Category: Oil painting techniques

4 reasons not to paint on cheap canvases from Michael’s, Hobby Lobby, Lowes & alike. Canvas review

Posted on April 11, 2024April 11, 2024 by veronica

Do you shop at these places for canvases? Michael’s, Hobby Lobby, Walmart, Lowes or online art supply retailers? When everything doubled or tripped in price in the art supplies section, these affordable canvases seem to be a steal. But are they really worth it? Stop 🛑 painting on these canvases now!

Video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/oxygIkpOwLA

4 reasons to stop painting on cheap canvases from Michael’s, Hobby Lobby, Lowes & alike.

Here are 4 reasons to stop buying cheap canvases at craft stores:

Cheap wood doesn’t hold the frame in a long run unless you frame the art soon after its completion. The frames are often crooked and the stretcher bars are not stapled together. It could be all right for a small canvas but not for a big one because large canvases need more support to hold everything up together.
You can’t be confident selling your art that’s produced using crappy art supplies. These canvases will begin to degrade within your lifetime (and this is a very conservative estimate).
This material is not a high-quality canvas. I can’t even tell you what it really is. It can rip and ripple easily. Constant flactuations in room temperature cause cracks in art. This material is asking for trouble.
This gesso (the white ground that covers panels and canvases) is not a high-quality gesso either. And that’s the biggest problem with the craft canvases in my opinion, because oil paint doesn’t form a permanent bond with this surface. It doesn’t stick even if it looks ok on the first sight. It’s very easy to damage the surface. Any shuffling of a painted art rubbed against something will damage the art. I’m not sure that acrylic paint forms a bond with this surface either. Beware.

Combine this horrible surface with low-quality, cheap paints and you got yourself a painting that will crack, fade and change it’s shape pretty soon. Do you really want that?

Affordable alternatives: paint on these high-quality panels instead

Here are some very good alternatives to paint on.

Paint on panels:

My personal preference is a medium-textured panel like Ampersand gessobord or aluminum panels by Artefex. Artefex Alcotpanel is aluminum panel with a primed cotton canvas mounted on ACM and ready to paint on. Da vinci pro wood boards are also very good.

The gesso quality is very important. Golden products are very good. I’m not an affiliate of any of these companies. I just like the quality and price of their art supplies. Panels don’t fluctuate with a change in room temperature or humidity unlike canvas. Old art looks ok painted on wood panels… Raphael Premium Archival OIL PRIMED linen panels are designed for oil painting only because their gesso is oil-based, not acrylic-based like the majority of gesso brands sold today. https://amzn.to/3VRUSBt

colored pencil manual veronica winters — These art instruction books are on sale on Amazon!

Paint on canvas:

If you prefer the lightweight of a canvas, try working on a Belgian linen or more affordable canvas like Unprimed Cotton Duck #10 – Uniform Canvas Surface. It should be heavy and uniform. It’s best to buy a canvas in a roll rather than in a blanket format. The blanket could have creeses that are difficult to get rid of.
It can be a challenge to buy a good canvas shopping online because you can’t see or touch it. Some canvases have a very thin thread and you can almost look through them. Look into the numbers to understand which one is good. For example, unprimed cotton duck #10 is a thick material…

I hope this post and video helps you decide on your art materials choices or at least save you some real frustration and disappointment when you see your art scratch, crack or fade.

Some art supplies available on Amazon:

Da vinci pro panels —https://amzn.to/3RTIduu

panels without gesso – https://amzn.to/3SfBJHx

Raphael Premium Archival OIL PRIMED linen panels (for oil painting only!) https://amzn.to/3VRUSBt

Ampersand gessobords-https://amzn.to/47ygmWg

Golden gesso: https://amzn.to/3TTwn4p

Gamblin oil paint and linseed oil – https://amzn.to/3vGNi1u ; https://amzn.to/47wvXph

Natural Pigments- https://www.naturalpigments.com/paints.html

Spray varnish – https://amzn.to/48OXyDn

Tombow mono eraser – https://amzn.to/3FXS9gI

Daler Rowney System3 Rich Gold Imitation 59ml Acrylic Paint Tube – https://amzn.to/48GA5nQ Alternative metallic acrylic gold paint – https://amzn.to/3vxx6je

If you’d like to support my work, check out the Amazon links or make a purchase from my shop. Every bit helps and you’re a part of my push forward!

How to paint realistic details by studying famous art & artists through art history

Posted on March 14, 2024June 27, 2024 by veronica

When I travel and visit art museums, I study the art. I often take pictures of closeups and details in the oil paintings to see how famous artists conveyed realism through texture and detail in their masterpieces. Some top art museums have digital art collections available to view and even download online these days but many don’t.

I find it enjoyable to take pictures of jewelry, fabric, bows, gowns, metal, gold, silver and other details I see in art. I learned a lot by studying such detailed paintings and if you’re interested in the realist oil painting techniques, I suggest making painted copies of your favorite paintings. I hope this blog post can inspire you to do just that. Enjoy!

All photos are taken by me- Veronica Winters unless noted otherwise. Also, many famous paintings are in the public domain and can be downloaded for free from art museums websites like the Met, the National Gallery of Art, etc.

Agnolo Bronzino-Eleonora of Toledo with Her Son Giovanni-painting details-blog — Agnolo Bronzino, Eleonora of Toledo with Her Son Giovanni, painting details of pearls and fabric. | photo: V. Winters. From 1539 to 1572, Bronzino served as the court painter to Cosimo I, duke of Florence. The Florentine artist, Bronzino painted in the Mannerist art style – emotionless figures and hyperrealist painting details of jewelry and fabric gowns.

Titian, a closeup of hands, fur and jewelry rings | photo: V. Winters

Holbein-the ambassadors closeup — Holbein, The ambassadors, a closeup of fur. National Art Gallery in London. Notice how soft the fur looks in comparison to carefully painted golden details in fabric.

A close up of a painting showing white lace, Metz, France. Photo: Veronica Winters

Art closeup at the CA’ d’ ORO palace in Venice, Italy

Sargent, Mrs. Joshua Montgomery Sears, a closeup of a white gown, Huston art museum

lady reading letters of Heloise and Abelard-1780-A. dAgesci — Auguste Bernard d’Agesci, A lady reading letters of Heloise and Abelard, 1780, oil painting, Art Institute of Chicago

Titian, Portrait of a Lady, a golden earring and pearl detail, the Pitti palace, Italy

Some ribbon and fabric details at the Smithsonian National Art Gallery

Turin, Italy. Here the meticulously created details of fabric are layered over the initial painting of a fancy yellow jacket.

oil painting closeup-the Soumaya Art museum, Mexico city, Mexico

oil painting closeup, the Soumaya Art museum, Mexico city, Mexico | I love the variety of textures created in this fabric.

white fabric detail-Smithsonian — White fabric detail at the Smithsonian National Art Gallery. | Notice how abstract the details look painted over the base color. Stroke direction and curvature are essential to describe forms, shapes and textures.

how to paint realistic details-white fabric and gold details- the Smithsonian — White fabric and gold details, the Smithsonian. | Notice, how gold reads as gold because of few light highlights added to the general shape of these golden accents. **How to mix gold color:** You should use browns with a touch of either red or yellow (depending on the reflected light) to color mix gold color. It’s not about mixing lots of yellow into the oil paint, rather it’s using ochre and brown oil paint like raw sienna, burnt sienna, raw umber and bunt umber to create the shape first and then adding some strategic highlights over it where the light hits it the most.

Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, The Marquise de Pezay, and the Marquise de Rougé with Her Sons Alexis and Adrien 1787. Image downloaded from the Smithsonian website. | This is a beautiful closeup of the female face that shows how to paint hair, face and fabric. The hair is always soft in classical art painting. The fabric has soft edges but definite highlights. The earring has the most defined edge. French female painter, Vigée Le Brun was a self-taught artist who got quickly noticed by her future husband – famous art dealer – Jean Baptiste Pierre Le Brun. The artist enjoyed both the opulent lifestyle and career in Paris and way beyond France, painting the wealthy and royals in Austria, Russia, Italy, Germany, England, etc. She is known for her official portrait of Marie-Antoinette. Her high-paying clientele loved her art style – creative poses based on classical ideals, realism and color choices.

Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun
The Marquise de Pezay, and the Marquise de Rougé with Her Sons Alexis and Adrien
1787 — Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, The Marquise de Pezay, and the Marquise de Rougé with Her Sons Alexis and Adrien 1787. Image downloaded from the Smithsonian website. | Although I find Le Brun’s art less intriguing in terms of subject and meaning, I think her ability to paint realistic gowns and details is supreme. Notice how she catches the light on fabric in broad strokes of golden pink. We can feel the shimmer of fabric looking at this intense turquoise-blue and a lush golden sash.

details of hands and animal-the Smithsonian — details of hands and animal, the Smithsonian.

de heem details-the Smithsonian — de Heem, still life painting detail, The Smithsonian, National Gallery of Art | The seventieth-century painter, de Heem is one of my favorite Dutch still life painters who captured life of the wealthy in lux objects and food items. I learned a lot about classical realist painting by studying Dutch art, mainly composition, color choices and objects’ texture. His deliberate compositions feature careful balance of all objects and textures. Usually a piece of fabric leads the eye to the focal point. The background has subtle colors that support high-contrast still life.

de Heem, oil painting details of glass, fabric and silver. The Smithsonian.

Dutch painting of donuts and sweets at the Smithsonian.

Dutch painting of sweets at the Smithsonian.

ringling art museum_Munari_still life with plates — Munari, still life with plates, closeup, the Ringling Museum of Art.

Lavinia Fontana, jewelry painting detail, The Smithsonian

Lavinia Fontana, Portrait of Costanza Alidosi, closup of jewelry- c. 1595, oil on canvas, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington. | Famous female artist of her time, Fontana lived in Bologna, Italy in late1500s. It was highly unusual to have a name and a career as a female artist in Europe before late 19th century. It was also a strange choice to depict the mythological nudes at that time. Like other female artists of the past, she was trained by her father- Prospero Fontana in the late mannerist style. When she married, her husband became her manager; Apparently Lavinia made a lot of money painting portraits of noblewomen and religious subjects for churches because she had a big family of 11 children whom she supported!

Golden jewelry and fabric details at the Smithsonian

Lace and jacket fabric details at the Smithsonian.

Rembrandt, Lucretia, 1664, dress details. The National Gallery of Art (Smithsonian) has 737 works of art by Rembrandt! Notice how abstract the strokes are describing texture and light of the fabric. These are thick strokes with deliberate rotation and movement of the brush.

Rembrandt, Lucretia, 1664, dress and jewelry details. Notice how the artist uses greys to juxtapose colors. Thick, painterly strokes shape and sculpt the subject.

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Best brushes for oil & acrylic painting

Posted on November 6, 2023November 6, 2023 by veronica

If you’ve tried painting, you know how hard it is to find a good set of brushes. Many of them are flimsy or too soft to spread the oil paint around. Cheap brushes can shed the hairs like a cat. They don’t keep the fine point necessary to paint the details in oil painting. I went through many artist brushes trying to find something that works in my oil painting process. Here you’ll find information on how to pick a good brush for oil and acrylic painting, how to clean the brushes and what brands you can try to purchase the brushes from for your art studio practice.

Painting brushes differ in size, shape, and type of bristles

Size

The higher the number written on a brush, the larger the brush you get. For example #0000-0 brushes are for super fine detail, # 2-4 brushes are for small work, # 6-10+ are designed for a general application of paint.

Shape

There are rounds, flats, liners, chisel tips, filberts, and fans. The shape of a brush determines the stroke you can make with it. The rounds have a fine point and are good for small, detailed application of paint, flats are for a large coverage of paint or to make a wide stroke; fans are good for gentle blending of the edges and for creation of some textures like tree foliage. My favorites are the filberts because they give me a variety of strokes. Depending on the rotation of my brush, it can give me either a flat stroke or a thin, fine line that’s great for defining and maintaining straight edges.

How to pick a perfect brush for oil & acrylic painting

Types of brushes

In general, watercolor brushes are very soft and are not suitable for oil painting. They are too soft to maintain a point filled with oil paint. However, small round Kolinsky brushes are very good for painting details, and watercolor 1″ flats are great for blending large areas of paint right after a painting session to soften the entire picture.

There are three kinds of oil/acrylic brushes: the bristle ones, the synthetic ones, and a blend of synthetic and sable hairs. Both the bristle and the synthetic ones are necessary for oil or acrylic painting.

First layer of painting: the bristle brushes

Use stiffer, synthetic brushes for your underpainting because the first layer doesn’t brush over smoothly. Many artists help the oil paint flow by using some solvent ( Gamsol) mixed into the paint. Both the solvent and canvas surface wear out fine brushes using them at this step!

The bristle brushes are used in a first, rough layer of painting to put the paint on canvas and to mass out shapes. It’s difficult to paint the first layer with the synthetic ones on canvas, because they are too soft for this step and don’t spread the paint around easily. I find that major manufacturers produce similar bristle brushes that don’t differ much in quality. I would avoid the cheapest ones because they shed hairs a lot that get embedded into the wet paint, if you don’t take them out of your artwork during painting. However, If you paint on panels and not canvas, the bristle brushes may be too hard to paint with.

Second layer of painting: the synthetic brushes

When you paint with oils over the underpainting, it glides over the first layer much better but often needs just a little bit of medium to have the flow. This is the stage when you switch from stiffer brushes to the synthetic ones. I find that “Simply Simmons” brushes are cheap, over the counter brushes sold at Michael’s that are quite durable and have a nice point when painting. Craft, unbranded brushes is a waste of money because they don’t hold the paint and have no stiffness necessary to move the paint around or to make clean edges and details.

With each layer your painting becomes more refined in color and detail and so do the brushes. I use Robert Simmons oil brushes that are cheap, durable and hold the point well. I paint with #2 round and #2-4 filbert for most work. I also have #6-8 to paint larger areas. The Robert Simmons brushes’ quality is OK for its price. They don’t last for a year, but perform quite well in comparison to other more expensive brushes I’ve tried so far. I also buy them separately, if I need a particular size or a tip. Another brand I recommend is the Rosemary and Co for the majority of oil painting.

To complete big chunks of painting I like using a variety of filberts. The W&N Galeria set of brushes are great. They are quite soft but work well with oil paint.

Third layer of painting: synthetic and sable brushes

Having good brushes is critical to painting subtle transitions, texture effects and details. For detailed work, I like the Ebony Splendor by Creative Mark that are budget friendly. This brand has a variety of small brushes. However, the really good ones are by the Rosemary brushes & Co. This English company manufactures a great variety of brushes.

For a super detailed work I love to use:
1. the **Kolibri, artisan Kolinsky 3/0** sold at Natural Pigments
2. a variety of **3/0 or 5/0 Rosemary & Co oil painting brushes** sold on their site, which I prefer using the most.
3. I also use a **#0 liner “scepter gold II”, a sable/synthetic blend by Windsor & Newton to paint fine details.**
4. Recently I found the **Princeton, round, 18/0** to paint the tiny details as well but it didn’t last as long as the Kolibri one.

What about the brush handle?

I find that the brush handle length makes no difference in painting. In fact, if you do realistic painting with lots of detailed work, you want to minimize your hand movements to remain precise. I don’t see how long handles help artists do that.

I keep a wide, super soft watercolor brush (3/4 or 1″) for blending large areas to soften everything before I quit painting for a day. It doesn’t matter what brand it is as long as it’s a super soft brush like the watercolor brushes are.

If you want your brushes to keep their shape, it’s not only the quality of the hairs to pay attention to, but also how you wash them.

Thomas Gainsborough The Honourable Mrs Graham (1757 – 1792) 1775 , painting detail

How to clean the oil painting brushes

If you want your brushes to last, take good care of them. Squeeze all the unused paint out of your brush, using a paper towel. I Usually, I deep them in linseed oil first and then take the paint out with a paper towel.

