How to Paint with Oils Over Acrylics

1. What You Will Learn: Hello and welcome to my studio and Malcolm Dewey. And in this tutorial, you're going to learn about painting with oils over a critics on combining the best of these two mediums. I've done a course called from the critics to oil painting in five easy steps. This tutorial is building on that. I'm going to show you a different scene and how to quickly go from the idea to the critics and into the oils and in the end result, get a beautiful oil painting. So I hope you can join me on this lesson. It's going to be a beautiful painting and you can download the reference for yourself and have a go share it with me for a critique as well. Join the lesson and let's begin. 2. Why Oils Over Acrylics?: Thank you for joining me on this lesson. So why paint with oils or acrylics? I like to start a painting with acrylics because I'm using the best quality that a critic's provides and that is as quick drying ability. It also helps me to get in the good, strong structure, especially the darks. And once you've got that in, it makes it so much easier to work over it where you want to with oils, you can leave some of the critic showing. You can cover all of the acrylics. It's up to you. It helps you get that impression that you wanted from the start. Lot quicker with art, struggling with weight, overweight with oils, the delay in completing an oil painting can be a real problem sometimes. And fighting with that, weight over weight is a headache, especially when you're dealing with the darks and lights combining, it can ruin an oil painting very quickly. Now, there is also another advantage and that is if you are selling your paintings professionally, it's a fact that oil paintings for traditional approaches are still favored by collectors. That you can start your painting in a critics and get halfway to three-quarters of the painting done, complete the painting with oils. Nat store an oil painting. You are simply doing the underlayer in acrylics. Now, to me, that is a great advantage. So in this demonstration, we're going to look at how fused the five-step approach to transform this beautiful scene into a vibrant and rich looking oil painting. Ready to begin? I hope so. And don't forget to the painting yourself. It is through practice that you become more confident with your painting. Let's have a go. 3. First Steps: Plan and Tone : Now the first step is always to do some preparation. Consider your scene to a sketch. Maybe do a little color study just to a small six by eight, perhaps nothing bigger than that. And just figure out your composition. I'm not going into the details of composition. You can find that in the critics to oil painting in five easy steps or in any of my other foundation courses. So for this, I'm assuming you know a bit about composition already, but practice that, get it all set out in your mind. The next step is also to consider your colors where you want the strong lattes, what you're gonna do with the shadows as well, what colors you're going to bring in to those once you've got your planning done, headed off to your Canvas, the first thing I'm going to do is turn that white canvas. Alright? Whether you're working on a panel or a canvas doesn't matter. You can even work on paper if you are using some sort of JSON paper perhaps, but get a tone on there, which I'm going to use with acrylics and just get a reddish burnt sienna perhaps to get that harmony of colors straight from the start. Toning also helped me to see my values a little easier. I'm not competing with the white canvas for my lighter slides. I've also got perhaps the opportunity of having some of that turns surface come through if I want to leave some of those open right through to the end of the painting. I'm going to turn the panel with a bit of a critic paint using burnt sienna and some sky blue. It some water onto a large brush, something like a number ten brush that would be good. And brush on the burnt sienna. I'm starting burnt sienna at the lower side, this landscape side of the warm side of the panel, and then transitioning to cooler. Traditionally, transitioning to a cooler sky color perhaps or a mountain in the background, that sort of thing. It doesn't matter too much about getting an accurate toning. Just cover the canvas or panel. That's something that is sympathetic to your scene. And you can take a cloth perhaps and start scrubbing out some areas. Just start plotting where you're going to put your focal area, for instance, do a little bit of rough drawing with your brush, just get a feel for placement as well. But I'm going to cover this over and just curve for traditional turning. And then we can start the drawing stage. 