Introduction to Oil Painting

1. Introduction: Hey guys, my name is Ashley. I'm so happy that you've joined me today for this introduction to oil painting. I love oil paints. I love working with them. They're so great. I used to work with acrylics, but now I've switch to oil paints and I have not looked back. There's just such in these possibilities with it. There's so much movement with it, and it's just one of the best mediums I've found to paint with. I like doing abstract paintings. I love the fast-paced movement and flow of it. I also loved the tranquility and ease of portrait painting. It's something different with oils and it just gives you such nice textures and blending when you paint with it. Today I'm doing introduction to working with oils. I'm going to show you some tips and tricks along the way that I've learned over the last few years, that I've started working with oil paints just to make it less daunting when you start with working with this medium because they can be quite intimidating. I'm hoping that by the end of this class you'll be ready, gearing to go and try some oil paintings with me. We're also going to do a class project together from using the different techniques and tricks that I've showed you that we can just create something fun and vibrant and abstract together just so we can get a feel of it and you can see how they move and how they portray on the canvas or whatever surface you're working on. I hope you enjoy this class. I'm going to have so much fun showing you what I have in store for you and just the love I have for this medium. So stay tuned for the next video. 2. Supplies I: Paints: Welcome back. This is the second video of this class. I've split up the supplies that you'll need into full videos. The first one being the paints, obviously. I just made it a little bit easier for you to digest in terms of, because there's quite a bit that you might need that do not necessarily have to have, but some of them I will highly recommend to make your oil painting experience that much better. The paints that I use are the Daler and Rowney oil colors. They are the slightly cheapest of the brands that I found. But just because they're the cheapest does not mean that they're bad quality. I think they're amazing quality and I love working with them. They have such a smooth, very glossy texture to them, and they come in such great colors, as well is that they have the biggest tube, so you get the most paint out of what you pay, which is great and they can last ages and ages that I found. So it's great to think of that when you're buying oil paints. Because I work with oil so often I do get the 75 mole tubes. But if you just want to start out and just get a feel for the oil paints you usually get those little starter packs in the boxes that have the smaller tubes that you can just try out. It has a variety of colors, especially with the primary in black and white. So at least if you want to get started not knowing what oil paints will do for you, then you don't have to spend too much money just for starting with the main colors that you'll need. I just wanted to touch on the different types of blacks and whites oil paints that I've found just so you get an idea of the different types. With the blacks, you get an ivory black and you get a lamp black. With the ivory black, it has a brown undertone to it. So when you mixing it with white to create those grays, it has a very good pure gray underneath. Then with lamp black, it has a blue undertone, so when you're doing it or if you were painting with white to make a gray, it's not just pure, it almost looks like a dark blue. So it doesn't quite have that same gray that you would find normally. So just to be aware of that, there's differences when you're looking to get a black color. You don't need a lot of blacks sometimes, so I usually get the very, very small ones, so you don't need that much and it goes a long way. With the white oil paints, the two colors that I've used that I know of is the titanium white and the mixing white. With a titanium white is great for highlights because it has that stark white color. So it's great when you're just using it by itself. But with the mixing white, it's all in the name. It's purely used for mixing colors to make them lighter. If you try to use it by itself, it won't have that nice stark effect when you doing highlight, it has a dull tone to it. So it's purely just for mixing with other colors to make them into a lighter hue. The one thing I want to include in the paints and supplies video, part 1, is the use of linseed oil. Now, linseed oil is your friend when working with oil paints. I will obviously explain a little bit more when we using it in later videos, when we mix the colors. But it really stretches out the paints very far. So when you're mixing colors, you always want to add a bit of oil that creates a really nice texture when you working with it and you can have less or more when you're mixing and painting with it because then it gives you different types of textures and thicknesses. You don't want to have too much. Otherwise, it's too runny and then it doesn't quite dry very nicely, so you just want the right amount. But play around, you're going to find the amount that works best for you and how you find using it. But we'll cover that in the later videos. Stay tuned for part 2 of supplies. 3. Supplies II: Tools: Welcome back to part 2 of the supplies that you'll need. In this one, I'll be talking about some of the tools when painting with oils. The first one is the paintbrush. You want to try to use the ones that have the smooth soft bristles on top purely because it's nicer to work with. It has a very smooth line. It won't give any problems when you are working with it. You want to try avoid using the horse tail brush that's quite strawy and thick. It hasn't got the best texture when working with oils, especially when you're painting portraits. When you paint with it, it leaves these lines through the oils and through the paints when you're trying to get that blend or texture. It's nice to have on hand if you want to get that texture of the lines coming through it, which is great actually, but when you're working with oil paints in terms of blending and trying to get that nice smooth finish, then I wouldn't recommend it. I would recommend the nylon soft brush. The next tool I recommend is the palette knife. I only started using it quite far after I started using oil paints, and I have found it has made a huge difference when working with oil paints. You can create such great textures. You have different sizes and shapes and ways that you can use it. It's just great for mixing, which I'll show you in the next few videos. The ones that I have at the moment, I only have three, but I'm hoping to increase my collection. I