Then you can use a solvent like Gamsol to swish them around in a glass jar, and then wash them out with a bar soap and warm water. I skip the solvent step most of the time because of the two reasons. One reason is a plain health precaution and another one is care for my brush hairs. The solvent dilutes the paint and damages the hairs. I find that cleaning with linseed oil and a bar soap works great and makes the brushes last longer.

To sum up, I take the paint off the brush with a paper towel and use the oil to take most of the paint off. I use a soap bar to clean them after every painting session. I wipe the water off of every brush, and rest them flat on a paper towel, so the excess water doesn’t run underneath the ferrules, damaging them.

One more thing. Brushes wear out a lot faster working on textured canvases. Use lightly textured panels or linen canvases to keep your brushes like new.

Presto!

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Reasons why da Vinci Mona Lisa is still here: how to use your art supplies in oil painting correctly

Posted on October 23, 2023November 8, 2023 by veronica

Technical reasons why Mona Lisa is still here

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was a scientist and an inventor. In his mind, his remarkable abilities to perfect the oil painting techniques were secondary to his numerous other interests. That’s one of the reasons why so few da Vincis exist today. Tall, handsome, and charming Leonardo was great at building relationships and finding patrons for his military, scientific, theatre and art projects, which he rarely finished.

As an inventor, he also loved to experiment with his art materials, using new, untested methods and processes that led to a number of disasters. His greatest surviving disaster-achievement is the “Last Supper” mural painted inside a church in Milan. It began to chip off the wall during his lifetime! It happened because he disregarded the traditional fresco painting technique. Leonardo painted the picture on a dry wall instead of a wet plaster, and experimented with oil, tempera and other materials combining them in a new, untested method. The mural has endured a number of renovations since then, but only restored and computer-generated models can show us his genius: perfectly sculpted figures set in triangular sub-compositions. The admission to the museum requires multi month booking to see the mural, which attests to his long-lasting enigma.

It’s not a surprise that da Vinci experimented with “Mona Lisa” that he began working on in 1503. Obviously, this painting had held a very special place in Leonardo’s heart since it had never left his hands until his death. Da Vinci’s drawing of the figure was absolutely perfect, and his creation of a soft landscape behind her using the sfumato technique was his signature invention. I’m not going to talk about the mystery of the sitter, the beauty of this composition, or the artist’s preoccupation with the painting. There is numerous literature written about these topics. Rather I’d like to illustrate the importance of art materials used in the oil painting.

The artist played with the technical aspects of the painting itself that deteriorated its surface at a much faster pace than it normally would. The exposure to light and humidity darkened and discolored the pigments. Fine details in the face got lost as dyes mixed with the paint faded. Her brightly colored attire changed to shades of browns and black that we see today. Further applied varnishes during the early restorations darkened the painting even more, and today it has a rather colorless appearance of yellowed browns.

Italian painter, Giorgio Vasari was the first to write a comprehensive book about famous artists preceding his generation that he titled “lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors, and architects.” In his notes he reviewed the “Mona Lisa” as follows:

“The eyes had that luster and watery sheen always seen in life … the nostrils, rosy and tender, seemed to be alive … The opening of the mouth seemed to be not colored but living flesh.”
Georgio Vasari

These are the words that describe the mastery of the artist that we sort of see here, only if we could take the sunglasses off to see the real colors.

So what happened to the painting? Because the artist painted on a poplar panel (soft, non-durable and susceptible to insect attacks wood) that was removed from its original frame, the surface couldn’t withstand the changes in humidity. It warped and cracked. In the 18^th century the braces were added in the back of the painting to stabilize the crack, and later the added frame and cross braces helped to stop the continuous warping of the panel. Over the centuries the panel had actually shrunk!

Today you can see the painting in the Louvre that’s kept in a bulletproof glass case. It’s rather small (21×30”) and it’s hard to enjoy the beauty of it, jumping over the heads of so many tourists surrounding it with phones. To preserve the priceless artwork, this painting is kept in a climate-controlled room with a 50% (+\-10%) humidity and 18-21C (68-70F) temperature. To compensate for fluctuations in relative humidity, the case is supplemented with a bed of silica gel treated to provide 55% relative humidity (source: Wikipedia)

These are computer-generated models of the famous painting showing us true colors the Mona Lisa probably had when Leonardo had just painted it. In these models we can see the pinks and the blues that Vasari mentioned that have faded over the centuries.

Source for the images: World Mysteries at http://blog.world-mysteries.com/science/digital-restoration-of-leonardo-da-vincis-mona-lisa/ Other sources: Art history lessons | the Natural Pigments at http://www.naturalpigments.com/blog | Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa

Mona Lisa in the Louvre

If you’re interested to learn more, the Louvre museum website is a great source. Here you can see Mona Lisa up-close and personal going through the digitized images completed by the Louvre museum:

Close ups: http://focus.louvre.fr/en/mona-lisa/

Overview: http://focus.louvre.fr/en/mona-lisa/understand/most-famous-painting-world

Scientific tests: http://focus.louvre.fr/en/mona-lisa/compare/scientific-tests

This diagram is taken from the **Natural Pigments** website. NP produces lightfast, high-quality materials for professional artists.

11 Classical Oil painting techniques rules

If you are serious about creating permanent oil paintings, always consider using the best art materials that includes the painting substrate. the longevity of art depends on the environment you place it in. The best conditions you can set in your home or office must include:

-constant room temperature

-low humidity level

Also, don’t expose your oil paintings and especially watercolors and drawings to extreme sunlight, heat oxidation and high humidity. These are the main causes for art deterioration.

-Don’t wash the surface with water!

-Don’t paint on super smooth or glossy surfaces because the paint doesn’t stick or form a permanent bond with the substrate.

-Don’t use a lot of medium as it weakens the oil paint. Use a little bit of linseed oil to help the paint flow.

-Ideally, it’s best to paint with a lead white, no the titanium white or worse the flake white. Lead white holds everything together like a glue and minimizes cracking.

-If you don’t paint large, stick to painting on professional panels, the surface of which doesn’t fluctuate as much as canvas.

-Have strong stretcher bars and frames that keep the canvas flat and unchanged.

-Use the linseed oil to form the most durable paint film, although it may yellow more than the walnut oil. The walnut oil is also a very good medium that dries much slower then the linseed oil.

-Don’t use the oil paint that contains the safflower oil.

-Always paint on a previously dry layer!

I hope these oil painting techniques tips will help you use your art materials correctly. Learning the rules helps artists create permanent paintings that you can be proud of and confident selling!

+ Updated. First written in October, 2016.

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5 Tips in Realist Oil Painting Techniques for beginners & beyond

Posted on October 21, 2023February 10, 2024 by veronica

Traditional oil painting techniques means painting natural forms from life. Academic studies are based on copying reality as close as possible to life through still life and figure painting. Classical painting method consists of daily drawing from life. That’s why when you visit the art studios at the Grand Central Academy of Art in New York, The Art Students League or the Ryder’s School in Santa Fe, you’ll see students copy objects and draw from figure all day long for weeks, months and even years.

I spent many years learning how to draw realistically and then how to paint with oils well. I must say that realist oil painting is a lot more challenging than drawing because color mixing is not the same as shading in colored pencil or painting in watercolor. In drawing artists shade via subsequent layering to build up a range of values. In painting we have to “guess” correct color, value and color temperature in one stroke! It requires good understanding of color mixing and lots of practice. In this article I’d like to explain several important factors that affect the quality of your oil paintings. Let’s dive right in.

contemporary realism still life with blue vase and starfish-oil on panel-12x16-veronica-winters — contemporary realism still life with blue vase and starfish, oil on panel, Check out a short Video course

1. Invest in quality art supplies & understand their properties

Painting with oils could be a lot of fun when you understand how to use the art supplies in oil painting correctly. Of course, you shouldn’t break the bank by buying pricey art supplies. Painting with high-quality paints really makes a difference in the end result. I’m going to mention budget art supplies that are still good quality. I’ll also explain what to look for buying them in art stores.

Oil Paint

I use professional-grade oil paint. It has high pigmentation, so one small tube lasts for a very long time painting daily. Gamblin colors, Natural Pigments, Michael Harding and Utrecht oil paints are high-quality, yet affordable.

