Intro to Oil Painting: Part 1

1. Introduction: Hello. I'm Joshua, and I'm here to introduce you to oil. My first introduction oil painting was watching Bob Ross pain on TV in my grandma's house. She had this full studio set up to painting, and it made me feel like a real artist when I got a senator desk pain. Her preference was acrylic paint, so that's what I was taught to use. And I didn't give oil painting a chance until several years later. It turns out that using colors is hard when you don't have someone like Bob Ross telling him exactly what colors two years. So I work mostly in black and white and stuff to just using pens and pencils. Occasionally, I would color my sketches in using a digital painting program like Photo Shop, but infinite amount of colors let me feeling Boston, so I would end up using only one or two colors. But I finally decided to give oil painting try, and it turned out to be one of the most exciting moments in my artistic life. Oil pain stays wet so you can create expressive results that are difficult to do with watercolors and acrylics. You can lay it on thick. To get vibrant colors, you could create stopped blends between colors. We can easily remove the pain if you messed up, and you can even thin it down to make it work like watercolors. In this class, I will show you how you can get started with oil. I'll show you a list of materials that won't break your budget and will make you feel overwhelmed. I'll give you some exercises so that you can practice your brushwork and become more confident. With lane pain down, I will show you some basic palette pictures that will start you on your way to exploring the vast world of colors. And in the process, you will complete an abstract geometrical composition. This class is for people who want to try using oil paint for the first, or for people who want to improve. Their use of color, composition and ways of seeing is an artist. I hope you will join me for this class 2. Materials: in this video, I'll be showing you all the basic materials in need for this class. To start, we'll need some oil pains. The easiest way to do this is to get an introductory set oil colors. This gives you all the colors you need to start at a good price. The main colors visual need our white black, and then the primary color is red, yellow and blue. For white. I use what's called titanium white and for black. I used a lamp black for red. There several choices. There's a cadmium red medium, a lizard in crimson 1,000,000 or Indian red. Any of these work fine for yellow. I used cadmium yellow tail, you lemon yellow, yellow over and for blew. The two main ones I use are ultra Marine and COBOL live. You won't mean all of these different colors. You can get by with just one of each color. You may be wondering why I didn't include colors like green, orange, purple. These are called secondary colors, and you can create them by mixing the primary colors green, orange, purple. To save time, mixing colors. You could eventually just by these specific colors. But for this class, I'll be showing you how to make them out of the primary colors. Unlike acrylics watercolors, oil pain does not mix with water. This means that you can't use water to thin out your pain or to clean your brushes. As a side note, they do make some oil paints that mix with water. I'm not using them in this class, so what you need to use instead is a paint thinner. I use an odorless turpentine, but you need to make sure that you use it in a well ventilated area, since the fumes could be topic and give you a headache. Also, keep it in an airtight container while using. I just recently found out about Citrus paint thinner, which is a natural, non toxic paint thinner that is safer to use. So give that a try to mix your paints or to apply thick layers of paint. I use a palette. They come in different shapes and sizes, so get what you prefer. But I do find that plastic went break and they don't last long, so I use a metal one. The place where you mix your paints is called a palate. You can use an actual wood or plastic pallet that you hold while you're making your painting. Or you could just use a paper pad that sits on the table next year. Painting the paper palette. He is coated with a wax that keeps the oils in the paint rather than soaking into the paper . Next week, he brushes to apply the paint. Really, any paintbrush will do the job some better than others, but here, the ones that I use this is called a round. It's long skinny, and it curves to appoint a size. Forward is what I typically use, and you can get a size one for adding small details. Then there is this brush cold, a flat, a 1/4 inch size. What I use for smaller areas of color. It is longer than it is wide, but it is cut flat, so it is good for making sharp edges or laying down large areas of color for starting in canvas and adding the largest areas of color. I switched to a much larger size went into or two inch flat brush for line work and very thin lines. I use a brush cold, a liner. Lastly, we need something to put paint on to. If you put oil paint on a regular piece of paper, it will seep into the paper rather than spread on top. To prevent this weaken, prime the paper with a layer of acrylic jet, so a quick drying white paint. Most campuses and canvas pads come pre prepared with this layer of Jesse in order to keep your area and materials clean, it is helpful to have paper towels or cotton rag on hand to wipe away any excess pain on your