have two of the pointed shaped ones that you can see here. One is smaller, which I use for mixing the paints because it has a bit more control and it's not as bendy or flexible. The next one is a bit bigger, so it's a bit more flexible, but if you want to get those nice big strokes and movements with the paint, then it's great to use for that. The next one I have is a flat top one, it's squared at the top. This also gives some great textures and really nice lines if you want to get some vertical, or diagonal lines, or horizontal that you want to keep nice, relatively straight and even. That's the key, is that it keeps it quite even, more even than it does with the pointed end palette knife. Don't be afraid to explore different knives. There are such great ones. There are different sizes, different shapes, and you can create so many different textures when using them. You can figure out which ones work best for you. I do recommend to start with the smaller pointed shaped ones, especially when you're mixing with paints. I'll show that in the next couple of videos of how it works really well and it's such a great tool to have when you're working with oil paints. Stay tuned for part 3. 4. Supplies III: Surfaces: Under part 3 of the supplies, this one I'll be talking about the different surfaces you can paint oils on, and the ones that I use more often than the others. On top of my list is definitely the stretched canvas. You want to make sure it's the prime canvas. I love the box canvas because you can create your own frame by painting on the sides, or you can leave it white and it really create a 3D effect when your painting and keep hanging up on your wall. There are two thicknesses that I found. I prefer the deeper one because It feels more like a painting than a picture. But you can use the thinner one if you don't want to paint too much on the sides. You also get the ones that are flat board, like this one I have here. You can use that and then use it to frame around it nicely. It is a bit harder to hang up by itself, so I do recommend framing it if your using flattened one. Another surface you can use is wood. It creates such nice texture with the raw wood underneath, just because you don't get splinters. But you want to make sure that it hasn't got any varnish or anything on top that makes it slippery the oils won't stick on. I think it will take a little bit longer for the paints to dry when you working with wood. Just keep that in mind. But I think it's a great surface to use, I mean, that's something different. I haven't tried it, but I've seen others paint on wood, so I think it could be really cool to try it. I don't suggest painting on paper, obviously, it is cheaper than if you want to buy a canvas, but it's not as nice surface to work with, especially with oils. The problem I find is that the oil in the paints seep through the paper and creates a horrible mark around the edges as well as underneath. It makes it all slippery and funny and it's not that great. Try avoid using paper. 5. Supplies IV: Extras: My fourth and final video of the supplies is just to put a few extras that I've used over the times that I've painted and just give you an idea of what I've used. The first thing is good old newspaper. Oil painting can be very messy, so you want to lay down newspaper on just to keep everything ship shape when you're working on a surface, especially a desk or your dining room table. Newspapers are great, I used just old newspapers we've collected over the years. If you don't read newspapers and you haven't got any around the house there, no worries, you can use a black plastic bag that usually put in the dustbin. You can just cut it open and create a nice sheet over it. I do find it a bit slippery, so just make sure that you have a nice surface underneath that won't make your paint, your Canvas slip or your surface slip too much and spoil the painting when you're working with it. The next thing is easel. I use a small desk easel for smaller painting, smaller Canvases that I use. It's just nice that you can sit down as you are do this quick paintings, especially with abstract. I also have my big easel that are used for larger paintings and especially portraits, because that way I can really get up close to it when I'm getting all the finer details, and it's also just better to have a hold of a bigger Canvas because you'll want that stability when you are painting with it. The last thing I use is good or paper towels, I find a greater use when you cleaning your palette knife, it just slips right off, which is great and you don't have to worry about scrubbing it or for whatever. It soaks it all up and you can just fold it up and chuck it in the burner. Now that I've gone through all the supplies and tools and services that we can use for oil paints, you don't have to use all of them, I just find that it makes my painting experience a lot easier, life smoother when I'm using all these tools. Now that we've gone through all of these, let's go onto the mixing of colors. 6. Mixing: Great. So now we get into the fun stuff of mixing the paints. I'm going to show you how I mix using the palette knife, which I find the best to use compared to a paintbrush because it doesn't create as much mess and you really get the paints mixed up really nicely. Before I show you the mixing, I just want to show you what I'll be mixing on. I've found this so tear-off palette that I used to mix on. It's just sheets of paper with a really nice coating on it, so that the oil's doesn't seep through the paper. It's great because once you finished and you've used the entire paper, you can just chuck it in the burn. Folded up, nice and you don't have to worry about the hassle of cleaning up the board, which can be quite a mission with oil paints. Because oil paints when with water just don't mix very well obviously, with oil floating to the top, it doesn't bond. So I find the tear-off palette as it lifesaver, it changed the way I paint. So I definitely, recommend investing in that. Cool guys, so I've got an aerial shots of my work area just so you can see what I'm doing. I'll be working on my tear-off palette that I showed you earlier and we're going to get this open and get started. So you have your normal primary colors and I found working with the French ultramarine. That's just normal blue and the cadmium red, is that there can be a little dull in a way. I guess, if you try and get a really nice purple or really nice pink. So I've actually started using a primary magenta, as those basically the red and I have a primary cyan. The cool thing about these colors is that they give really nice bright colors when you mixing them. So primary the magenta and cyan will create saturnized purple together, which I'll show you now with a bit of whited really is so bright. It's just such a beautiful color with these two together. Then the normal cadmium yellow is quite nice and bright. It's really nice. You can always use a lemon-yellow, which is also really nice color to use as a primary. But I use the cadmium and I find it really nice. So those are my primary colors that I usually use, but then I also mix, the French ultramarine in-between to get a really nice deep blue with the cyan and the cadmium red, as well with the magenta. So to get a nice deep red with it. Because you don't always want to two pinky, you do want to bring that red color in. So you can start off with a normal fringe ultramarine and the cadmium yellow and red. But you don't need to have the cyan and magenta. I just really like working with those colors, just because they're really beautiful when you mix them up. So I'm going to start making a purple. So you can see the really nice color that it makes together, some of the cyan and magenta. Just get an even amount on each and then you can always add and take away. I say, you want to have your friend refined linseed oil. I didn't mentioned before that it needs to be refined but you do get unrefined linseed oil, but it looks dirty. You can see it's not nice to use as it's not filtered like the refined one is. So make sure you got a refined linseed. So I'm going to open that in a little bit. Sorry, it's been stuck. It's very hard to pour those bottles. I'm going to really try my best to get the right amount, just a little drop. I think I poured a bit too much, but we'll see when we mix it. Well, the great thing about the surface is because it's nice and shiny and it's smooth. You can actually tip it and see if it runs away so you can just keep it on the side to use later if need be. Cool. So I'm going to mix that up now with the palette knife. So you want to really squish it in together. The great thing is that you pull it to the side and you just squish it down, pull it down, and squish it over. So that really mixes it and nicely and you just use this motion of twisting and turning with your two fingers really nice and easily. So instead of a paintbrush where you try to mix and the paint that gets everywhere on the paintbrush and everything. It's just so much nicer having a palette knife just to mix it all together, really hits and the nicely. See it doesn't even better the stain on this, but it's much better than the wood pellet board. With the word it will seep through the grains of the words, so you can really get most of the paint that you're using you don't have to waste too much, which is great. So this is obviously over to blue. I want about a bit more magenta let me add a decent amount here. As you wanted to bluey purple, that's fine. [inaudible] add a bit more magenta. Mix it in nicely. Awesome, look at that. That's such a beautiful orange color and the great thing is that with this tear-off palette, you can see the underneath color here as you scraping it away to get an idea of what the color's going to look like. So what I'm going to do, because it's quite a deep purple now. I'm going to add a bit of white. I just use a titanium white for everything and I said, there's a mixing white. You can make it to use lighter but a nice big tube of titanium white just so it goes along way and you can really get that nice bright color. I'm just going to put on the side and take about half. You can see the color coming through. So this is still quite a bluey purple as you can see with the white, so it really shows the color brings here out. I'm actually going to [inaudible] almost like a dark lilac, it's very blue. Looks quite like that. Just using that technique of squishing paints together with a palette knife, it's very much better mixing this way than with a paintbrush. We are going to squish that down so you can get all the colors that haven't been mixed. Great. Now you can see by the texture that it's quite thick. You can really get these thick waves as you're pushing the paints across and you can see it's quite thick. I'm going to take half of this put it here and then take this half, I'm going to add some more linseed oil just you can get a better idea of what's happens when you put a bit more in, how much, how the texture will change. There's some here, you can't probably can't see it on the camera, but there's some here that I pushed to the side. I'm just going to bring some cross. It's quite a variety, also it's really a lot, so you're going to get a really good idea. Now the more linseed oil you put in the runnier it gets. It gets a very thin texture, and you can feel it's actually very smooth with working with it. You don't get as higher mountains when you push down as you do with linseed oil. It's not as firm when you have a bit more linseed oil than normal. You can see that it's a little bit runnier, a lot thinner. You can still get great textures with a bit more linseed oil. It's whatever you wanting in your painting. When you're working with portraits and you want that base color, it's nice to have a tiny bit more linseed oil, especially with this, because then it stretches a bit further and it's easier to work with the paintbrush when you're doing linseed oil. When you have a bit more linseed oil, it's easier to work with and with the paintbrush. Which is great because then it's really creates, says you can push it further along to make those plains better. I'm going to do another color because this is a dark, so you want some thing about lighter to go with it. I've got many paper towels to wipe the pallet knife with. You want to get as much paint off the palette knife as you can, so you don't waste any. Then you just take the paper towel, put it together, and voila, it's so easy just to wipe it off like this. Instead of trying to hassle of when it's dry, trying to scrape it all off and paint it nicely, so you just wash it off and that's simple as that. The complementary color of purple is yellow, so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to take the cadmium yellow. You see, we have a contrast and you can see next to each other hardens. Just take a little bit and I'm just going to squish it out. You can see with our linseed oil how thick it is. You can really get these high mountains when you push down on the palette knife. Without linseed oil it won't stretch very far. It's very thick so it's a bit harder to work with the paintbrush. That's why you put a little bit into linseed oil so it's smoother to paint with and you can get some easier flow with it. If you want to use it without linseed oil, it's completely fine. There's no right or wrong. It's obviously, even with a palette knife, you'll feel that it sticks quite a bit without linseed oil. As you push down, you can feel, I can feel it now and it really sticks to it. You can get some nice textures that you can see