4. The Drawing Stage: Okay, we've got our painting surface toned. I'm gonna do a sketch just to sort out that composition as our plan to draw from the start. And then getting to the acrylics. Now start with the horizon line is always a good place to kick off. Just draw that in. Basically, it's the iron line. If you were standing looking at the scene, where would the horizon line B, as I said, if it's hidden away, then just work on the eyeline. Now the composition is fairly straightforward. You can decide how big or how small you want to make the building. In this case, I'm making it fairly large. It's going to occupy most of the painting surface. And when I do the sketch, I'm doing it very roughly. It's relatively simple scene, so I don't have to worry about architectural details, but try and get perspective correct. So observe the angle of the roof line and other parts of the structure. That's pretty much the most important thing about a building like this. Now, I know that I can adjust as our paint it. So at this point, all I'm trying to figure out is where I'm going to put the main objects, the trees, where they're going to overlap, perhaps foreground shadow, I'm going to bring that in and let the paint so move as freely as possible. Don't tighten up. That's, that's the real big idea, is don't tighten up. Move the pencil round. Some artists say don't even lift the pencil up, and I pretty much agree with that. If you can keep the pencil down on the surface and just move it, you are going to get a loose type of sketch that's not going to force you to tighten up with too many details. Then we can start with the acrylics. 5. Acrylics Painting Stage: Now on to step three, the critics blocking in where we get to start painting my palette of colors. Very much my typical palette with the primaries and the two Earth colors. But I've added a put of viridian. I just think I may be using some of the brightness and the greens. As we progress. We're gonna start off with the background light colors. What would perhaps normally be a sky, but in this case, it's distant hills but very light. There could easily be mistaken for a sky or replace for a sky in your painting. That's not really very important in the scene, but it does provide a bit of light through the trees. Now I'm adding a little bit of that viridian with the yellow and white. Just to change the value slightly, I'm using a one-inch synthetic flat brush. Very basic brush, but serves me well because it has that strong sharp tip of the brush, which is great for painting houses. And anyway, where I'm going to be using straight lines like that. Some brighter yellow, medium yellow, and white. A touch of blue in the foreground. Now getting into the darks, this is what I think the critics really excels at. Burnt sienna, ultramarine blue, little touch of yellow to a little bit of green. But what's important here is you keep white out of your dogs. They must remain practically transparent. Although you may wonder why I say they are transparent because as you build up darks that don't have any white in it, they actually do have a little bit of transparency, which makes the layers of dogs seem rich and kind of mysterious, almost like you can look into it. No sooner you get any white paint into your docs though, then it's completely lost. All that transparency and deep rich dark color and you end up with something that's a little gray and muddy. So blocking all of these darks in fairly quickly because in the critic stage, I don't have to think too much about accurate details. It's more about getting the structure of light and dark and medium value. Color. At the Greene's going in, you're basically a dark medium value. So your painting is basically made up of four values, two lights and darks. And I should also say two lights, or you could call it to shadow colors or to shadow values. So a lot of your shaded color will fall within the two main values, dark and medium. Value, shadow color. And the same with the lats, a very light color and then less bright or less light color, but it will be a color that is touched by the sunlight. So that's the real distinction, or your colors being lit up by sunlight in shade. And as I said, you'd basically have four of those in most landscape, sometimes less. Three value is not unusual either. So the darks, as I'm painting, now, I'm painting these middle values in the darks. Give the structure, they give the drama, and allow the lights to really step up and shine. If we didn't have these darks and you've painted your painting mostly with lattes and light middle values, then you'd have a high key painting. A painting like this slow is more balanced and it would be a typical low key. Kind of paintings. So the darks and the middle value shadows that are going to come into all give a more balanced color structure or value structure to the scene. A little bit of ocher and burnt sienna. To get this middle section. I'm bringing some of those burnt sienna touches into and against the green grass. Burnt sienna is a kind of a red and earthy red, so it really does set, the greens are very nicely. Very simple. Tree trunks, burnt sienna, little bit of wired, some ocher for the light side. Remember to make sure you've established the direction of your light. Before you start the oil stage must be very clear on that. Hopefully from your planning stage. The light here coming from right to left. So all your shadows must correspond as well. So I'm mixing a bit of burnt sienna into the blues to get the shadows over there. And now I'm mixing up some colors for the building. The walls facing us, or in fact in shadow, but