideas and methods

1. Make your individual painter’s palette

After nearly 20 years as a painter, I admit, I’ve by no means owned a correct painter’s palette. As a substitute, I exploit thick cardboard (ideally corrugated, so it’ll take the burden of oil paint). The advantages of this imply having a recent painter’s palette as usually as you want. The cardboard absorbs excels oils within the paint to create a thicker texture which could be best for impasto.

2. Masking your painter’s palette

Oil paint is dear and it may be arduous to understand how a lot paint that you must squeeze onto your palette. Prolong the lifetime of your paint, with a easy trick: preserve a tube of plastic wrap in your studio and place a sheet gently over the palette board when not in use. Nonetheless, don’t wrap the movie tightly as you’ll squash the paint and lose some. You possibly can preserve doing this every time you utilize the palette. Paints ought to keep moist for not less than per week.

How does oil paint examine to different paints?

Take a look at our sequence on totally different paints and portray mediums to resolve which is the proper paint for you: