Oil Painting for Beginners - "Fat Over Lean" Principle

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to my studio. My name is Rachel Bridwell, and this is my skill share Siris on oil painting for beginners Throughout this series, I'm going to walk you through all the fundamentals from the ground up to give you a good, solid foundation in oil painting. In this course, we are going to take a focused look at the fat over lean principle in oil. Painting the foul, overly in principle, is very important for oil painters to understand and be able to properly implement. In order, Teoh build their paintings in a way that allows them Teoh dry or harden properly. And it also assists you in building your layers in a way that they remain workable through the entire painting process. After demonstrating how the fat over lean principle works and why it's important, I am going to take you through an example of my painting process and how to properly implement this principle and how I think about the different layers and when Teoh implement different applications. So I hope that you'll join me in this course, and if you have any questions or need further explanation on any of the aspects of this principle. Please let me know in the discussion for the project. I encourage you to tackle a composition of your choosing and to implement the fat over lean principal using at least three layers if you can. Once you understand this principle, it will make your painting process so much easier and you'll know how far you can take your painting. And over time you will develop your own workflow. With this principle in mind, I hope you're ready to get started painting. I know I am. 2. Key Terms: before we get started, we need to discuss some important terms. Let's first talk about mediums. The word medium is basically interchangeable with the term oil, and when we talk about oil, we're actually talking about fats. A few examples of mediums that we will commonly use in oil painting are linseed oil, walnut oil stand oil and you may encounter al kids, which are just compounds that are made from oils. It's very important to know that you should not be adding any mediums to your paints in the initial stages of your painting, and in the next video, I will get more into exactly why this is. But if you remember one thing, just remember that you're going to be increasing the amount of medium that you add to your paint as you progress with your painting in order to make your painting as stable as possible. But even though you're increasing the amount of oil with your additional layers, it's really important not to add too much medium. And as a general rule, it's recommended that you do not have more than 25% medium to about 75% of your oil paint, and this is because that oil contains an generates acids that are going to lead to yellowing in your painting. And so you never want to have too much medium and not enough pigment to counterbalance that yellowing effect. It's and so as a general rule, we want to use our mediums sparingly or not at all. It's a common misconception that oil painters think that they have to use mediums. Absolutely not. You could do an entire painting with just paint straight from your to now most of my courses that I demonstrate I used the alla prima technique. That's where I apply my paints all at once, which is what alla prima means all at once, and this is otherwise known as the wet into wet technique. Now it's very important if you're doing in alla prima painting that you do not use any medium until you absolutely must, and you need to remember that there is a limit to how much wet paint you can work on top of . If you are doing an alla prima painting and you're putting layer upon layer, it won't matter how much medium you add to your paint. At some point, you will not be able to apply it on top of all the other soft paint that's already there. And then, in general, other than the alla prima technique of applying paints, we are going to refer toothy other methods as indirect methods. And we won't get into detail into exactly what those are because there are many indirect methods out there. But it's important to know that indirect methods are where you are applying wet paint over layers that you've allowed to dry, and even though you're applying on top of layers that are dry or more properly, said hardened, you want to remember to use that fat over lean principal consistently in order to ensure the durability and good structure of your painting. Now let's talk about thinners and solvents really quickly. This is mineral spirits, turpentine or, as I like to use Citrus solvents, or there's also lavender spike oil. These are chemicals that are going Teoh. Dilute your paint and you should Onley use thinners or solvents on the initial layers and use them very sparingly. It's easy to remember that a solvent or thinner is a lean, medium lean, meaning thin 3. Fat Over Lean - Illustrated: And now that we have some of that basic terminology out of the way, let's really get into what the fat, over lean method is and, more importantly, why it is so important. Oil paint consists of two ingredients. Basically, it is going to consist of, of course, your pigments and also a binder. And for oil paint that is always going to be. It's some kind of oil. Most commonly, it'll be it linseed oil in your tube of oil paints. To say that oil paint dries is actually a misnomer. Oil paint hardens through a process known as polyamorous ization. Let's examine the anatomy of an oil painting in order to understand how polymer ization works for oil painting. So here I'm going to draw just the basic surface that you're painting on. It might be would or canvas or paper, and you're always going to want to have that surface protected with some kind of primer. So either an oil primer