brushes or mistakes on a canvas. If you're particularly messy, you may want to invest in a neighboring, sends oil pains in stain your clothes, and you will want to sink that you can rent your brushes out the end of the session. In the next video, I will be showing you some exercises to get you started, mixing paints and using your different materials to save your canvases for your finish works. I'm gonna show you now how to prime a regular piece of paper or a piece of paper from a sketchbook. So what, You're what is paper town nearby, A large brush. I'm gonna use a one inch flat brush and then or white acrylic Jessica and the piece of paper that we're going to be applying to. Okay, so we'll just take our brush, dip it in, and then we're just going to apply it evenly over the surface of the paper. And what you could do is to get a nice even coat is to make sure that when you're brushing it on your brushes, going in the same direction. So I'm going back and forth this way so that the texture is even. You don't want it going in all different directions, or else you'll get bumps in weird places on your paper, unless that's what you're going for and you'll notice that the paper is becoming very wet from this paint. But once it dries, it will be find Teoh do our exercises. I wouldn't recommend doing this for a finished piece because the paper is so thin you might recall over bend. But this will serve the purpose for our next lesson for our exercises. So go ahead and do this on several pieces of paper because we'll be doing a lot of different exercises in the next lesson there. I have primed my piece of paper and notice it. It does get a little bubbly, but again, this will be fine. What drives? So then this is acrylic pain. So I could just go take my brush to the sink and wash it out with just water. And so and then I'm just take this and put it in a place to dry for next. So see that? 3. Painting Exercises: in this lesson, we're gonna be trying out our materials and I'll give you a few exercises that will help you build your confidence. So what you'll need are at least three pieces of paper that you have primed with your acrylic jet. So or if you have a spare canvas or campus board, you can use that. So on the first page, we're going to fill this with different brush strokes. We're gonna see what kind of textures that we can get using the different Russians. So I'm gonna start with my biggest brush. It's a flat, one inch brush, and I'm gonna use some ultra Marine. Open up my dinner. I might take my brush when a dip it in the paint thinner. Put some on my palette next to my painting. Then I'm gonna pull some of that paint into paint. You'll see it gets very friends. Parents almost like a water color. I'm just going to pull a stroke across my page. You can go very light, depending upon how much paint thinner that you use. And then, if you want an area to be darker, just dip it mawr straight in the paint and then apply over the area that you want to be dark, so large, fresh like this Kanani Paint thinner is a good way to start your campus because it fills large areas quickly. When you try and do is made Grady int and then just use paint thinner to thin out and smoothly blend. I'm gonna wipe off all the paint thinner. And if you use just the paint on brush, this is what's called a dry brush effect. And what happens? It pulled across the service of the paper, and so you can really see the texture that it leaves behind. This is great for a painterly effect. If you want to show your brush shrugs, I would recommend doing this, and you can pull it in different directions. Maybe if you're wanting toe paint some grass, you can push into it and pull up, and it shows each of those brush. Here's or you could just do dads, maybe like bushes trees. So there we've created almost a full Bob Ross painting with just our ultra Marine and are one inch brush. But now, on the bottom half, let's tracks and different brushes, and we'll switch to a different color medium. I'm gonna use my flat 1/4 inch brush roads we can get so there You could really see the dry brush, in fact. So if you want a more even coat what you use, you just add a little bit of paint thinner. Pull it across. It gets in all the groups of people. Now, I really like this flat brush because not only can you do large areas a flat color, but you can also use the flat edge of it to do straight lines. You can do all kinds of depending upon the pressure that you push, you push for spread all the bristles on their You get a whiner rush row. We go in a little bit, do the grass like we did with our larger brother. Now I'm gonna switch to a round size. For now, this is a very expressive brush. I'm actually going to switch colors, cadmium, yellow, pale. Now, because the bristles air so long, it really smooths out your stroke and you get flowing her lines. And if you use just the tip, you can get very thin lines. But then, if you put more pressure on it, you can get you could go from sin too thick. Lastly, I'm gonna try out my liner brush and I'm gonna go with some black this now with the liner brush. It's got extremely long bristles, so if you just use the paint, you're not going to get a very smooth stroke, just like with a flat brush before. So if you're trying to do straight lines or details with your liner brush, that's what you paint thinners for. So just get some paint thinner, put it on the palate next to the color, and then pull some of that color into paint. Mix it up now when