If you want your oil paintings to last, you must use White oil paint that has PW6 pigment and nothing else in it. Most white paint contains additives that break down the paint much faster that leads to deterioration of your entire painting! For instance, Winsor&Newton titanium white has PW6 and PW4 mixed with safflower oil in it. Gambin colors are mixed with high-quality linseed oil. It’s not that important when you paint as a hobby or for practice but it becomes important when you sell art to savvy art collectors. I have written an extensive post about oil paint here: https://veronicasart.com/oil-painting-techniques-whats-the-lightfastness-of-paint/

Panels & canvases

In general, panels for oil painting are much better than canvases because they don’t fluctuate much as room temperature and humidity change. Canvases tend to curve and deteriorate, especially in humid climate. Canvases expand and contract a lot due to temperature changes causing paint to crack in the long run. That’s why you can see the cracks in master paintings in art museums today. If you’re a beginner, it’s not your concern, but if you paint professionally, you should paint on panels.

I recommend: Ampersand Gessobord (medium texture, professional white panels) & Jack Richeson toned gesso hardboard panels (toned surface is great to start painting in full color. It gives a warm undertone to colors!

Canvases have a very big advantage however. They’re light and easy to carry. Canvases can be stretched to any size. Large panels are very heavy and it’s difficult to find large panels selling online. When they arrive, the corners may be damaged.
Fredrix canvases have good quality-to-price ratio for beginner artists. Utrecht canvases (and other Utrecht art supplies) are high quality that don’t cost you a fortune. They are good for beginners in oil and acrylic painting.

Brushes & mediums

Brushes must have a spring to them, meaning that they should keep their point well while painting. It’s best to test the brushes at the art store as opposed to buying unknown brands online. A lot of them are too soft or don’t come to a nice point. Here I have an extensive post written about the brushes. I recommend oil painting brushes manufactured by the Rosemary brushes & Co.

Oil paint mixes with mediums for oil painting. All paints already have some oil mixed into the pigment in your tubes. You need a little bit of medium in the 2nd and subsequent layers of painting to develop transparency and vividness of color. I also use the medium to clean up the brushes during the painting process when I switch between the colors. Clarified, cold press linseed oil is the best for oil painting because it’s stable. One disadvantage, it yellows quite a bit over an extensive period of time. Walnut oil doesn’t yellow. It slows down the drying time of oil paint however. If you’re slow, this is a great medium to work with. I recommend Sennelier Clarified Linseed Oil. Buy a small bottle. It lasts for a very long time.

Varnishes & palettes

You’ve got to have medium-toned palette for oil painting. It doesn’t really matter if it’s wood or plastic. What matters is its size and hue. You need a large one to have enough space to mix colors. Medium-toned panels are great since most of the oil painting techniques involve painting on a medium-toned surface (The underpainting in browns or greens or grays preps the painting for color layers). I have a rectangular, 10×14 palette made in Italy –Feather’s touch palette. You’ll find a great selection on this site: https://www.jerrysartarama.com/

Varnishes come in sprays and liquid form. My absolute favorite is Grumbacher final varnish for oil and acrylic painting, matte. It gives me a very even coat in seconds. Many artists like Gamblin varnishes. Please know that both the surface and space must be super clean! Varnishes attract dust like a magnet and then it’s a pain to remove any tiny hairs from the surface. Usually, you varnish oil paintings in 6 months after painting or you could wait on varnishing your oil painting even longer. Spray two-three times outdoors in low humidity environment.

Also, have at least one palette knife to mix batches of paint.

Additional art supplies: https://veronicasart.com/5-great-art-supplies-to-use-in-your-drawing-and-painting/

video courses by veronica winters — Check out free previews of my video courses here:: https://veronica-winters-art-school.teachable.com/

2. Paint everything from life!

Paint still life with oils from Life. Direct observation is key. There is no better way learning to see how light turns the form!

Links to how to set up a still life: https://veronicasart.com/how-to-paint-still-life-step-by-step-oil-painting-techniques/

3. Precise prep drawing is a must to create realistic oil paintings

Drawing skills are super important! Prepare a full-scale preparatory drawing in accordance with classical oil painting techniques. You can read about it here: https://veronicasart.com/how-to-use-graphite-transfer-paper-to-trace-designs-for-drawing-and-painting/

4. Direct vs. Indirect painting

There are different approaches to color mixing in painting. The Impressionists painted without the use of black. Their paintings taught me to see colors in shadows. The old masters painted with black. I don’t know how Velasquez or Caravaggio would work without the use of black. Their high-contrast paintings taught me to focus on placement of shadows, not the details. Vermeer and Ingres have subtle, controlled palettes that reveal beauty through color unity.

caravaggio wall in borghese gallery-veronica winters art blog — Caravaggio art takes the entire wall space at the Borghese gallery. Photo: veronica winters

Direct oil painting technique

No matter what oil painting style you choose, never put acrylic paint over your oil paint! High-quality acrylic paint is ok underneath the oil paint. Always paint following the fat-over-lean rule with oil paint. Meaning that you start out with very thin paint using no medium and progress painting, building up thicker layers with more oil and linseed oil.

Direct oil painting technique is oil painting in full color right from the start. It doesn’t have the underpainting layer done in one hue. However, oil painting in full color often has 2-3 layers, depending on the artist’s style of painting.

Direct painting in full color became very popular among the Impressionists and landscape artists who began sketching outdoors in mid. 19th century. This change happened due to the simplification of the entire manufacturing process of oil paint. Artists could finally buy colors in tubes to carry them around to paint outdoors.

In this video I explain the difference between direct and indirect ways of painting. These are classical oil painting techniques that can be used in combination to achieve the desired effect.

Indirect oil painting technique

Indirect oil painting technique is the most used traditional oil painting method. It’s about creating an underpainting in one color only and then layering the colors in subsequent layers. This method has several variations.

It could be done in black-and-white (grisaille) or in low chroma greens ( white skin has a lot of green in the shadows). The grisaille oil painting technique allows the artist to develop values in shades of grey. Values are more important than colors because values express the 3D effect, the illusion of something being round on a flat surface. The same is true for painting in low-chroma green-greys. You can find many classical art studies in art museums when artists painted in grisaille only or made an earlier version of a finished, full-color painting. Ingres comes to mind here.

ingres odalisque — Grande Odalisque in Grisaille and full color by Ingres | http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436708

Here are two versions of the Odalisque painting completed by the 19th century French artist – Ingres. Usually, the grey monochrome painting looks like a finished work of art in its own right. Technically, it’s painted on a tinted, warm brown surface. So this warmth shows through the shades of grey. Every layer must be thoroughly dry before continuing painting. If you paint over the wet layer, you not only mix the colors you don’t want to mix, but also make the paint fragile and easy to crack in the future!

Grisaille means ‘grey’ in French. It’s an oil painting technique that has been used by artists for centuries. Grisaille means painting in monochrome or shades of grey. Usually it refers to creating underpainting. Sometimes other low chroma colors are added. For example one of the Italian painting techniques is painting in shades of low-chroma green. So shades of grey look greenish (because skin tones in white people look greenish).

The Ringling museum of art, De Heem, "Still life with parrots" — The Ringling museum of art, De Heem, “Still life with parrots” | Here you can see grey-green sections in the painting where the color layers wore off to reveal a complete underpainting!

My grisaille palette is Gamblin titanium white+ ivory black + Burnt Sienna. Burnt sienna is a warm brown that 'warms up' the greys.

Why do you need to know about this oil painting technique? You learn to see values as opposed to color and to create volume on a flat surface in just two colors! It trains the eye to see and paint a wide range of tones. In classical oil painting training artists painted in greys and then added colors over the underpainting.

5. Combining the effects: sfumato, glazing & scumbling

Glazing means applying oil paint very thinly over the dry layer. Glazing gives you the effect of transparency. This technique requires the use of linseed oil or walnut oil to dilute the pigments. Strong paper towel is needed to wipe off some of the paint to create the thinnest layer possible.