quite light storm. It's very easy though to think they are a bright white, but actually quite cool and quiet gray. So these walls would be lit up by indirect light. Light reflecting from all sorts of sources into the shadow side of the building. You're getting all of those shadow colors. So it's a white little touch of that sky blue and maybe a little touch of magenta as well to create a slightly violet blue tint to the white. So this now is the light side sunlight hitting directly that I would simply use titanium white with a little bit of yellow or perhaps even a little bit of ocher, but I'll brighten those lights up, especially when we get into the oil stage of blue and green to create the recesses for Windows and getting those nice darks and really stand out so well against the light colors of the wall. You can see how useful this flat brushes, perfect for these lines that you're creating. I do enjoy this blocking in stage because I can work pretty quickly. Now I'm going to go over everything, but may need a second go. So I can fix up any errors as well. And this makes the critic stage so very useful. It can work out so much, so many problems before the painting is complete and before you get bogged down in any difficult oil painting. The roof is also distinguish between direct light and indirect light, where I'm painting now. Indirect light, so it's slightly cooler and darker. But of course, temperature of color can only be establishment compared one to the other. Lights against the dark and shadows for the roof line, very important little top that to always put that shadow under the roof line. Notice also, I change the Shape of the roof slightly giving the roof line in the main building just a little bit of a curve as if it's slightly sagging. And that's just to lend a little character. I look here at how the titanium and yellow rarely does stand out. In fact, let's get some more onto the front of the building. Not strictly necessary, but that's already helps me to visualize the process with the oils and where I want the bride's to really stand out. Some basic dark color for the fingers. Very simple. Still using a round brush here for that quite large round brush. Number, number six round would be fine. Just use the tip of that brush, a little bit of burnt sienna for the heads and hands. Remember to keep the head is very small, attach them to the body as well. Say here, don't have any floating heads. Some fence post to break up the horizontals and link up foreground, middle ground. Just loosely dragging the brush to get those shapes. And a little bit of variety in the shadows with some blue violet. Here, I'm really exploring color options. Seeing it in action with the shadow be better as a blue, violet or shadow, make it a dark green. Things like that. I can consider and think about and then make a decision. Ultimately, the acrylics lets me play around with these options and ideas. And very simple to change them. Plucky and a few more of the sky holes. Just open up this dark and create these beautiful light, dark contrasting shapes. A few touches of burnt sienna to add those raids against greens. A little bit of red balances aren't a lot of green. So if you feel your paintings looking to green, throwing a few little burnt sienna or red color nodes. And as you will pull it all together again. Eucalyptus trees, very thin and spindly. Just trying to get the character of that. You don't have to create the perfect tree, but just that loose thin character or gesture of the tree. Using blue for the shadows. Very nice little touch of color that I really do like that touch of blue in there. Increasing some of the darks as well. Just to prepare me for the oil painting stage. With the ultramarine burnt sienna, you could use ultramarine and magenta as well to get a dark purple few skull Holds on the left to add a bit of light through there. So little final touches. We're basically done with the acrylic block in. Then on to stage four, where we'll do the oil on stage. 6. Preparing for Oils: Now the acrylics or on the strength of the painting is already there. It looks like it has great potential, cannot take it further now with the oils are certainly believe so. But before we start with that, I'm going to get a little bit of medium, just a toned medium over the entire surface. So you can use a little bit of linseed oil with a bit of oil paint in it. E.g. burnt sienna or even a red, perhaps. Depends on your subject for landscapes or like a warm, earthy color. You can even try raw sienna, that's also quite popular. Mix that up and just brush that over your dried acrylic painting. Let it rest 10 min, 20 min or so, and then wipe off gently with a lint free cloth. Alright, you don't want any bits and pieces sticking to your surface. You can take a bit more off in the light areas and leave little more oil on. But you don't want the surface to be slick with oil. They'll just be a little form of oil left on there which will make your oil paint glide on a little easier. And that's the real purpose of it. One, get a harmony of your toned oil on there. And then secondly, so it's ready to receive your last oil paint on top of it. Alright, let's