you go to apply and you will have to go back and constantly add more pain because the bristles are so thin that they don't have a lot of pain. So there we have some different effects that they can get. I'm sticking with some fairly basic brushes, but feel free to use as many different types as you can. I'm gonna set that aside on a switch to another piece of paper, so this time we're gonna work more with specific tech things used my flat brush, and I'm gonna use my read on this side of the paper. I'm going to start with a thick red and as I go along, I'm gonna make ingredient that goes to the white of the paper so starting thick and as I pull it across I wanted to be less and less red. Now there it's not quite smooth. So I will add more paint thinner and I'm actually gonna rub off some of the paint, go back in just with paint thinner. No applying more over here. So it's nice. Four more paint thinner and less paint. So that's one way to make greedy. We're going to go from a color to the white, but this time I'm actually used white paint. So I'm gonna start with my blue over here. I'm gonna pull it away to the mill. And whatever you do, wipe that off. Gets a white going to start over here whole towards the blue. And then I'm gonna continue pulling into the blue like that off. Do that again. Start with white. Start over here. All end the blue. Now I can leave it just like that so that it's very painterly effect. I can see the strokes of the bristles, but another way that you can do it. I'll do this below. Start the same way one color on this sign White put to believe this time once I pull into it. Now I'm going to start blending the colors together. So I'm actually going to brush perpendicular direction to my ingredient. I'm going to just down that way, I'm gonna start middle again. I'm gonna add a little bit of paint thinner. So there we've gone from blue toe white, but with a smoother transition between them. So these are some different radiance, and you can try them out with all your different colors to see how they go together. So next what we're going to do, we're gonna go from black to white, showing all the different Grady ins in between. So I'm going to start with pure black, and I'm just going to make a square shape that age. With this black on my brush, I'm gonna pull some white and then I'm gonna mix it with a little bit more black. And then, with this color, I'm going to paint a square right next to this color, and I'm gonna do the same thing I'm gonna add a little bit more white to this. Line it up a little paint thinner, spit it out, apply it right next to color. It'd be. And I'm gonna keep going anymore. I want to get here to this end. I'm gonna want white my brush off so that I can get it pure white. And I'm gonna put this aside so we could dry. And I'm gonna get one more peace paper that I had from still using my flat brush. That just my favorite brush. So feel free to use, which have a medium sized brush that you prefer now. First, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna paint a shape in what's called a flat color. A nice even coat. Can't even really tell what brush I used. And I'm gonna use my red. We've laid in the paint one shade. Now, when we do this in a painting, it gives the very flat look to the service. But if you want your pain, have more of a three dimensional or a vibrant look to it. You could do what's called broken culture. Broken color is where you late in little bits of different color right next to each other so that all their colors together blend for this vibrant color area. I'm gonna take my green, and I'm gonna mix it up with some different cheese, blue and yellow. So now I'm going to paint in a square shape. But I'm gonna use all these variations of green to give the shame more of exciting. Look, when you're doing this technique, you want to put the pain on thick, and this is green for large area of colors when you're painting instead of just doing one large, flat area of one color. If you put a little bit of variation to large area, it will really give it more life. And lastly, what I'm gonna show you is using the palate tool as a brush. It is great for laying long thick, and it gives you great texture, and then you can pull it thin. Leave it, leave it on sick to create actual texture on top of this service, and you can actually do the same thing with different colors on top of each other. So in the next video, I'm gonna be showing you some specific mixtures of colors that you can do to create different color palettes. 4. Color Palettes: in this lesson, I will be discussing some basic color theory and how it applies to our. They don't show you some different color palettes that you could try out on your own pains to be in. You have probably heard the pneumonic device Roy G. Bibb, which stands for the colors of the rainbow that was started by Sir Isaac Newton in the 16 hundreds, and a lot has been added to his theory. By taking the colors of the rainbow and connecting them into a circle. You get what's called a color wheel. One of the more modern versions that I will be using includes 12 colors known as Hughes. This color wheel can be broken down into three main groups. The first is called Primary Colors. This is red, yellow and blue. The reason that cold primary is because all of the colors on the wheel can theoretically be made by mixing these colors together. Now, I say theoretically, because when I demonstrate in a little bit, you will see that the paint doesn't