Glazing is useful to unite all shadow areas and to glaze the colors in progression, creating special effects. You can do glazing multiple times when each layer dries completely. Also, know that each new layer darkens the surface. So plan ahead and paint your values a bit lighter, knowing that they’ll be darker via glazing in the end. I show the glazing technique in a short video course painting painting the blue vase.

Scumbling means applying light, opaque paint over the previous layer. Scumbling is great to paint fog, mist or to lighten up any area, uniting the surface as well. It’s possible to create fuzziness on the fruit or softness on the cheeks you can observe in classical paintings.

Sfumato is an Italian term that means super soft shading. Sfumato gives haze or smoky effect to oil paintings. Leonardo is widely credited for the invention and use of this painting technique. If you look at his late paintings, the transitions between the tones are super soft with no visible edges, especially in the skin tones. The background is hazy.

You can achieve such effect by carefully blending every new layer of paint with a separate (clean from paint), soft brush. Paint application is different too.

Why do you need this technique? Objects go out of focus and fade as they recede in space. So you’ve got to soften the edges a lot to show this aerial perspective. Skin tones are also very soft. Personally, I’m far away from this method of painting as I like to have strokes in my paintings but I often look at da Vinci’s work to push myself to create softer shading.

If you’re interested in da Vinci’s work, I like this wide format, hardcover book by Pietro C. Marani titled “Leonardo da Vinci, the complete paintings.”

This is one of my most popular videos I made years ago explaining the underpainting techniques, grisaille, glazing, and other color painting techniques.

One more thing. Paint the same object from different angles and under different lighting conditions. This will help you understand how light turns the form. As you can see painting with oils requires thorough understanding of materials, subject and styles to become good at it. Hope this article gives you plenty of information to start painting with oils like a pro! Thank you for reading and if you’d like to keep in touch you can subscribe to my VIP list or follow my art on Instagram, and YouTube. Good luck!

To read how to varnish your art, go here: https://veronicasart.com/fixatives-varnishes-what-you-need-to-know-to-preserve-your-art/

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How to use grids in art to create realist painting

Posted on July 9, 2023November 23, 2023 by veronica

What is a grid method in art?

The grid method is a technique used in drawing and painting to help artists accurately replicate an image or scene changing the scale of the picture. The artgrid is one of the ways to transfer the outlines onto enlarged canvas with maximum precision. The artist can grid a small reference photo to enlarge the image to a big canvas with maximum accuracy. It involves breaking the reference image into a grid of equally-sized squares, and then creating an enlarged grid on the drawing or painting surface. The artist then copies the lines seen in each square of the grid with the corresponding details of the reference, resulting in a precise and proportionate representation of the original image. It’s especially useful in portrait and figure painting.

Hyperrealist artists often use grids in art to create realistic portraits, landscapes, still life or other complex compositions that require precise proportions and details. It takes many years to learn to create accurate and precise drawings by hand and the grid process helps achieve the same result in a much shorter time. The realist artist spends his time working on an original idea and outline sketch, erasing and composing the image on a sketch piece of paper. Then he simply grids that sketch to enlarge it to a desired scale getting ready to paint it. Having clean outlines and no residue on canvas is important to realist drawing and painting. By breaking down the complex picture into smaller, manageable parts, the artist can focus on recreating one section at a time, which can make the process of transferring the overall composition less overwhelming. Therefore, grids in art or gridding is often used by artists although it’s not the only way to transfer and upscale images. Nowadays, artists use projectors, transfer paper, print outs, etc for this purpose.

You can take almost any image and grid it using a pencil and a ruler. Number each square and transfer the lines you see inside each square. See the demo below.

How to use grids in art

To use the grid method, the artist first needs to select a reference image or a composite scene to draw or paint. The artist needs to decide on the size of the grid squares, which often depends on the image’s complexity. Once the grid is established on both the reference image and the drawing or painting surface, the artist can start filling in each square with the corresponding details, using the lines of the grid as a guide for accurate placement and proportion. In the images below, you can see my process of gridding the photo and then transferring or copying the outline onto my drawing paper.

how to use grid in art-grid method-veronica winters — **How to use grids in art:** Besides using the transfer paper or a light box, you can use the grid method to enlarge and transfer images onto your fine paper or canvas. The grid method is one of the oldest methods used by artists including Durer. Print your reference and then measure equal squares of 1 inch to divide the space. The length of each square is your choice and depends on the complexity of the reference. If the image has lots of details, you can make smaller squares to be more precise about image transfer. Say, it could be half an inch square. If the reference is simple like you see above than a 1.5inch distance is ok. Pick an even number because it’s much easier to measure and grid it. I use a very light pencil pressure to do artgrids. Also I use the 2B graphite pencil and the kneaded eraser to erase the artgrid afterwards.
This reference’s ratio is about 6×10 inches, which means that I can enlarge it to 12×20, 18×30, 24×40 and so on. **You multiply the number by two to get the enlargement.** Also if the image has lots of squares, you want to number them both vertically and horizontally to keep track of the squares when you begin to transfer the image.

This is a sample rather detailed grid you can use for your designs. If you use Photoshop you can layer the grid over the image and use ‘multiply’ function to see the grid on your reference.

Is grid art cheating?

The short answer is no. Is using a ruler by an architect called cheating? It’s simply a tool to achieve the accurate result. You also learn to eye-size the objects from a reference doing art grids. So there is nothing wrong with it, in my opinion. While the grid method is a useful tool for artists, some argue that it can also hinder creativity and spontaneity in the artistic process. It depends on the art style, in my view. I doubt it hinders your creativity. Abstract artists and many other artists who paint with spontaneity simply don’t need to use the grid because their painting technique isn’t about meticulous precision, rather it’s about gesture and expression – the opposite technique and result of the hyperrealist painters.

colored pencil techniques video course by veronica winters — https://veronica-winters-art-school.teachable.com/

Who invented the grid method in art?

Grids in Art History

I think it’s not quite clear who invented the grid method to upscale and transfer images but at the same time the grids or the grid lines were used with different intent and purpose for centuries including Egyptians and Greeks. Mathematical grids have a different purpose from the artist’s, using an artgrid to scale-up and transfer the image. Art grids used in architecture had a different purpose from a simple image transfer and enlargement. Grids were important in design because they were used to create balanced and harmonious designs and compositions involving geometry, math and scale as you can see in one of the pictures below.

One of the churches’ interior in Venice where you can see a complex mosaic floor design. Photo by Veronica Winters

Pompeii geometric floor design. Photo by Veronica Winters

The grid is a series of intersecting lines that divide a surface into equal parts. In ancient Greece and Rome, for example, grids were used to create ancient Greek mosaics and floor patterns and to plan the layout of architectural structures. In the medieval period, grids became a key tool in the creation of stained glass windows, which required careful planning and precise placement of colored glass pieces. The grid provided a framework for the design, allowing for accurate and proportional depictions of figures and scenes. During the Renaissance, grids continued to be used in architectural design and in the creation of frescoes and other large-scale murals. Artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer used grids as a tool for creating accurate perspective and proportions in their drawings and paintings. In the 20th century, the use of grids in art took on a new significance as modern and contemporary artists began to explore the grid as a conceptual element in their works. In the early 1900s, Russian avant-garde artists such as Kazimir Malevich used grids in his abstractions, creating works that emphasized pure geometric form and color over representational imagery. Later, American artists such as Sol LeWitt and Agnes Martin embraced the grid as a foundational element of their minimalist art, using it to create precise, geometric compositions that explored the relationship between order and randomness.

Pompeii geometric floor design. Photo: Veronica Winters

If you’re interested in art history, geometry and design, I recommend to read “Rhythmic form in art” by Irma A. Richter. I wish this book had more illustrations but you can get a thorough understanding how artists designed their art images based on mathematic shapes and forms. If you struggle with composition, you’ll learn how to apply geometry to your compositions. You can also find many books of MC Escher’s drawings and study his use of art grids, perspective and design.

What artists used grid method?