get the oil on my adding a little bit of linseed oil to this container using about a tablespoon and then a teaspoon of white spirits to mix with that linseed oil and then mixing that into the burnt sienna oil paint. Getting that nice and loose and brushing it on. Getting a good coverage, makes sure the entire panel or canvas is completely covered with your toned medium. And you can see how that color will create a harmony, but also, most importantly, create a nice loose form of oil on the surface for the oil paint stage. You don't paint directly onto this as it is. We're going to let this stand for awhile. Five, 10 min minimum, I would say. And then you can start wiping the oil layer off with a lint free rag. You can see how much there is there coming off onto that reg. You can leave a bit more in the darks if you want to. And obviously in the lights you're going to take quite a bit of that oil off. However, this token to be a thin form of oil left on the surface, which will make a nice surface for your oil paint stage. You can start painting on this straightaway. 7. Oil Painting Part 1: Now the fun stage, the really fun part for me is getting the oils on. And I love to get those bright, rich light oils against those deep and mysterious shadows. So don't get too much white or paint like that into your shadows. You want them deep, rich, mysterious. It's your transparent darks. Maybe bringing a little bit of oil into those docs if you want. But if they're already in place with your critics, you can leave them as they are. So let's have fun getting the rich oils on and then see what the end result's going to look like. This is my standard palette. Got the lemon yellow, deep yellow, this cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, cadmium red, light alizarin, crimson, burnt sienna, yellow, ocher. Cadmium orange. Basically, a warm and cool set of primaries and some convenience colors. Now I'm going to mix up a range of colors. It's a good practice to mix up a few colors. Keep your palette knife nice and clean when you changing color. I use the tissue paper a lot to keep brushes and palette knives clean. I don't really spend a lot of time cleaning the brush in spirits or anything like that during the painting process. That you have mixed up a few darks, orange and the ultramarine blue over here, just to get a deeper, warmer, dark green. I'm going to start off with getting a little more variety in the darks. Now the acrylic stage has established a very good dark pattern for the painting. It's so important that's the anchor, the whole scene. Because it's these docs that make the lights work. But I do like to add in a little bit of further information of some more complexity. I could say, using dark transparent oil colors, no white paint coming into the darks. The reason I like to have these more complex shadows is to try and create a little bit of mystery. If you can make your shadows look subtle, but something going on in the shadows, than lose the dark. Just keep little subtle variation amongst those talks and encourages the viewer to take a second look at tried to sort of peer into those shadows and see the suggested details that you're getting in. Now, I don't cover every little bit of the acrylics in the dark areas. I have simply added here and there. And for instance, a cerulean blue mixed with a bit of yellow gets me a cooler green color. I'm just adding some highlights way some sun is coming through and just touching those leaves. So this is different. This is not dark that I'm trying to put in there. I'm simply trying to put in that little bit of detail that has been lit up by some sun filtering through. Now, adding a few scar holds, a few more than I'm going to set learn. I'm sure. It's simply a case of adding information and then assessing. And during the painting process, you're always get to a point where you need to re-establish some of your darks. It's an inevitable thing that you want to get some of the darks back. You've lost a few because you've tried things or experimented a little with the dark colors. Nothing wrong with that. You building up complexity, you building up layers of interesting colors. Let's get some of the lights now into the foreground. And mostly lemon yellow and a little bit of the deep yellow and white. That's almost pure color on putting down yet. But it has been this saturated with white and it's been a little bit of cerulean blue coming in. This bright, warm light in the foreground makes the foreground rise up towards us. And helps to accentuate the, I guess the barrier that we step over visually to get to the house. Most likely when to increase the shadows from right to left in the foreground. There's none in the reference right in the foreground. But I'm going to bring that into the painting to create some harmony. And the link between foreground, middle and background. So expect more shadow in the foreground, introducing some violet, blue, violet cool colors. Why do I do that? Because the yellows really stand out so much better against the complimentary color. And the shadows can accommodate some violet as well. Little more cerulean, making it even cooler. And