always work out exactly like the theory tells us. The next grouping is secondary colors. This is orange, purple and green. These colors are made by mixing two primary colors together, and then we have our six tertiary colors. These colors were made by mixing a primary and a secondary color together, and they're named after the two colors makes together, starting with the primary so yellow, orange, red, orange, red, purple, blue, purple, blue, green and yellow. If you had black to these hues and you make them darker, this is what's called shades. If you add white to the use and you make them whiter, you create tins. Now this is all helpful to know, because it will make it much easier for you to make sure pains. Most of the time. You won't be using the pure color that comes out to, especially if you're trying to paint something realistically, and you want colors that look really when you're mixing your paints and trying to get a certain color here, some helpful questions to ask yourself. The colors in a painting are called its color palette. Did you go about just adding random colors to a painting? It will sometimes turn out all right, and other times it won't look right to save you. Time and energy there are specific formulas that you can use to create a good color palette . The 1st 1 of these is called monochromatic. This is where you use just one you and then you add black and white to create the tins and chains. Let's give it a try with cadmium red media, and then I'll be adding white and I'll be adding black. When you're doing this, you might notice that the mixture is not always 50 50 of each color. Some pigments are stronger than others, and this is just something that you have tow. Find out by mixing that yourself. And as you can see when I added that white didn't really change that read a lot. So I'm gonna have to add a lot more weight. Go here, make a shade, and then you can go down and mixed colors in between these so that you have even more options when you're making a painting. And then, of course, you can also add all three of them together, read wait. And what now white and black makes together makes great, and any time you added gray to a pure color. What it does is it cuts down on the saturation it still works within this range of colors. They all look good together because they're made from the same set that is called monochromatic. So give that a try and you can use any you. It doesn't have to be a red, so another color palette that you use is called complimentary. This is where you take two issues that are opposite each other on the color wheel, and then you can add the white and the black to make the tints and shades. So let's try that by mixing a blue and orange for the blue. I'm gonna use an older Marie and then for the orange. I'm going to use a cadmium yellow medium, and then I can use my white on black before it's all start by mixing these two together there, we kind of have a greenish color, and then I can add white to each of these, and I can add black and you can add make sure great any of these to get even more variations. Next, there is the analogous color palette. This is where you use four Hughes adjacent to each other on the color wheel, and then you can add the white and black to creating tens and shades. Let's say that we're going to use a purple, red, purple, a red and red orange. We'll start with purple, and if you don't have a tube of purple, what you could do is mix your two primary colors together. You're reading your blue. Remember what I was saying before that? Theoretically, if you makes read and believe, get a purple. But it might not be that fiber purple that you're looking for. And that's why I got this purple tube is because when you mix the red and the blue together , you get a purple. But if I spread it in on here and you look here, it's a little door water than this, so back to my analogous color palette. So I've got my purple. Then there will be a red purple. There will be a red, and then there will be a red orange. So in order to get the red purple, I just mix these two together and make my red orange makes with my red work. You don't have an orange, just makes a little bit of yellow. That's the thing with analogous colors is that they're so close on the color wheel that there is very little difference between the Hughes and then, like we did with our complimentary how it we can mix white and black with these I'm gonna show you. This is what happened when I made a tint of the purple from the to. But this is what happens when you make a tent. My red blue. See the purple is almost it's very gray. Dole, not nearly as vibrant, is that from. So that's the great thing about oil pains is I can mix a whole palette of colors and not have to worry about them drying up. If I had done this with acrylic paints, by the time I went back to pain with these first colors, they would already be dry unusable. But here, with oils, I could mix it up. I can get everything that I need, and then I could go in and I can pain in my painting, and then I could come back. The next day. I used the same colors because the oil's days went so there is some basic color palettes that you could try out and use in paintings of your own. In the next lesson, I'll be walking you through an entire painting from start to finish 5. Sketching Ideas: in this video, we're going to be creating an abstract geometrical composition. To start, we're gonna need some sketch paper either in sketchbook or just lose