or a just so so those are going to be constant here now, in the most basic oil painting here, we have our pigments represented by these little circles, and they're going to be suspended in a binder, so these little dashes represent the oil that your pigment straight out of the tube is suspended into now in the environment around your painting, of course, there is oxygen represented by 02 and it binds with the binder of your oil paint, toe harden or otherwise polymer. Raise that surface. Now let's take a look at a painting that is painted with the fat over lean methods. So here we have our surfacing primer, and then our first layer of oil paint is actually going to be send out with a solvent represented by these orange horizontal dashes here. And then I'll just write in the key that these little orange dashes represent a solvent so that layer is thin down. Now I'm going to apply another layer of paint, and this time it's just straight out of the tube. So we have, ah, higher concentration of pigment because it has not been thinned out, and then we have a ratio of pigment to oil that represents what you would get straight out of a tube for the second layer. Now let's say we have 1/3 layer, and I'm going to draw in my pigments here, but you can see there a little bit more dispersed out, but I'm going to have a much higher ratio of the oil that the pigments are suspended in. So this represents a medium that has been added to my oil paint. And so this is going to be the fattest layer so you can see that the layer with the solvents in it represents Arlene Layer. The layer above that is a little bit more fat, but it's straight out of the tube and then above that, where we've added medium, otherwise known as fat, we have AH higher ratio of fat to pigment, and then when oxygen in the environment is exposed to our layers of paints, it is able to permeate these layers. And that's because the layer on top, the fattest layer is permeable and allows the oxygen to go down to each layer to bind. Now let's say that everything is flipped upside down, so I have my fattest layer on the bottom in my Leanness layer on the top. When oxygen binds with that top layer, we're going to form a hard film, and the oxygen won't be able to permeate down to the other layers, causing them to remain unstable, and this will lead to cracking over time. So now I flip this back the right way. And just to reinforce this idea, we want to think of our canvas as a rigid surface. And then we'll think of our primer as basically just being a protective surface so that the acids from the oils don't deteriorate that surface. Now, Arlene Layer, is going to be our firm IHS Layer. Paint straight out of the tube is flexible and then paint with medium added to it is going to be our most flexible layer. And I like to think of this as though I'm building a house when I'm building a painting. So we start with a foundation. It isn't much, but it's very solid, and we really need it to build the frame of our house on, so the frame would represent paint that is straight out of the tube, and we can get a nice structure here. In fact, we could leave it there if we wanted, But a lot of times when we want a really detailed painting, we are going to need to add some medium and so I like in that to kind of the basic walls and everything that go into a house and maybe even some decorative embellishments. But what is really important is that you must build your house from the ground up. You must build it from the most firm and solid structure to the more decorative features in order to make sure that your house will last a lifetime and that goes for oil painting as well. 4. Materials: And now I'm going to demonstrate the fat overly in principle for you with one of my own paintings. So first, let me just show you some of the materials that I will be using. Of course, Number one is oil paint. That is the most important thing. And I will be applying my oil paint to a canvas panel and I will only be using one medium for this painting and you can see it clipped on to my palette. Right now it has the lid on it. But as soon as I get my paint squeezed out, I will just open that up early. Quick to show it to you. I usually leave the lid on just to avoid stay billing, as I am commonly doing if I leave things open, so I'll just go ahead and close that back up. But I am just using walnut oil as my medium for this painting. And then the thinner that I will be using is Citrus solvent. So this is a non toxic solvent. I talked a lot about it in my materials and techniques course, so you should check that out if you're interested in non toxic solvents And then, of course, I just have a variety of brushes. For the first several layers of this painting, I'll be using my bristle brushes, which are a little bit more course. And then for the layers that have medium, I will switch to a softer bristle, a synthetic bristle, because that will allow me. Teoh applied those softer paints more easily. 