The grid method has been used by many artists throughout history, particularly those who create realistic and detailed works of art. Grids are not useful for gestural, free style painting. They’re needed to create hyperrealist art or art that has strong sense of geometry and design. Here are some famous artists who have used the grid method in their work:

Leonardo da Vinci: The Renaissance master is known to have used the grid method to achieve accurate proportions and perspective in his drawings and paintings.

Albrecht Dürer: The German Renaissance artist also used the grid method to create detailed and precise works, particularly in his prints and engravings.

Chuck Close: The American painter is famous for his photorealistic portraits, which he creates using a grid method that allows him to break down the image into small sections and build it up piece by piece.

David Hockney: The British artist is known for his use of the grid method in his photographic works, which often involve multiple photographs arranged in a grid to create a single image.

Johannes Vermeer: The Dutch Baroque painter is thought to have used a camera obscura and a gridded glass plate to achieve the precise perspective and proportions in his paintings.

Gustave Dore: The French illustrator and engraver used the grid method extensively in his detailed and intricate illustrations for books such as “The Divine Comedy” and “Don Quixote.”

MC Escher: must have used the art grids to create his complex art compositions that have incredible geometric designs and perspectives!

Wypych-Anna-artist interview in podcast with veronica winters — Art by Anna Wypych. Hooked on Art Podcast interview can be found here.

There are a number of contemporary artists who use the grid method to transfer and enlarge their images onto panels and paper. For example, a contemporary realist artist Tanja Gant (interview) and a Polish painter Anna Wypych grid their surfaces to do realistic painting. Do you know any other contemporary artists using art grids to enlarge their references? Let me know!

https://veronica-winters-art-school.teachable.com/

how to color like an artist_coloring book_veronica winters — These art instruction books are on sale on Amazon!

Video courses

Art supplies:

Drawing pad, bristol vellum
Kneaded eraser
koh -i-noor drawing paper, colored pencil
Tombow mono eraser
Drawing fixative
Sennelier fixative for charcoal and pencil has a super fine spray mist, matte, high-quality
Gamvar varnish for oil paintings, satin
Brush for varnishing oil paintings
Color Wheel
Canson Colorline drawing paper is available in many colors and various thickness. You might find better choices at art supply online retailers
Molotow metallic marker, gold
How to color like an artist, coloring book for children and adults
The colored pencil manual, art instruction book

Fixatives & varnishes: what you need to know to preserve your art

Posted on March 13, 2023November 23, 2023 by veronica

Do you know how to varnish art using the varnishes and fixatives correctly? There are numerous videos on Instagram with artists varnishing their art dead wrong. They pour the liquid onto the surface and brush it all over the canvas. I saw one artist at an outdoor art event varnishing her painting in a frame with bugs flying all around her! If you really care about your art and want to preserve it, using your art materials properly is a must. Otherwise paintings may crack or discolor over time.

What’s the difference between varnishes and fixatives?

Key difference between varnishes and fixatives is that varnishes are made for oil and acrylic paintings and fixatives are manufactured for dry media or drawings.

So don’t use a varnish on your drawing! Use final fixative for pastels, pencil, charcoal, colored pencil, and other media on paper, etc. Read labels carefully to decide which fixative or varnish is appropriate for your artwork. A lot of them produce harmful vapors containing acetone and turpentine. However there are some “healthier” alternatives available on the market today. More on that later.

veronica winters colored pencil — Omnipresent mind, colored pencil on paper, 19×25 inches, interior

3 reasons to varnish your art

The environmental changes can produce environmental smudge on a surface of the unvarnished oil or acrylic painting that would be very difficult or even impossible to remove later on. One example is the growth of mold on the painting’s surface. Varnishes and fixatives protect your art from UV light, dust and environmental changes. Varnishes are removable, so that a painting can be cleaned and re-varnished, if necessary.

High-quality varnishes and fixatives bring all the colors out in a painting or drawing. The surface becomes nice and even. Colors seem to gain depth and saturation. Personally I love to see how my drawings and paintings transform after varnishing.

How to varnish your colored pencil drawings, pencil and charcoal drawings, pastels and other dry media art

All fixatives come in several denominations - matte, gloss, semi-gloss, etc. Personally, I prefer matte fixatives because the surface becomes nice and even and doesn't reflect the colors. If you like gloss varnishes, know that it takes a lot more fixative to saturate the paper and make it glossy evenly.

Read directions on the label carefully. Test the spray on a separate piece of paper or magazine page first.
Spray 15-18 inches away from your drawing, holding the can at an angle. Move quickly from left to right.
Do short spurs and thin layers. Let each layer dry completely for at least half an hour.
Spray in a clean and well-ventilated area or outside. Humidity level must be less than 65% in a 55-60F temperature. Otherwise, you may trap the moisture or condensation on the artwork and it would turn cloudy. Depending on the type of fixative, fumes can be hazardous. Once fumes evaporate, bring the artwork inside. I use my bathroom’s countertop to lay art flat and use the bathroom’s ventilator to get rid of the smell completely. Ed S Brickler, technical consultant from Chartpak has a dedicated space in his garage to do the varnishing.
Workable fixative is often used to increase the texture of your paper. Colored pencils are made of wax and when the surface becomes too waxy and you can’t layer more color, you can spray it with a workable fixative to increase paper’s tooth so it accepts more layers of colored pencil. I often use a very light layer of final fixative to give me this extra layer to work on. I don’t find the workable fixative as useful as the final one.
I strongly advice against buying cheap fixatives because they give uneven coverage and can ruin your drawings.
If your colored pencil drawing has some bloom, fix it with a gloss spray first and then use a matte fixative over it. The gloss fixative should even out the surface and get rid of wax bloom.

How to varnish pastels & charcoal drawings

I used to draw in soft pastels before I switched to drawing in colored pencil. Main secret to drawing in pastels is to work from dark to light in layers. Purposefully draw darker in the first layer or two, fix it with a fixative. Then apply lighter layers, fixing each layer. Don’t spray the finished pastel painting heavily because the fixative will darken and change the color. Or use a very light final coat spraying it very lightly.

Drawing with charcoal is about the same. Draw in layers and fix each layer with a fixative.

Don’t spray art if you have sharpie in it. Sharpie will bleed and dissolve.

How to store drawings and art on paper

The best way to store your colored pencil drawings, pencil or charcoal drawings is to lay them flat with glassine paper covering the art. Parchment paper could work as well although the glassine paper is highly recommended and preferred by art professionals. It’s also used for shipping art to create the barrier between unframed art and packaging.

Safe alternatives to traditional fixatives

Non-toxic final fixatives for dry media and colored pencil art

These are the two brands of final fixatives that are made differently and are non-toxic. If you know more about non-toxic fixatives, let me know! I don’t recommend using the Brush and Pencil fixative because the nozzle produces uneven spurs of fixative. It also crumbles thin paper.

How to varnish oil paintings

Oil paintings must be varnished when the paint is dry completely. 6 months must pass before placing a final varnish over the oil painting. But because of possible environmental damage finished oil paintings can be varnished with a retouch varnish first and then varnished with the final varnish in 6+ months.

There are two types of varnishes for oil and acrylic paintings – spray varnishes and liquid varnishes. All varnishes come in several denominations – matte, gloss, semi-gloss, etc. Personally, I prefer matte varnishes because the surface becomes nice and even and doesn’t reflect the colors. If you like gloss varnishes, know that it takes a lot more varnish to even out the gloss.

Damar varnishes seem to be dated because they yellow or darken over time. So synthetic varnishes are preferred to preserve paintings from deterioration.

It's difficult to remove the varnish safely if the paint layers are super thin or the painting was varnished too early.

Princeton 4750 Neptune Mottler Brush can be used for varnishing oil paintings

Your space must be very clean. Liquid varnishes attract dust and particles like a magnet that can settle on a varnished surface. The brush should be high-quality and soft not to leave streaks.
Pour the varnish into a small and clean glass bowl and deep the brush into it. Start brushing your painting from top left corner moving to the right and then down the painting. You need to be rather quick because the varnish starts drying almost immediately. If you feel that the surface becomes too sticky in one spot, don’t brush over it, rather let it dry. Repeat the process in your second, thin layer moving at a different angle or direction to make sure that everything is covered.
Varnishes are self-leveling and applying them in thin layers is the best.
If you use spray final varnishes, apply thin layers, letting each layer dry completely for up to an hour. Also, change the direction with each new layer to cover the entire painting surface evenly.