here. I've got some nice textures there I'm pushing it through. But then it just won't go far on the canvas. You'll be using quite a lot for a small area of your canvas or surface. You want to a bit of linseed oil just so can stretch it a bit further. I'm going to try to get a little bit in. Now you are going to fold that in. If you've added a bit too much linseed oil and you feel it's a bit too thin for your liking, add a bit more paints, no problem. It will really thicken it up again, because then at least you have linseed oil in it already, so it won't be as thick. Awesome guys. That's just giving you an idea of mixing paints together. You have the one that has the purple that has a little bit less linseed oil, so it gets a really nice thick texture but it will still spread fog because you've got some in it. Then you've got the purple with a little bit more linseed oil. That will spread even further, but it won't give as much mountain when you're pushing in for the textures, which is great if you just want a thin, wispy layer, which I'll show you in the next video. Then that's great to use. Then you have your yellow just a little simply harder. You can add a little bit if you have another yellow, if you're lucky lemon yellow to go with it. That will really bring it out. This is quite a sun yellow. If you want a lemon yellow though it's more like a sunflower, then put a little bit of that in and looks really great, because you can get some nice rich colors from that, especially when you mix it with priming magenta, you'll get such a beautiful orange, believe me, [inaudible]. It's such a nice orange, you get really bright colors. But if you want it a little bit more softer, then you use the cadmium red and that will give a little bit of earthy orange to it. It's a little bit more darker, which has really great colors but won't be as bright because if you use the magenta. That's it for this mixing video, just to give you an idea of how to mix the paints nicely with your best friend, linseed oil. Until the next one. 7. Textures: Welcome back to the next video. This is where I'm going to just show you some textures that I've played with when I've been painting with oils, mainly with my palette knife, but then I'll show you a few with a paintbrush and the other two palette knives I have that I showed earlier. I'm going to start with the yellow because it's already on my palette knife and it's easier just to use it instead of just wiping it off again. So this one had a little bit more linseed oil than I intended, but it's actually quite nice. It's really nice and smooth if you lift up your palette knife like this and see the mountains that form when you bring it up, it creates a really great texture. Anyway, and obviously we'll use a lot more oil than normal. So just be aware of that when you try to maybe doing this texture. Just be aware that you're not wasting too much paint or just maybe using a little bit less linseed oil so you can get that nice texture I mean that's really cool. It's quite stippled effect and it looks like little mountains and ravines, which is really awesome. So that's one texture. One texture down didn't even have to put it on the canvas. I've got my canvas here as just a small one to show you the textures it creates on the canvas. It's primed already so when I feel it or touch it, then it has a very bumpy effect, which is great, especially when you want a washed outlook with paints. If you don't want that bumpy look and you want it a bit more smooth, then you can prime it yourself just with normal acrylic white paint, just to smooth it out a bit. Just make sure that you'll paintbrush that you are using even a roller. A roller would work quite well or paintbrush is nice and soft, so you won't get those line textures that I said earlier that you want a nice smooth finish as the surface. But right now I'm going to use a prime canvas ready bought, so I'm not priming it myself I'm keeping it as it is. I'm going to take some of the yellow, a good amount and I'm just going to push it up and you can see what we're going to get. See so you have to make sure you see how much pressure you put on. At the bottom it's obviously very smooth and then the further I go away I lift up and create some really cool textures. Yeah, awesome, that's really cool. Then when you go back onto this smooth area, maybe take a little paint. You can get textures on top of that. There you go like it's sticking. You get a little bit of air bumps. Nice lines through this and then it fades out as you go along and it's quite cool. I like that. What you could do, then is you don't want that faded look. Just grab a little bit more paint and then carry it on. Instead of having this line across. We're pulling it up. Cool. Yeah, this is the texture you could get. You can see the washed out sections on the sides. But then in the middle that's the main texture that you want to get. Then that's really nice just to have as it is. If you wanted a later stage when it's a little bit dry, when it's not completely dry, but it's still sticky. You can add some more paint and really bold on that layer and get some nice depth to it. Another thing that you could do is take a little bit of white. Take it on the sides, mix it up here. Don't mix it up all the way so that there's some yellow coming through. You can just bring some in. Now you can get some really nice depth with it. Just lightly push across so you don't want it to mix in like I did there. So you really want to get it nice and can even go this way. Here we go. Nice and just on top just to get that depth. This will probably work best if the yellow is a little bit more dry so it doesn't move with it, or if there's less linseed oil. Because there's more linseed oil, it will smooth out a lot more than when there's less linseed oil. Yeah, you get the idea that I'm going for. But just to take note of if you do want that 3D effect of the different color or the white coming through. Wait for the yellow just to dry a little bit. Usually a day maybe, maybe two days. You can judge it by how much paint you've got on the canvas, and you can add some white to it and really make it stand out and play around. All right. I've wiped my palette knife clean with a paper towel, just the same paper towel, you don't need to throw it away just yet. I'm going to use the purple that we've mixed earlier. I'm going to take the one with less linseed oil first. You can see that still quite thick. If I do this, it's getting really high mountains. I'm not sure if you can see from above, but it's getting very high mountains as it did, or more than what it had with this yellow. So less linseed oil, the higher the mountain you can get with that stippled effect. With a thicker paint, what I'm going to do, I'm going to show you this one I have. I'm going to do another line down. You can see it's a lot thicker when you push down. It takes a bit longer to get that line that you need. I'm going to use most of this just to get a nice thick layer on top of it. With this one I'm going to do bumpy effect. What I'm going to do is, I'm just going to go up and down using the same technique as we did with the paint mixing. Just go up and down, up and down like this. It gives a stair, looks like you're climbing stairs, creating stairs going up and down. You can make them small, like this, small ridges or you can make them bigger. I can actually use my bigger palette knife, it's a lot bigger than this one, you can see in comparison. If you have a one in between, would probably work but better. But then when you go flat, I'll need some more paint. When you go flat, it will create bigger steps. I haven't got enough paint, but you'll get the idea when you try it, that's bigger steps so you can see it quite little bit more spread out. I'll put that one down again. I'm going to take this one again, so you can get that little ridges when you go forth. This actually works, but better because these lays paint. A smaller and palette knife will work but better. Another one you could do if you have more paint, this is a bit thinner than what I had here so if you do this lifting up effect, you'll get smaller mountains, but it will work better than if you have more linseed oil in. Because there is less linseed oil, it's a bit firmer, so you'll get more of the stipple. This is great if you want small stipples like this, but more consistently, but if you want something about more uneven and you can take a paintbrush and really go around. This is a bit more, not as consistent as with the palette knife because this is a rounded edge, you can maybe use one that has a flat edge. Also gives quite a cool texture but they're round. Play around with the stipples, see what works with lesser or more oil, and which paint brushes you have, just tap, tap, tap. You don't want to tap too much, we'll you could, actually. You could tap with the whole thing and you can get some other different textures, on right on the edge. It's pushing up the paint as I tap. With little bumps on top, it's giving like a blue ranging oaks of bumps which is quite cool. Now that's those couple of textures that you can try. Cool, I'm just going to use this last bit of paint with a more linseed oil. What I'm actually going to do, is add a little bit more. You can see this is really getting runny, very smooth. You want to make sure that you mix all the oil into the paints. You don't want any excess oil coming out and spoiling your painting. You really want to make sure that's in your paints, all mixed up nicely. Skimming it all this on sides. Push it in, cool. You can see it's very smooth and it's moving very fluidly, that's just good like this you can see how nice and smooth it's going. Compare to this one that had less linseed oil, it's very smooth, it's very, very runny. But it's a really nice consistency actually, it's not too much linseed oil that you have to add more paint you can actually work really nicely with this. We're going to take some of this and we're going to see what it does on the surface. Look at that, so there you can get a really nice continuous line and you weren't getting much wisp as you do on this side. Like, this is a nice texture on the sides, but this, you can get it quite smooth. Because there's a bit more linseed oil, you can actually get too much depth with it. If you try do this movement, it doesn't quite get those nice ridges as we did with first thicker paint, so it's more if you just want to smooth texture in between, maybe these ones. You just want to break it up a bit, bring in some smooth textures, but this is really nice and smooth, you can see my palette knife really moving very fast and nice and smooth move across with that paint. Like I said, this one give you much texture. If you do the stipples they won't hold as nicely as this one is. It's a lot more inconsistent, you can see, it's just not giving that same effect. If you want more depth, I'll take a bit more. What you could do, is just layer on top like lattice like these big strokes. That's really getting some depth but it's still not as firm, if you had less linseed oil in it. That's just gives you a good idea of how much or how it works with linseed oil if you have too much or if you have blot in what the texture, how different it does. But this is great, this is the perfect consistency if you're working with culture painting and you want to get that nice smooth paint with your paintbrush. I'm actually going to take my paintbrush and take some of this and just show you. You can really get along the edges of the, like of the face. You can see it works really nicely. It's so smooth with it, so it really works best for portraits. As I said earlier, if you add too much linseed oil, it still goes too runny, so then when you're doing this, you can see the edges of the paints separating so you can see the oil, which isn't great. You want to make sure that you aren't putting too much oil and it doesn't run the line. Great, you can see how smooth it is with the paintbrush, it's so nice and with this nylon brush. Obviously it's stained because I left the paint on too long, so try not to leave it in paint too long. Otherwise, it's really hard to clean off, so you want to clean it as soon as while it's still wet, straight after you've painted otherwise it will stain. It's obviously like all paintbrushes stain, just don't leave in it too long. As with the porous horse tail bristles, those will stain any way, no matter how, if you just use it once and quickly wash off after you use the paints, it will still stay. I've got a fan horse tail bristle brush, which I bought for textures specifically. It's not for the smooth edges that I did with a nylon brush, it's for textures. It's quite cool because it's nice and fanned out so you can really get some wide texture. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to use the purple with the more linseed oil and show you. You can really get some nice lines. This is great for the lines because it smooths really nicely. You can get some nice textures in that. Then with that, you can have it on its own and have some really cool whisper effect, it's like that. If you do too much, it will get too dense, but if you just want a light one, on the sides like that, then it's really nice to have and you don't need much too. But see, what happened there is that, if I had too much and I did a quick big dump, it got really dense very quickly so I lost that wispy effect. Try to get it thinner, so it's not all condensed into one section and then carry on so it doesn't get that big dent when you try to get a nice smooth textures with that. Cool, that's all the textures I've played around with. There's probably lots more, but this is just to give you an idea of what you can use or what textures are out there, what tools make what, and how the oils grow with linseed oil and how much it affects it. You can see the differences in texture smoothness. Great. Now that we've gone with these textures, we're going to do a class project together. Stay tuned for the next video where we play around with these. 8. Class Project: Cool guys. Welcome back to the next video. We're going to do a class project together, just something small. Taking the techniques and textures I showed you in the previous two videos, and putting them onto canvas or whatever surface you're working with. I'm going to be using just a small square canvas. This is my preferred surface to a con. I do like canvas. You can see this is the thicker one, it's nice deep frame. Going all the way to the sides with the paints, it will create really nice depth when it's hanging on your wall. I've got my pair of palette that'd taken previous one off so starting, but the new one, nice clean ones with a clean surface. We don't have to worry about the other ones. We're going to do some of the abstract piece together with the textures I showed you. You can try new textures. You can follow along what I am doing. You can try different colors. I'm just going to stick with the colors we worked with either a lighter version or darker version, but just keeping that yellow and bluey purple. Then, we're going to just play around and see what happens. I will post or upload the picture at the end, to show you how it's turned out, and we can go from there. Let's get started. I'm going to start with a very light yellow. I'm actually going to do more of a off-white. Basically taking the titanium white, good amount of it, see, and tiny bit of the cadmium yellow. I need to use all of that, just have more than you need. I've got my small palette knife and my linseed oil. I'm going to take this. Let me push this out so it catches nicely. Great. Let's me turn to know what to start off with. Looking good. Great. Mix that in a bit. Then, I'm going to take a tiny bit of yellow just to start to see what that gives. This is giving quite a little bit of an off-white, but I wanted maybe a little bit more off. I'm going to take tiny little more, mix that in, that's looking quite nice. It's so quite thick. I do want to do a little bit finish. I'm going to take a little bit more of linseed oil. Put it in. Here it goes, should be good. Thin it off a little bit so it spreads nicer onto my canvas. The great thing with this white on this pallets is that it doesn't actually stain like the other colors we did in the previous video, which is nice. You can get all of the paint. Don't have to worry about the excess camps. Go squish that down, get all the excess that's hasn't been mixed in yet. Cool. There's my off-white. Now I'm going to start in this corner. I think that's just great to get along, just to get it on. Then we can play around with the textures on top of that. Closer. I quite like what's happening here. It's not quite even, creating some nice textures with the paints. It's actually leaving some of the canvas peeping through, which is actually quite cool. Then, it fades out here. I'm actually going to push quite hard surfaces looking. I'm going to bring this side, getting more out, so I can get more of the faded area. I'm not going to worry about the sides now. I'm just going to do the top for you, around, and then do the sides later. I want to bring light faded but slightly here. What I'm going to do now I think I need a little bit of a darker yellow maybe here. I'm going to take a bit more of this, bring it in, just a section, just to start off with, and then you can mix the entire thing. You have the base, make everything lighter. I'm just going to bring it in this corner here. Yeah, that's cool. That brings a nice pop-in. I like how that this texture is actually coming in with the lighter yellow, off-white. I'm actually going to bring a little bit more yellow and add on top of that. You really want to add the layers. It'll really give a lot of depth to it. I've got three hues of the yellow. I've got this dark one and in between one and then a very light one with more white than the yellow. It's really giving some great depth and almost looks like a bit of a sky when the sun is starting to rise like just a few hours after it's risen, or quite the orange, but the more of the other yellow thought. I'm quite happy with how it turned out. It's giving us a faded texture that we looked at last video and this weathered look on top here as well. It's still bringing in some of the canvas through, which is quite cool and that gives some great depths as well. Great. I'm quite happy with how that's turned out. What do you guys think? I'm just going to scrape it on the side so I can paint on it later to get all the excess. Awesome. I'm going to take my paper towel and I'm going to wipe off this paint from the palette knife, put that aside to be used later. Now I'm going to take the purple that we did. I'll put in magenta here, put the cyan. I actually wanting it to look a little bit more blue than magenta. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to take the cyan and I'm also going to take the French ultramarine to give a bit more depth and bring that in as well, mix it together. Cool. I'm going to mix them here, and then put a little bit of sea linseed oil. I've quite a deep purple. I'll put another more linseed oil than I intended. I've just got more colors to put in. I'm going to put more of the blue. I need just a tiny bit more magenta. I leave the from aside. Keep up that top to keep the deep blue purple. I'm going to keep it as it is and see what it looks like on the canvas. If you're not quite happy what it looks like on your surface, then don't worry, you can just scrape it off as much as you can and to leave a little bit less on the canvas surface and then put it back on your mixing palettes. You can always add some white if you're not happy with the color you wanted lighter, or you can add some more of the colors that you've mixed together. It's really not a problem, or you can mix more and add on top of the color on your surface and to add those layers as well. Let's see what this looks like. I'm going to go from this corner. I'm going to go up broadly and across. That's very dark on here, especially in concentrated sections. I'm actually going to add a bit of white. Yeah, it still keeping it deep, but it's just bringing more of the color out, which I much prefer. Otherwise, it might be too deep and dark and loses on the canvas. That's very blue. You can see how much of a difference the white makes with the colors. This is too blue. I'm actually going to add