5. "Lean" Layer: the first layer of paint that I will be applying will be, of course, my lean layer. So this is the layer that I will have a little bit of solvent in, and I like to start out my paintings by toning my service. And so this is actually part of the lean layer, because I'm applying a very minimal amount of paint and basically I'm going Teoh be able to spread around this small amount of pain because I will apply just a little bit of a solvent Citrus solvent for me to this pain and that will just thin it out and spread it around. But you can see that I barely had to dip my brush in there. It does not take much solvent to really thin out your paint very, very effectively. And even with this small amount of solvent, I will still have to use a paper towel just to remove any excess solvents from the surface , because solvent is kind of like a lubricant for your paint, so it's going to make this surface much slicker than it was when it was completely drive. So I'll go ahead and wipe off my brush with a paper towel and then just wiped down this surface until there is no more excess solvent on the surface. And now that I have my surfaced toned and it's still what I'm going to go ahead and for this painting, I just decided to quickly mark in some of the dimensions of this still life that I'm painting, so you can probably barely see this drawing. I'm actually just using a regular colored pencil. And, um so this is just to give me some very, very rudimentary and basic guidance as I go in with my next phase. And I usually refer to this as my sketching phase, where I basically am, using some dark paints and my ultra marine blue in my raw number here. And then I had dipped my palette knife into my solvent, and then I mixed that in with this dark color, and you could certainly do that with a brush. You could dip your brush into the solvent and then mix that into your paint. And sometimes I do that. However, I find that my bristles really soak up that solvent, and so a lot of times I end up going overboard and I put too much solvent in with the pain , and that just causes it to be running. Basically, I only want as much solvent as it takes to get a really nice and smooth, easy mark so that it can easily start sketching in some of the most basic shapes of my painting. And so I kind of think of this is sort of just mapping out where things were going to be. I will kind of block in some of my darkest values, and this layer really isn't meant to be much more than kind of just a guide for me moving forward. It doesn't really matter whether any of this shows through in the final painting or not, and some people do refer to this as their under painting, even if you leave it wet like I will be. It's still kind of like an under painting, although I personally like to think of it as a sketch rather than an actual part of the painting. But basically it's just here to give you a little bit of guidance. You're not stuck to anything that you do during this phase, because again your pain is very thin, is going to be very easy and simple to apply paints on top and to correct any errors that you might have made. So this should be a pretty loose and easy parts of the painting process. The paint will come off of your brush very easily. You don't need to worry about covering up that toned background that you're working on top of, and I like to use a toned background just because it helps to guide me in terms of deciding what what values go where in this painting, because when I work off of just a stark white surface, it's a little bit difficult to judge that. And I often feel like I'm working too dark. And so I end up with a painting that is lighter than what I intended. And some people use a toned background and others don't. But it is important just to know that during the lean aspect of your painting, you will have some solvent mixed in. But it's really not much. You don't wanna have too much solvent in your lean layers because it will disperse your pigment too much. And Silva actually evaporates from your painting, so it actually doesn't become part of your painting. In the grand scheme of things, oxygen is still going to be binding with the oils that your pigments air suspended into. And so it's important not to disperse too much of that with the solvent. All right, so this concludes the lean aspect of the painting and you can see there isn't much there, but it is my foundation. 6. 1st "Fat" Layer: and now I can move onto the next phase, which is the first fat layer. And it is really important to remember that there is no rule toe. How many layers you must have in an oil painting. You may only have one layer, and a lot of people who do alla prima paintings will be basically just have one layer, maybe two. And so I'm actually pushing myself to do a few more layers in this painting that I normally do because I actually don't use mediums at all very often. So in the first fat layer is going to be very important that I'm using my paint straight out of the tube. So that is the first principle that I'm going to follow in this layer. But because I know that I'm going to be adding quite a few more layers on top of this, I need to make sure that the way that I apply my paint is going to be somewhat thin. And what I mean by thin is basically if you think about in pasta or paint that has a lot of texture. It almost looks like frosting on a cake that is a very thick application. And so when I'm applying this first layer of just pure paint straight out of the tube, yeah, it's going to be a little bit thicker, of course, than my lean layer. And it's also going to be a little bit thicker, just inherently than any layer that has medium added to it. So I need to make sure that on my brush, I'm not loading it up with too much paint because that's going to create a very soft surface. And it will be increasingly difficult to add more paint on to a surface that's already very soft. Going back to the house analogy. You want to think of where your building onto your foundation. You're not building your foundation somewhere. That's very swampy and unstable and soft. You need to build that foundation on ground that is very firm. And so, with this first layer in the fat process, I need to make sure that I'm not creating a foundation for the other layers that is too soft to be built upon. And so one of the challenges with that is because, of course, I'm working on a toned surface that is still way. I have not let it dry at all. I've just gone straight into painting, so there's going to be some intermingling between the color of my tone to surface and these thinner layers, because I'm applying more pressure with