hopefully accentuating the warms. Burnt sienna. I'm lightening this up a bit. Trying to simplify the middle distance at putting in a shrubs and bushes. Just the, the reddish burnt sienna can to stand out very nicely, I think, against the greens in the middle distance, the loan at the house. So at this stage, it's about contrast, light against dark and warm against cool. Which as you probably aware, is what a painting is all about. That all comes down to those key elements, warm and cool and color and Latin dark values. Just suggesting a few of those shrubs and bushes. Bit of blue in the shadows here, adds a little bit of variety and interest into the shadows, but very suggestive of details. It's not adding actual detail. Touches of blue. To suggest these branches as well. 8. Oil Painting Part 2: Okay, in part two, I'm going to spend more time with the trees and then get into the colors of the house. Now these eucalyptus trees are very interesting because they have such a characteristic, a variety of color in the tree trunks and branches. The blue-gray is that touches a burnt sienna. So I want to make them more interesting with a variety of these colors. And I think the blue and blue violet really do accentuate every landscape painting. So always looking for any excuse to bring that in. And then some of the, the warmer burnt sienna, slightly orangey burnt sienna as well, showing through here or they're keeping it all very loose. I've got a number four brush here where I'm just dragging these colors and that's why it's a little too white, of course, are immediately cool that down and adjust the value. Now moving into the background as part of my typical process, I like to work all parts of the painting and I don't get stuck on one area too long. So I've worked on the trees, I will come back to them. Now. Move to perhaps an easier part, which is this background. Bright greens. In creating that kind of a little bit of atmospheric perspective behind this, are they not very warm colors in the background. The coolish light, greenish colors. A little cooler and darker in the tree. Here. These, if you can call them sky holes, letting through a bit of lights or the colors beyond all be a little darker and cooler. Now, I tend to experiment a bit. I will put down a color or shape. And if it's wrong and get rid of it if I like it, I'll add more. Now the lawn area towards the house. I'm really trying to center it. The ability of oil paint to add a lot more energy and color. As you can see, the vibrancy and the texture and the sheer pleasure you can get with the oil paints. Really coming through here. I'm just ladling a tone with the brush, nice and thick. And one that is, one of the requirements of good oil painting I believe, is to use the strength of the medium. And it's almost like a soft clay. And I lay it down nice and thick. And very often you get brushstrokes that on little happy accidents as well. Adding a little texture into these lights as you can see there. Now, back into the trees. In the shadow area of the trees on the right, the blues and violets need to be a little darker. But there may be a few things that catch a bit of light as well. So break those up a bit. You can see I'm ready pushing the light, dark contrast wherever I can. Of course, these dark verticals and a beautiful counter change between light and dark and also join up the foreground, the middle ground by overlapping the house. But don't be too precise with your branches, tree trunks, fence posts, keep things a little organic, a little broken. Fence posts or things like that can be leaning over a little bit, just some character. Now, in part one, I spoke about reestablishing darks and that's what I'm doing. Yeah. I've gotten for epsilon bit too far with some of the lights, made a couple too many scar holds. All I need to pull things back and get the dark colors back in. A variety of blue, touches a blue, violet. And intense dark mixing, burnt sienna and ultramarine blue. Now there's quite a lot of dogs, of course. So break those up a little. Bring back those blue violets that lost. Probably have a better idea of how to paint them now, so they're a little darker. But I think the blue and violet adding an impressionist touch, the typical impressionist approach is to bring blues and violets into the shadow areas. And I'm a big fan of that myself. I think the colors to accentuate the other landscape colors, the yellows against foreign, it's the blues against an orangey color. And of course, violet and green, as long as one is dominant. They can also work together, creating some harmony by bringing those violet nodes into the fence posts as well. Breaking up the edges of the ground that burnt sienna. Okay. Mixing up some colors for the house. The shadows of the house. Let's see that light bluish violet color. Really just popping so nicely because it is oil paint on top of that toned color that we applied. And you can see, of course, how the oils have so much greater energy than the acrylics. The shadow colors are series of gray, so you can get gray with mixing. Cerulean, an orange, and a little bit of white. Add more blue if you want the gray to be cool or more orange to make it a bit warmer. The trees over the building, creating beautiful contrast organic shapes to the Bolding little bit of indirect light on the shutters of the house to get rid of that stock dark color. The lights, obviously titanium white and a little bit of yellow, or perhaps white and yellow ocher depending on how bright you want it. But you can also warm it up with yellow and white. 