How to varnish acrylic paintings

Same rules apply to varnishing acrylic paintings. However, the first thing is to use “medium & varnish” acrylic varnish. Varnish your acrylic paintings in three days with either matte or gloss final varnish over it.

If you gesso your canvases and panels with acrylic gesso or use acrylic underpainting for oil painting, allow acrylic-based gesso or paint to dry for 3 days before starting painting on the surface!

References & resources:

If you’re unsure how to use your particular varnish or fixative, go to the manufacturer’s website. Companies have their own blogs and videos showing how to use their products correctly.

This information is based on my conversation with technical consultant from Chartpak inc- Ed Brickler. You can watch our conversation in a video below. This interview is also available on my Hooked on Art podcast on Spotify & Apple.

Here is a great resource on oil painting varnishing from Gamblin: https://gamblincolors.com/oil-painting/gamvar-picture-varnish/

Amazon links to art supplies I use the most often:

Drawing pad, bristol vellum
Kneaded eraser
koh -i-noor drawing paper, colored pencil
Tombow mono eraser
Drawing fixative
Sennelier fixative for charcoal and pencil has a super fine spray mist, matte, high-quality
Gamvar varnish for oil paintings, satin
Brush for varnishing oil paintings
Color Wheel
Canson Colorline drawing paper is available in many colors and various thickness. You might find better choices at art supply online retailers
Molotow metallic marker, gold
How to color like an artist, coloring book for children and adults
The colored pencil manual, art instruction book

Preserving History – Painting Conservation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Check out visionary art for sale

5 ways to check the accuracy of your drawing to create realistic paintings

Posted on September 12, 2022November 23, 2023 by veronica

If your goal is to create realist drawings and paintings, you must master the accuracy of your outline drawing. Never neglect it and strive to perfect the drawing every single day. If you paint, you rely on your drawing skills even more to create realist art. Whenever something looks off, it means that your drawing is off. There are several easy tools realist artists use to catch their mistakes. I’m going to list the ones I use the most often.

5 tips to catch your drawing mistakes:

#1 Turn your canvas, paper or any other surface you’re using upside down.

how to check drawing accuracy and catch mistakes-veronica winters — Although this is a finished drawing turned upside down, you need to turn it like so at different stages of your drawing process to catch the anatomical and other mistakes… I keep rotating my paper and canvas often as long as I draw and paint.

Turn it often. By turning your canvas upside down, your brain sees the mistakes instantly. I often paint upside down too because it lets me focus on shapes and see my subject differently. I keep rotating my drawing/ canvas often checking for anatomy mistakes.

how to check the accuracy of drawing — I also like to paint rotating my canvas sideways. This way I place the strokes in the right direction and I check the accuracy of my drawing at the same time.

Canvas rotation while painting and checking for mistakes in art.

#2 If you paint digitally, flip your canvas horizontally often.

The image on the left is the original drawing but if you flip it, you see the same image with some mistakes. The more accurate your drawing gets, the fewer mistakes you’ll notice. If you don’t see any awkward shapes, it means your drawing is close to being perfect!!!

By flipping the canvas, you see all your awkward shapes. Use “Flip Layer Horizontal” function. Go back and forth working on your drawing in both modes.

#3 Check the accuracy of your drawing in a mirror.

Put your mirror in front of you to catch your painting in its reflection. You’ll see the mistakes instantly.

Look at your drawing in a mirror! This is the most useful tool I use to catch my mistakes. You’ll notice the crookedness of the eyebrows or unevenness of other shapes in your drawing.

#4 Step back to look at your drawing from the distance.

You can evaluate the relationships between big elements in your composition standing far away from your canvas, which you don’t see being up close to your painting.

#5 Take a picture of your art in progress.

Hold your camera straight and quite far from your drawing to prevent big distortion (yes, almost all cameras distort images, especially the phone cameras). Now look at your picture. At first glance you’ll see a few strange shapes in the photo. They may become less obvious after a while because our brain makes adjustments… I often use my camera at the last stage of my painting process thinking that I’m done and ready to take my final shot but then I notice a few more mistakes I didn’t catch during the painting process.

This is it! Use a combination of all of these tools to perfect your anatomy drawing or any other kind of drawing.

Check out my video art courses here: https://veronica-winters-art-school.teachable.com/

Art SHOP

Drawing pad, bristol vellum
Kneaded eraser
koh -i-noor drawing paper, colored pencil
Tombow mono eraser
Drawing fixative
Sennelier fixative for charcoal and pencil has a super fine spray mist, matte, high-quality
Gamvar varnish for oil paintings, satin
Brush for varnishing oil paintings
Color Wheel
Canson Colorline drawing paper is available in many colors and various thickness. You might find better choices at art supply online retailers
Molotow metallic marker, gold
How to color like an artist, coloring book for children and adults
The colored pencil manual, art instruction book

the infinity of human soul-24x36-veronica winters-oil paintings for sale

Realistic oil painting techniques & image design

Posted on August 14, 2022November 23, 2023 by veronica

In this video I explain how I design my images using Photoshop Elements. Next, I show how I approach painting my picture in layers. Photoshop Elements doesn’t require a monthly subscription. I bought it for under $100 several years ago and use this program as much as I want to. I usually paint on panels but when I go bigger I switch to painting on canvas because it’s much lighter. I gesso my surface 2-3 times even when the surface has been gessoed before because it gives me a much better grip of the paint to the surface. I let each paint layer dry completely before painting the next and I apply a spray varnish over my painting in 6 months after painting it.

Art supplies on Amazon:

Drawing pad, bristol vellum
Kneaded eraser
koh -i-noor drawing paper, colored pencil
Tombow mono eraser
Drawing fixative
Sennelier fixative for charcoal and pencil has a super fine spray mist, matte, high-quality
Gamvar varnish for oil paintings, satin
Brush for varnishing oil paintings
Color Wheel
Canson Colorline drawing paper is available in many colors and various thickness. You might find better choices at art supply online retailers
Molotow metallic marker, gold
How to color like an artist, coloring book for children and adults
The colored pencil manual, art instruction book

Stop creating ugly paintings: 4 color mixing tips in oil painting that work

Posted on May 4, 2021November 20, 2023 by veronica

I spent many years learning how to draw realistically and then how to use color in oil painting well. I’m not the best realist artist out there but I’m sharing what I’ve learned over the years to help you become a realist artist today. I must say that realist oil painting is a lot more challenging than drawing because color mixing in oil painting is not the same thing as shading in colored pencil or painting in watercolor. In drawing artists shade via subsequent layering to build up a range of values. In oil painting we have to “guess” correct color, value and color temperature in one stroke! What I’m sharing here has taken me years to learn. I spent thousands of dollars on classical painting education that was hard to come by two decades ago. We’re are lucky to have proper art education available today in a form of atelier schools and on-line classes.

How color mixing works

Artists have various approaches to color mixing in oil painting. Some paint in full color from the start, others work on detailed underpainting before moving to color. Some pre-mix colors, others don’t. There is no wrong or right way of doing it. The oil painting technique comes with experience and varies in accordance with the artist’s personality.

Over the years I learned different ways of oil painting and I usually use them in a combination. Color mixing is the hardest part to master in oil painting. Even when your drawing is pretty good, oil painting can still be a huge challenge because of a different approach to color mixing. That’s why even when you get the exact list of colors used in artist’s artwork, you can’t really re-create the same beautiful result you see on YouTube.

Artists have to match color, color temperature and value in one stroke as opposed to achieving the same result via layering in colored pencils or watercolor. Therefore, artists must have a system in place to make color-mixing easy.

contemporary realism art oil painting with starfish by veronica winters — contemporary realism still life painting with starfish, 16×20" oil on canvas, silver frame, available

#1 Do underpainting in one color first

Underpainting serves three purposes.