my brush in order to get the paint into the fibers and texture of the surface. And so there is going to be some intermingling, and that's something that I'm comfortable with. Some people really don't like that, and so they prefer to go ahead and just paint on a white surface so that they can keep their colors really pure in just the way that they mixed them. So that's a personal choice. You do have to have that first lean layer at all, actually if you don't want Teoh. But if you're going to be adding lots of layers on top of layers, you just need to make sure that you're applying the paint thinly enough that you can retain some of that texture that is coming through the surface that you're painting on because that helps to create the friction that will allow additional layers of paint Teoh grip onto that surface and because I'm working with the intention of adding more layers onto this painting. I'm not really that concerned about my colors being perfect or even my values being perfect , because there's going to be lots and lots of room for adjustment. And I really recommend for beginning painters that before you are really feeling comfortable with your color and your value techniques, you might want to consider painting in this method where you're giving yourself enough room to make adjustments as you go. So start out applying your approximately correct values and your approximately correct colors in a very thin technique. A thin application and you will leave yourself a lot of room to make adjustments as you go , and that will be so important for you. And with oil painting, there's a lot of refinements that you can dio, and it's almost never too late. Teoh. Make corrections to your painting as long as you're leaving yourself enough flexibility to add more layers by keeping your initial layers thin and relatively flush to the surface. 7. 2nd "Fat" Layer: So now you can see I have not first fat layer in place, and I'm ready to move on to my second fat layer. Now I want you to notice that I haven't entirely covered that toned surface, so I still have some of that lean layer showing through. And that's really important to remember when I talk about layers in oil painting, I'm not necessarily talking about a full coverage layer. Like I said, you could have aspects of your toned surface showing through even on your final painting. And so adding layers doesn't mean that you're going completely over everything on your painting all over again. It just means that you've moved on to a phase where you're adding paint on top of paint. So that is what I mean by a layer in terms of oil painting. And for this second fat layer, I still am not going to be adding any medium, as stated earlier in this course, you don't want to be adding medium to your pain until it's really necessary. When you get to the point that you can no longer add paint that is just straight out of the tube onto your painting because everything is just a little bit too soft. That is an indicator of when you want Teoh. Go ahead and start adding a little bit of medium to your pains, but definitely don't do it too early, especially if you're working alla prima. And since that first fat layer was applied in a very thin application, it's very easy for me to go over that paint with more paints, even without adding any medium to it. And so I can begin adjusting the colors, the values and I can start working on some more of the little nuances or details in the painting, so that initial first layer of paint straight out of the two was just to kind of block everything into place. As I said, I use that to just approximately get my values correct to approximately get my colors correct. And then I'm going Teoh build on that foundation as I move forward in the painting, and I'm still using one of my larger and coarser bristle brushes. This one is a long filbert and so it has kind of a nice soft touch to it. But the bristles are actually quite coarse and so very textured. And so I need to be careful that I'm not picking up too much pains and not leaving too much imposter during this stage. If I'm going to apply any imposter textures to this painting, they would have to come almost last. And if you've taken my course on palette knife painting, you'll know that I also show techniques for applying paint with an imposter. Oh, technique with the palette knife. But even if I'm using only a palette knife to paint, I have to apply those first layers very thinly, even with the palette knife. And it's important to also keep that in mind with the brushes. And so I'm really finding it quite easy to apply more pain to kind of take things forward and backward and make adjustments as I go. And I'm starting to pay a little bit more attention to some of the little nuances in details on the painting, but really going to be leaving those for last and in fact, this little glass jar would you really can't even tell it's a glass jar. At this point, I'm going to save most of that work for last, because that is where I'm going to be its spending most of my time in the final phases of this painting and also the area that will end up having the most paint with medium on it, because there's just a lot more nuanced. They're a lot more details, a lot smaller marks, and so that's why I'm kind of reserving that area for last and just kind of working on blocking everything else in that is a little bit less important. 8. 