9. Oil Painting Part 3: In this third and final stage, we're going to focus on the Bolding year, just adding a few little stains of mud that's splash up on the side of the building. All adds a little note of authenticity. Of course, we take all the cues from the actual reference. Now the shadow side of the building is mostly made up of ultramarine and white with a little bit of alizarin crimson as well. Also notice that the roof is not perfectly and architecturally straight. They are little curves and there's a little bend in the roof line. All these things add little touch of character to the house. This right-hand side droop, getting slightly less direct light, so there's a slight color temperature change, just a little cooler on the right. No real of value change. I've added a few little details like these. Protrusions in the roof as well, also adding little warm notes against the core shadow side of the building. Notice how the oils really bring the front of the building to life. These bright touch of white, yellow, and yellow ocher. And this is why I love finishing with oil paints so much the texture and bright colors just cannot be equaled. Mostly white, lemon yellow. For these extra touches of highlight. Light against dark. That is what attracts the eye to a painting and brings it to life, creates the impression of light. Most beginners stick in the middle value range, but to really bring the light out of the painting, you've got to explore the extreme lattes and extreme and darks. That is one of the main parts of this lesson, is to achieve that extreme dark and light shadows under the roof lines very important. And then a few little shadows like this help to attach the building to the Earth. That's also something important. So you don't have this sense of something just hovering over the landscape and buildings. Anything attached to the surface has got some type of shadow. You can also use things like grass, for instance, that blur the edge, all create a more natural sense of something being part of the landscape. Speaking of edges, make sure the edges of your foliage and bushes are softened up here or there as well. Now I'm going to focus on the figures. Shadow and light. To finish this off file, use the rigger brush, just a small dot of burnt sienna to bring the facial features and hands to laugh. Nothing else is required. Remember to keep the head very small, and that's one of the primary mistakes, is to make the head much too big. You can make the legs longer than perhaps normal, slightly longer, but the head must be small. I'm actually just cutting in around a third to neaten up and make the heads just a little smaller. Few little bright touch ups just to bring the details to life without having to add too many details. The painting is pretty much done. I could perhaps have extended the shadow in the foreground from right to left a bit more. Something. If you have that sort of thought, you can put it off for another day and just try and live with the painting for a bit and see if it works. You can always make those corrections. Few last minute X sense of light and dark here or there. Touch-up light. Sometimes we overdo these accent colors. But you got to test them out and see if they work for you. Breaking up some edges. Just a little too straight. So breakup an edge, make it look a bit more organic. I hope this has illustrated a process that does deliver results and when you can follow and help you is established and work on your composition and then finish it off in oils to get a painting you can be proud of. One or two last color nodes. Before I sign up this painting off, there it is the painting done. And now it's your turn to have a dog. 10. Final Result and Conclusion: Well there you have it. A beautiful oil painting and one I hope you're going to try out for yourself, download the reference and have a go. Now I think you'll agree that it is worth the trouble to do the first stage with acrylics. You can bring this into your process. You can subtract from it over time. Maybe you just do the toning, but it's always going to help you work quicker and get a richer result. In my opinion, if you're painting outdoors with time is of the essence, this is a great way to get a blocking in w1. Very quickly. Those acrylics will dry quickly, but you'll get a great start and it'll help you finish off in oils with a lot more confidence. So have fun with this method. Try to painting for yourself and share that with me as well. And if you want to take your painting further, have a look at the other courses I have available. You can also find me at Malcolm Dewey fine art.com. It'll be great if you can share your results with me on Instagram as well. Just tag me in at Malcolm Dewey fine art until next time. Cheers for now.