and a pencil to schedule it. We're going to sketch out our ideas in what's called thumbnails. These air just small representations of the painting that we're going to complete. It gives us an idea of where the shapes were going to go before we jump in and actually start painting. So on your sketchbook piece of paper, we're going to sketch rectangles that are going to represent the canvas we're gonna be painting. But feel free to fill the whole page and do as many of these as you want until you're satisfied. So this is how I come up with a composition. I start small, I play around with shapes. And then once I find out what I like, then I enlarged it and put it on my canvas. So for this project to create an abstract geometrical composition, we're going to use three types of shapes were going to use squares, rectangles, and we're going to use service just using those three basic shapes. We're going to play around with them and see what kind of interesting designs we can come up with. So I may start with a circle. Then I'm gonna have a square that cuts that circle. Then I'm gonna do a rectangle that divides that square. Put a circle inside that rectangle, then and I'm gonna do some shapes that kind of go off the edge. So I do circle that cuts off upper corner square inside. Let's dio here more shapes that you had the more overlapping sections you're going to have and these different sections can be different colors. The more sections you have, the more colors you can use and the more interesting it's going to be, we believe it like that where it's pretty simple, large shapes, or we can keep going and dividing up the areas using these three shapes. So I'm gonna push this one a little bit further, so let's try no using the same shapes. But I can adjust the size and change the placement to create a completely different picture sort of the circle. That's right. Now, this time I'm gonna use only straight lines. So just using squares direct for the next time I'm gonna use just service. What I did here is I hit that circle behind this one, which is called overlapping. I haven't used that any of my others before ever used transparent ones. They're like, see through shapes where you can see the whole shape overlapping each other. You can also put sheets hidden behind other shapes, and that kind of gives depth to the composition. Now, go back to using all the shapes. But this time I'm gonna use more of that overlap. I have a square, I think, but another square. Find it by just cutting off that corner where this squares in front, rectangle behind, circle behind. But then I can also overlap. And this is what creates those extra spaces where we can put different colors. Once we start painting, we can always decide. Add more, James. But this just gives us a general idea of what we're going to do with her for this next one . I'm gonna use just straight lines again. I'm leaning towards this more than that, but I want to incorporate some of those circles, so I'm going to start by doing the same thing. But I might add in some circles overlap. I'm going to do the same thing. But this time I'm gonna add a few more circles just to give it a lot of variation. You can do as many of these you want. You could Perhaps you prefer one of your other thumbnails. But I'm meaning to words this. So my next step is to transfer this on my campus. 6. Painting: the palate to mix the paints on palette knife mixed with paint thinner to clean our brushes and thin out the paint paper towel. The wipe off extra paint. One large brush, about a one inch flat brush and some medium sized brushes. A 1/4 inch plant round for then for my colors. I've started with primary colors, but instead of using very saturated colors, I've used more muted earth tones. So for my red, I've got Indian red for my yellow. I using yellow over and for blue. I'm using ultra Marine, then for white got my titanium white. And instead of using a black, I'm using the dark raw number. It's a good substitute. You either need a canvass board or a canvas to paint on. You can choose the size that you want this painting to be. I'm going to be using the canvass board and it's an eight by 10. I'm going to take my campus and I'm going Teoh glaze it with my yellow over to do this, I'm going to put some yellow over on my palette that I'm going to take my large brush, gonna dip it in the paint thinner and pull off some of this yellow Oakar. I'm gonna dip it back in the paint thinner and then I'm going to apply a thin coat to my kids doing this. You might find your getting some pain on the table so it might be helpful to have maybe newspaper or paper towel underneath so that you're not actually painting your table. This is an old table, so I don't mind as much. I can always clean it at the end of my session, so you may need to go back and get some more color if it's running too thin. But I'm just covering up all the white of the canvas this color come through. You might also notice that when I'm brushing it on, I'm pulling it in the same direction. This just gives it kind of an even coat all over to take a my round paint brush with more yellow over, and I'm going to sketch my thumbnail onto the canvas. So this time, instead of sending it out, way to use just the yellow over. It doesn't have to be perfect cause we're gonna be laying colors on top. But this will give us an idea where the colors are gonna go. Now I'm noticing that I placed circle in the wrong spot, so I'm gonna show you how to fix a mistake. Well, you do this to go back to your big brush diffidence and paint thinner a little bit off on the palate, and then just rush over that area like an eraser, pulling that color away back, wiping excess paint on the paper town. Now go back. And but that circle the correct spot, it doesn't have to look exactly like your son. And since our campus is larger than our thumbnail, we might now decide that we want to go in and add a few more shapes to it, just to give more variation. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to go back now and add extra lines. They're gonna call that good. Now I'm ready to make some colors together, and then we're going to just add them right on top of this sketch. I'm gonna go ahead and apply each of my colors to my canvas from the start by making some different types of reds. So I'll try red with adding a little yellow over to to make kind of orange. Now you'll notice that this Indian red is very powerful and it completely overpower the yellow over. Could hardly tell there's any yellow card in there. So what? I'm gonna do some push it aside and just use a little bit of that. Make sure that more yellow over to it. They're now starting to get more a middle color. Then what I can do? I could pull a little bit of that to the side and then makes white. I could do that again. Go even white. Okay, then I'm going to do another a variation of the Indian red, this time with the ultra Marine. You'll notice what we've created here with our red and blue is a Okay, then I'm gonna pull a little bit of that to the side. Wait. Also that besides Mandy Moore next minute at the blue to the yellow white, my palette knife also get all that read out blue and yellow, which is going to make our green. But you can see since I'm using a yellow car and sped up, say, a cadmium yellow pale you a bright, saturated yellow that it makes more of a muted green. It's not a very wide cream, and I kind of like that. But if you want more vibrant colors than when you're selecting your primary colors instead of an Indian red, you can choose maybe academy and red medium that is more vibrant. And instead of yellow color, you use can yellow pale. But I wanted this commuted earth tone palette. I suggest you give trying. Perhaps if I like it, If not, you know, for next time to use something else. Okay, then pull some of the side on some weight, some inside, more went. And then lastly, what I'm gonna do, take my three primary colors and I'm just going to add white read. Wait. This is called tinting color when you add white to it, but you can also do is at black. But in this case, I'm gonna use my bra number, which darkens it, and that is called shading color. So there we have some tins of the red. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make one. It is a shade of that dark. He's black if you want. It is even more powerful than that Indian red. So I'm actually having a little bit more of the grid. So it's not just wrong. I could do the same thing with my blue blue shaded adding rob number. Lastly, mixed my yellow over and then the end. I'm in a shady Oh, so there we now have a whole palette that has been unified. All the colors relate to each other because they're made from the same primary colors. And now that we have our palate all mixed up, we are ready. Fill in our areas with these colors. So now I'm gonna use my medium sized flat brush, and I'm just going to put the colors and the different sections that have drawn up. And this is the fun part because this is where I get to be creative and add colors in different areas and try out different colors next to each other. So here we go, and what I'm doing is I'm picking a color, and then I'm going to fill in an entire area that I sketched out earlier, just with a plant tone of that color. But I'm making sure I'm getting a lot of pain on their so that it's nice and thick and since that colors on my brush, I might as well filling some other spaces with that same car. I'm gonna wipe off that says paint. Use a little paint thinner to get it off. I'm gonna switch to a different color than so you see, your decisions don't have to be random. You don't have to just place them anywhere. You can think about what colors are putting next to each other. So what? I'm doing it. I'm thinking what color is going to go along with this color? That putting next to it, is it? The complementary color is a darker version of the color, isn't it analogous color, Meaning it's gonna be right next to it on the color wheel so you could do like I did. Do it all in one sitting, or you could take your time and spread it out over a couple of days. Great thing about oil pain is that it stays wet so you can leave your palate out and use the same colors the next day. The next day, 7. Conclusion: Once you finish your painting, you want to put it somewhere where it won't get under smeared, depending upon how thank you applying paint or what brand of paint you use. You can take anywhere from a couple of days or a week or more dry, but go ahead and take a picture of it and share with the class. I'm excited to see what you create. If you have any questions about the class or you want me to explain something better, just leave a comment below. In the meantime, keep painting. Try out different color palettes. Experiment with different rushes, come up with your own compositions in this class, Peter interests and stick around because there will be more oil painting classes to come. Hope to see you then.