3rd "Fat" Layer: All right, So now I am moving on Teoh, my third fat layer. And this is the layer in which I've decided it's time to start adding in just a little bit of medium into my mixes. So, of course I'm not going to go overboard with that, and you'll see in a second that I only just barely add any medium to these mixes just to kind of soften them up, make them more flexible and easier to apply on top of the wet paint that's already on my surface. And I just needed to replenish some of my colors. Here I go through paint really fast. It's just kind of the way that I paint. And I'm just going to kind of clean off a little area on my palette here, and I'm going to demonstrate one of my favorite tools that I use. This is my two bringer. I featured it in my materials and techniques. Course it on skill share here, and it's a really great investment because it helps you to get every last little bit of oil paint out of those little metal tubes. So I highly recommend checking that out. All right, so now what I'm doing here is I'm going to just barely dip my brush into my medium as you just saw there. So it's making my paint just a little bit more flexible, a little bit more malleable, and it's better able to sit on top of that paint that's already wet. And now, in general, I say that we need Teoh. Try to work from our darkest values up to our lightest values. But of course, oil painting is very forgiving, and if you need to actually add a darker value on top of a lighter value, the best way to do that, actually, is to add just a little bit of medium to the paint because it helps it to sit on top of that wet paint that you've previously applied. And it reduces the amount of intermingling that you'll get, and so you want. If you have any white paint under this darker application that you need, you're going to get less mixing in with that whiter layer and so your white won't pollute that darker layer quite as much. So when you add medium to your paint, of course, as I said, it makes it a little bit more flexible. It helps it to sit on top of that wet, soft paint that you've previously applied, and it's also great for making your smaller marks. And so this is where I kind of reserve most of the detail work. Or, as I like to say, the nuanced work when I'm doing paintings. And so that's why I actually have left. The focal point of this painting, which is that little glass jar that's going to have some paintbrushes sitting in it, have mostly left that pretty much untouched up until this point, because I want to give myself plenty of room to be able to go in with some smaller marks, some darker marks. And so I didn't wanna apply a lot of paint there in the initial phases, because then I might end up getting more intermingling between those layers than I actually wants. And I want to reiterate again that there is no precise formula for oil painting as to how many layers you need to have. And as I said, you may find yourself enjoying the process of painting in a way where you don't use any mediums at all in, so you may only have one or two layers that you are working on, and so it's important just to kind of get to know how you paint and let that evolve over time. And just remember, Teoh remain flexible and adaptable so that you can work in a way that is going to suit your own personal needs. I'd say that with Alla prima painting where you're painting wet in tow. What it's going to be very difficult to get more than four distinct layers onto your painting because at that point, your entire surfaces very soft. It's very malleable, and it's going to be difficult to apply paint on top of those soft layers without increasing the ratio of oil to pigment too much. And remember, when you apply a medium to your paint, you're actually adding in more oil, otherwise known as more fat. And these oils and fats have acid in them that will cause you're painting to yellow over time. If there isn't enough pigment in that mix to counterbalance it, so you don't want to get to a point in your painting that you're just having to add a lot of medium to it. Just Teoh get the paint to properly apply onto your surface, so at some point you're going Teoh have to either call it done, even though you may feel like there's still work to be done. Or you may need to let it dry so that when you apply subsequent layers with your medium, you can have a proper ratio of medium to pigments. And because this is the phase in my painting where I am adding more details and having to be very much more analytical about how I apply my paints, the values that I apply, the colors that I mix. This is where I end up spending the vast majority of my time. And so even though I'm not making any huge drastic changes and amusing a much smaller brush and by the way you can see that I've switched to a different brush. This is a synthetic brush with much softer bristles. I find it very difficult. Teoh apply my most flexible paint that has the most medium, the most fat in it, with a strongly bristled brush, because I find that with those bristly brush is, I end up just inevitably applying a little bit too much pressure and getting some intermingling. That is a Nintendo sh inal. And so I like to have a couple of smaller brushes with softer bristles on hand for this phase, and when I get done with this phase, I'm really going to have this painting pretty much 95% done. The last fat layer that I use is going to be what I use my most sparing applications for so just some very last details and these air details that you may not encounter in every single painting. For this one, it's going to be the lettering that is on the book. Or if you're doing a landscape, this might be small branches on a tree. Or it might be a line that's going across a road or offense or a bridge or something like that, something that is a little bit more linear, where you're really needing a lot of flexibility with that paint so that you get a nice thin line with your application. And another thing to keep in mind is that there is no distinct way to separate your layers . It's kind of very subjective and determines how you think about your own painting process So for me, getting to the point where I'm using medium at all kind of distinguishes