First Steps Painting With Water Mixable Oils

First steps painting with oils

The idea of painting with oils was daunting but as it was the medium of the Old Masters and for many aspiring paintings I thought I should at least give it a try.

So, how to start?

The first choice was to decide whether to use the water miscible oil paints on offer or to stick with the conventional medium. In favor of the turpentine thinned oils was the range of colors and that, for the last few centuries at least, they are the traditional thing. However, the attraction of the water thinned oils was the elimination of smelly thinners and the ease by which brushes and palettes can be cleaned.

I did some research and discovered that I had a choice of brands but for convenience sake, and that the brand is on sale at my local supplier, I chose Winsor and Newton’s Artisan product.

My local supplier had brushes, paints, medium and thinner and a sales person who was willing to hand out good advice. Advice that encouraged me to take a palette and a palette knife as well.

My color palette is made up of Ivory Black, Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Raw Umber, Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Cerulean Blue, Cobalt Blue Hue, Cadmium Yellow Light and a Viridian. This is my basic starter color palette and from this I can create most of the colors I want. I have added Raw Sienna and Magenta since and will plump for a darker yellow hue later if I need it.

Why the colors?

The basic starter will give all the greens I want using the blues and the brown colors. Viridian is for a true green that can be modified or used as a green wash base and thinned down to a tint with added white will act as a light under the painting. Crimson gives me the range of deep reds to light, delicate pink and of course the white and the black are the mixable colors.

I based my preferences on what I had learned using acrylics.

Starting a painting.

I prepared a medium size canvas with two coats of a mixture of gesso and yellow ochre acrylic paint allowing the sealing coats to dry before starting the oil.

Starting with the sky I used a slightly thinned Cobalt blue at the top, a strip of Cerulean blue under and a tint of Cerulean under that. Taking a wide brush I steadily began to blend in the layers until I had a graduated blue mix from dark to light to somewhere past a third of the canvas.

Next, mixing green I did a similar thing with the color for the ground landscape adding a blue and white (with touches of green) lake about a third the way up to the right. The beauty of oil paint is that you can add darker color and manipulate the mix on the canvas the way you can acrylic paints but with much more flexibility.

I added hills and trees, a few Fir trees in the foreground and a wall with flowers below it and then I dealt with the sky-scape shaping the clouds by blending darker colors over the blue, adding white and edging it for sunlight creating a moody sky. The moodiness was accentuated by the yellow ocher mix laid down as a base.

Finally I added some geese taking off.

As an exercise and a first excursion into oil painting I enjoyed it.

Quick tips:

Choose a basic kit.

Oil paints take time to dry so you have time to make changes.

Take your time and get used to the medium.

Oil painting techniques can be applied to water mixable oils.

Naturally there are terms to do with oil painting that at first seem odd. One rule is the “Fat on thin” where the heavier, oil mixed paint is placed on top of the thinned wash or on the paint, such as the blue of my sky, has the heavier oil mixed paint on top. It has to do with the drying rate as well as the base color. With water mixable if you mix with water instead of the medium the drying time is less.

The term Glazing is a process where a color is thinned with a mixture of medium and thinner and can be painted over an already dry area to change the color but leave the under color untouched to show through giving the painted area depth.