a bit magenta to bring back some of the purple. Consistency is still good. I'm still happy with that. Let's see what it looks like here. That's actually very nice with the dark on top with the layering. It's worked out very nicely. Don't worry about it if you've made a mistake. It's rarely not a problem. It does when it mixes in with the yellow. Bring it along the bottom to connect the sides, so you can see what that looks like. It's looking quite flat, especially in this bottom section. Not so much here, this is quite cool how it's coming in with the yellow and this darkish color coming while the darker purple coming in there. We need some more depths, I'm thinking to go a little bit lighter again, I'm going to take some good amount of white, I've got a little bit of yellow in there, and I'm going to mix that up. I like how this is looking without it being mixed too much. I'm going to leave it like that, and try and see what it looks like. That's really cool. It's looking like an ocean, waves or white peeping through. The fun thing about abstract is that you just have so much free movement with it and you can do what ever you want, there's no set way. I'm just playing around and seeing what works, doesn't work, adding some white just to get a bit of depth and mixing it in together on the canvas, and then bringing it up into the other that doesn't look like it's too separate sections. It's come relating to each other. Cool, I'm liking what's happening here. Some yellow have has actually come down from when I've brought it up, it's actually both ways, which is nice and which you could do is actually take a bit of that, and bring it in between of the mixed yellow that you've done already. Yeah, that's cool. There's this little middle section that's quite barren. What I'm going to do, I'm going to take this tough that get a bit more paint here. I've run out of this color, so I don't to mix much more, I'm going to take my horse tail fan brush and try bring it up with it. I want to take away from this texture I've got here so I'm going to go back can go back with a pallet knife and get that texture back. I'm going to swipe my palette knife again so I have a clean one. I'm going to go back to this very light. Well, it's off white. I'm going to go back across, actually bring in some more because I'm not quite happy with how it's not quite blending very nicely. I'm going to bring some more of the white and see what that does. That's actually looking quite nice. There's two different directions and it's also quite fun and different movements. Starting to look like the bottom of the ocean, heading the sunrise. The sun's coming out of the horizon, that's just me. You guys could be looking at something completely differently, which is not a problem at all because everyone interprets it's completely different to each other. Some bright more yellow, what I have left. This mixing is also corporate, it looks like ripples. That looks quite fun, you've got the blended of the yellow and blue together. It's more of a blue now then a purple, but no worries, start off with one column and ends up with different one. It's absolutely not a train smash, and then I've got some fun textures with the layers to get some depth. I might mix a little bit more darker blue to bring in more in between here instead of just the bottom and bringing it in so It's not too flat around here, especially. You can see it's starting to look a little bit flat, but this is great. It's got some really nice depth mixing in with the different colors. Awesome. I hope you guys had fun with your paintings. I'd love to see what you've come up with, with the different textures. If you followed what I have done, you guys would've interpreted a lot differently. Please show me what you've come up with, I'd love to see it, please share, and if you found another texture using something else that you felt had around the house, even if it's just maybe some bubble wrap, you've got some dots in a dried leaf that you found on the floor, you want to put some leaf printing. There's endless possibilities with the textures and it's really up to you and how much you play around with. I just stuck with the palette knife because it's nice and simple and easy and you can still get a lot of textures with it, and then a brief one with the brush. It didn't work too well. Maybe it will with another painting. You have to try before knowing what works or not. Great guys, I really had fun doing this little piece, it doesn't take long at all. The only thing it'll take long is for the paint to dry. The other great thing, because it takes so long to dry, you can come back tomorrow and play around a bit more if you need to. It will be slightly drier than now. You can always add layers that you want to, and see what happens after that. You can take forever on it, you can take 10 minutes on it. This is obviously a very small canvas, so I did take a lot quicker than if you do slightly bigger one, but It's really up to you and how much you put into it. It's more just to release some creativity onto your surface. Cool guys, thanks for doing this class project with me. Please just show me what you've done, I'd love to see your creativity. If you don't think you're creative, that is absolutes load of nonsense, everybody is creative in their own way. You just need to mix two colors and play around. The great thing about white is that you can make two colors into five different colors. It's really endless. Add a third color if you like, you don't have to stick with two. I just stay stuck with two because it's quick and simple, with more playing around with textures and having fun together. Please, don't limit yourself to two colors. Three colors will work together and they can be absolutely anything you want. You just put it on, see what works, see what another color does with it, and if it doesn't add onto it, take away from it. It's the possibilities I invest and that's what's so great about oil paints, is that there is so much you can do with it. 9. Layers: Cool. Now that we've gone over some mixing and textures and our class project together. I just wanted to do a quick separate video on the layering of oil paints. I definitely recommend layering, putting as many layers it on as you can, because with the textures that I've showed, it really creates a great depth and give such dynamic to your paintings, and with portraits, you really want to have a nice base color underneath whatever skin tone you're doing that you can bold onto because, the more you boulder on, the better it is to blend and you can get that really great glow and greets feel of the portrait when you're painting it and really comes alive, especially with the building of layers and colors using blue for shadow, to create shadows instead of black, because the black will completely dead in it and doesn't look as 3D and as deep as if you use blue. Definitely use blue when working with portraits. Oils do take a bit longer to dry, which is great when you're painting portraits because you can come back the next day and it's still wet and you can carry on basically where you've left off in terms of the blending and when you're building those layers, that's great to have underneath the wet with just add a little bit more linseed oil and it will come back basically to where it was. Don't add too much, otherwise it will wash it out and it weren't look very great. Make sure you don't use too much, especially with portraits and layering those thinner layers and you do with a palette knife and the thicker textures. 