its own distinct layer. Because I'm working with a little bit of a different mindset here, focusing more on details, making some little adjustments to smaller areas using a much smaller brush. And so the way that I define a layer may not be exactly how you end up thinking about your own layers. I could have easily separated this into two different parts just to make it a little bit more, even with the other parts. But really not every layer is created equal. You're not going to spend an equal amount of time on each layer, and each layer is going to have its own unique goal and method of working. So my initial layers air really just about blocking everything into place. And this layer is the first layer where I'm really focusing in on my focal point of the painting and developing that in a more nuanced way than I left the other areas of the painting, which are okay to be left a little bit blocky and painterly and more general. While this phase of the painting is a little bit more thoughtful, considered and where I spend more time just analyzing different areas of my painting and what you're not seeing in the video are the times that I actually get up and kind of walk away from my painting and then come back to it so that I can see it with fresh eyes. And one challenge that we face is artists. Whether we're working with oil, paint or any other medium is our tendency to overwork things. And so it's really important. Teoh have a phase in your painting process where you allow yourself Teoh, Really take your time with it and walk away from it, because again, if you apply too much paint, there is going to come a point where you're not able to apply any more pains. And so when you do try to apply additional paints, you end up just pushing it in with the previous layers and getting a lot of intermingling there, and that is what we typically refer to as an overworked painting. So you want to be really mindful of that and just kind of get to know your own process and how you proceed through these different phases of painting. There is no one formula for it, and the way that I approach my paintings is just kind of what I've organically developed over time. And it's a good starting point for you. It's a good reference for you, but as you paint more and more, you're going to develop your own workflow for your paintings. 9. 4th "Fat" Layer: And as I mentioned previously, my fourth and final fat layer is going to be my most sparing layer. And again, remember, layer doesn't mean that I'm completely going over the painting again. There are still some areas in here that if I looked really closely, and if you look really closely, you can actually see that my toned surfaces showing through just a little bit, and that's completely fine. So I do need to have a little bit more oil in this mix because I need it to be very flexible. I need to be able to apply some very thin lines with my little rigor here. And so I've added quite a lot more of my medium that I have in the past. Now remember, it's really important to make sure that the ratio that you have is 75% oil paint from your tube and maybe at the very most, 25% of your medium. Now, of course, that's approximate, and it's something that you're just going to have to kind of guests and get a feel for, and you will, because if you apply too much media into your paint, the first thing that you're going to notice is that it's going to take a really long time for it to dry, especially if the medium that you're using is not in Alkhan medium. Al kids cause your pain toe actually hardened a little bit faster. So if you're just using what I'm using, which is just straight walnut oil or if you're using a linseed oil and you apply too much of that to your pain, it's actually going to slow down the drying process quite a lot. Or should I say the hardening process to be a little bit more accurate here? But basically, I'm just using this to apply paint on top of all these other layers that are very soft, very wet, and I want to just be able Teoh make these marks. I want to be a little bit more precise and accurate, of course, because I'm putting the title of this book on here, including the author of the book, and by the way, this is a really great But it's by Todd Casey, and it's called The Art of Still Life. It's at this time it's kind of a newer book that just came out, and I'm really enjoying it. So I decided to make this part of my little still life. But I digress. So this layer is going to be very useful just for doing some last minute touch ups, Maybe adding a couple of highlights, very small areas where things just need to sit on top of a lot of other very wet and soft paint. And you shouldn't find yourself spending too much time on this phase of the painting because you should have your foundation, your structure and everything really in place. This is really just for some of those nice last minute embellishments. So now that this painting is finished, I'm gonna take it outside into some good light so I can get a look at the final products. And I'm pretty happy with it. And I know that this painting is going to last a very long time because I followed the fat over lean principle 10. Bonus: Process Overview: 11. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for joining me on this course. I hope that you enjoyed it. And I really look forward to seeing your project posted in the project section of this course. If you have any questions at all Of course Feel free to ask me anything in the discussion section of this course and I will make sure to answer you. And if you like to be notified when I upload new courses here to still share feel free. Teoh, follow me here on still share. And then it will be notified every time I upload a horse again. Thank you so much. I really hope you enjoyed it. And happy painting.