10. Cleaning: Also, so we've mixed the paints and we played around with textures, with the palette knife and the paint brush. So what I'm going to do, because the palette knife is so easy to clean with a paper towel, so I'm going to show you how to clean the paintbrush. So we're going to start off with, I've really done is that you take the paper towel and wipe off the excess so it's flaccid, it won't soak in anymore. We're going to first start with turpentine. I have the distilled turpentine, but you can use any artist turpentine or anyone that you can find out a hardware store to clean off. This is distilled so it's not as strong. But yeah, you can get odorless, which is great. I've used up that before it's amazing because it doesn't stink up the house. But yeah, I'm using distilled turpentine at the moment. So I've got a glass jar here so I'm just going to pour some in. Not too much, but it depends on how much paint you have used and how many paint brushes you've used. Because we've just used one, I haven't poured that much in. So you're going to mix around and you'll see immediately turn purple. Just mix until you get most of it off. When you push it off on the sides, if you see clear-ish, that's good. We've got most of the oils off. Because it didn't use too much of this paintbrush. It's already quite clean. But if you're using a quite a bit and you've really got into and in between the fibers and stuff, it will be a lot dirtier than this it'll turn out, the turpentine would probably be the color of paintbrush that you've had still. So what you want to do next is take good old cooking oil. I've got a container lid here. I'm just going to pour a little bit on top here. I don't need too much. Because the cooking oil will help break down the oils from the paints and that will really loosen them up. I found it works really well, so you just want to mix it in. So like I said earlier, because I haven't used this paintbrush too much. It's not as stained, but they still slight colors coming through. So if your oil is still got color in it, then you need to mix it quite a good amount. You push on the side, it's slightly purple still. So you want to mix it all right off. It builds up right at the edge here, right in here. So that's where the paint builds up the most. So you want to really scrape it all off. Cool, so once you've done that, because rinsing out with water won't help because oil just does not bind with it. I use normal hand soap. I'm just going to squash a little bit on the same lid. I don't need that much either. That really helps clean off the oil. You don't need water, anything, you just need the the soap and you just clean up. You can see how dirty it is already. So if it's still dirty, you want to go back to the oil it really gets it quite clean. So the soap actually brought out color quite a lot more. Now back to the soap. Clean it out to them more. Really get into that bottom section where it builds up. If you need a bit more soap you can just wipe it this lid clean and add more so it's nice and clean so you don't have to mix any more color. That might be quite tedious if you have quite a lot of brushes and you've been using different sizes and stuff. But it really will help in the long run. It really won't stain so much and if you haven't left it. It's just the best way to clean oils because with acrylics you can just wash it in water and it helps. But with oils, you really need to do this process to get a clean brush. So that's quite clean and that's it. All you need to do is just rinse it under some water, get the soap out because at least the oils come out from the soap. Rinse it under water and you're good to go. What I like to do is just take a little bit of hand soap in my fingers. Just smear it across, nice and thinly, and then I just push or a put it on the outsides of my paintbrush just so it keeps the bristles nice and soft and it keeps it nice and fresh and good as new every time you use it. You can see it's stained here from when I previously used at I've kept the paints in which I shouldn't have for a few days, so it's stained at the very bottom. But if I had cleaned it straight away, this probably wouldn't have happened and not very quickly anyway, it would have maybe done it over time. But clean it straight away. I know it's such a hassle. But you really want to keep your your brushes in good shape. So you don't have to keep replacing them. Awesome, so that's the best way to clean the paint brush. Like I said with the palette knife, just take some paper towel and you're done. With the horse tail bristle, it will stay in quite a bit. I've only used it a little bit, but it will stain quite heavily. But that's normal, that's fine. It's porous so it will. Don't be upset if it does stain. Even if you clean it straight away it will still stain quite a bit so don't worry too much and these are the cheaper brushes, so you really want to take care of your nice smooth Lilone brushes or you want to really take care of that. 11. The End: That's the end of the class. I really hope you guys have enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed sharing my knowledge with you guys. It really is such a great medium. I really hope this has enlightened you a bit more in working with oil paints and how great it can be, especially with how much you can do and what the flexibility and the potential it has to create great pieces of art. I'd love to see your class projects guys. I can't wait to see the different textures you've used. I'll put mine up as well, so you can see what the complete painting looks like. Please stay tuned for some other tips and tricks that I might find along the way. If you guys find anything that's been helpful and useful for you for when you're painting with oils, please let me know. I'd love to share your knowledge. I'd love to learn more and more because this is such a great medium and I want to make it even better for myself and for everybody else. Please share them. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks so much for joining me guys and happy painting.