First, you establish your drawing on canvas. So it stays in place.
Second, you put warm color underneath your painting. This process gives you a nice, warm tone that interacts with your colors at a later stage.
Third, you establish basic pattern of light and shadow. It becomes a guide for your painting to control values.

Use warm brown underpainting

I use W&N artist’s oil color burnt sienna for underpainting in warm brown. Sometimes I add a touch of ivory black to darken the darkest areas in the painting. I keep everything rather transparent. Caravaggio used this oil painting technique in his art.

color mixing oil painting — Here I’ve done the underpainting in burnt sienna (warm brown) and began using full color palette to develop my painting further.

Use grey underpainting

Sometimes I underpaint my work in grays.

It’s a mix of 3/4 ivory black+1/4 warm brown with the increments of titanium white. (More on that below). This oil painting technique was used by many classically-trained artists including Ingres.

Use green underpainting

Some artists prefer the underpainting in dull green. White skin has a lot of green in it and this kind of underpainting becomes great to reveal cool shadows in the face, etc. There are many classical artists who used this oil painting technique. Beautiful, natural greens are Natural Pigments’ Antica Green Earth and Gamblin Terre Verte.

#2 Use your palette knife for color mixing in oil painting

#1 Use your palette knife, not the brush to mix the color strings. It’s the only way to mix large, clean batches of color.

#2 Use the palette knife to compare and to match the color you want to mix.

color mixing in oil painting veronica winters — To match the color perfectly you need to use your palette knife. Mix the color on your medium-toned palette, rotate the knife and place it next to your color source to see if you’ve matched the color. In this picture you can see me try to match the blue of this card.

#3 Pre-mix your main colors

I premix batches of color for large areas to have consistency and color unity throughout my oil painting. It could be separate batches of color for my background, for a dress and the skin tones.

I premix color strings for skin tones as well. Colors vary depending on my project.

#4 Use grays to neutralize chroma in color mixing

It’s rare to see vibrant (high-chroma) objects around you. In fact, realist artists show restraint in using bright color because only one or two hues should be dominant with the other hues supporting them. So most colors must be toned down to give the realistic effect. Beginner artists and art collectors tend to paint and to collect very bright art. True understanding and appreciation of color mixing mastery grows overtime. By looking at Sargent’s & Bouguereau’s work you can see how muted yet realistic their colors are.

Psyche abduct_By William-Adolphe Bouguereau — Psyche abduct, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

I use the grays to neutralize my tube colors.

how to make oil underpainting — The strip of grays represents the value scale. It’s mixed from 3/4 ivory black+1/4 warm brown with the increments of titanium white.

Chroma is the brightness of a color.

The easiest way to tone down bright colors is to use a slightly warm gray. It’s mixed from 3/4 ivory black+1/4 warm brown with the increments of titanium white. The strip of grays represents the value scale.

To keep color mixtures fresh for more than one day, I wrap them up in wax paper. Airtight oil paint stays fresh for 2+ days on average.

Color harmony in oil painting from art history

There are different approaches to color mixing in painting. The Impressionists painted without the use of black. Their paintings taught me to see colors in the shadows. The old masters painted with black to create strong contrast.

Color unity or color harmony are present in all classical paintings. You’ll find explanations of color harmonies in classical oil paintings in this article 5 Tips that’ll make you better at oil painting: https://veronicasart.com/5-tips-thatll-make-you-better-at-oil-painting/

Video explaining color mixing in oil painting:

Basic Art supplies:

Panels & canvas:

Ampersand gessobord: https://amzn.to/2WWioP1
Da Vinci pro Panels: https://amzn.to/36qrgQf
Jack Richeson panels: https://amzn.to/3gfk6CI
Sample wood panel without gesso: https://amzn.to/3re7q4g
Da Vinci pro panels, gessoed medium texture: https://amzn.to/2PE1NhO
Sample gessoed, wood panel: https://amzn.to/3e5dtnZ

Don’t buy the cheapest canvases at craft stores and online! Their gesso (white ground) is very low quality that affects everything from paint application to oil paint adherences to archival properties.

Mono eraser: https://amzn.to/3e6SHRw
Kneaded eraser: https://amzn.to/3gaZWtH
Oil paint: Gamblin intro set: https://amzn.to/2zt5gbd
Linseed oil: https://amzn.to/3ebrixQ or https://amzn.to/2LWkdoP
Varnish for oil and acrylic paintings only: https://amzn.to/3bUJ2fh
White transfer paper: https://amzn.to/3gAaPFo or https://amzn.to/2XMdBPg
Loew-Cornell C101-1 4-Piece Grey Transfer Paper https://amzn.to/2Zx3Wyv

Why do oil paintings crack?

Many famous artists – including da Vinci, Reynolds and Rothko–experimented with their art materials creating oil paintings. For this reason contemporary conservators study artists’ process to understand how they can fix the oil paintings using correct solvents, paints and varnishes.

The oil paint cracking depends on the artist’s process completing the work. Most artists (especially hobby painters) have no clue how the quality of art supplies affects their art long term. Of course, it doesn’t matter if you’re just learning, practicing and making sketches. But if the aim is to create museum-quality art, you must start thinking how you use your art materials. I think art collectors also need to be aware of these issues to ask artists the right questions. All of us buy art based on emotion and what we react to in the painting visually but if the art is really pricey it’s worth understanding why cracks appear in oil paintings because it can devalue your art collection or be difficult to fix the canvas in a few years.

White paint

Scientists at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute found that zinc white in oil paint creates permanent problems that lead to paint cracks and peel off of the paint. Many white colors have some zinc white in them that makes the pigment brittle with age.

Read labels carefully. It often says ‘Titanium dioxide (PW 6), zinc oxide (PW 4)’. Your titanium white oil paint should have PW6+linseed oil only. You’ll see that cheap paint is cheap for a reason – it has a lot of additives and PW4 mixed into it.

Mediums

All tubed oil paint has some oil mixed into the paint along with some additives to keep it fresh. Linseed oil is the most stable oil that is also used widely as paint medium by artists. It’s long-lasting and dries quite quickly. The disadvantage is that it may yellow over time.

Safflower oil, poppy oil, and walnut oil are less stable oils often used as vehicles that are mixed into the oil paint. Avoid using safflower oil. Walnut oil slows down the painting time and it doesn’t yellow. Consider using it instead of linseed oil if you’d like.

When there is a lot of medium mixed into the paint especially in the underpainting layers, cracks may appear after a while. Try to paint with the lead white and a small amount of linseed oil. Add a bit of the medium in the top layers of painting.

Layering of paint

If artist painted over the wet or semi-dry layer of oil paint, the lower layer didn’t have enough time to dry completely. It may cause cracking.

Surface

Oil paint doesn’t stick well to a very smooth surface and doesn’t form a permanent bond necessary to preserve the art well. Low-quality gesso (white ground you see on canvases and panels) doesn’t allow for proper adhering of paint. Cracks or flacking of paint may happen. Don’t paint on cheap canvases sold at craft stores. The quality of gesso and canvas is poor and the paint won’t adhere to the surface permanently.

realism oil painting of ocean sunset — Sunset, 36×48″ Complementary delivery in Naples area

Climate

If you live in a hot and humid climate like Florida, it’s very important not to adjust your thermostat changing temperature and humidity levels when you leave the house. Why? Because if you own original art on canvas the surface expands and contracts all the time straining the paint layers. This is one of the main reasons why you see cracks in the old master paintings…And those that keep up their shape were painted on wood panels…Know that panels provide a much better painting support and don’t warp or fluctuate as much as regular canvas does. It doesn’t mean that you’re doomed having art on canvas however.

Oil paint application over the acrylics

I came across a really useful article recently that explains what happens when you apply oil paint over the acrylics. It’s fairly known that if you underpaint in acrylic paint, you must wait for 3 days for acrylic paint to settle before working in oils. Even when acrylics are dry to the touch, they go through a molecular process of drying out called “coalescence”. When the acrylic paint dries out in 3+ days you can resume painting over it in oils. This is where new research comes in handy.

In this new article https://justpaint.org/revising-our-recommendations-for-using-oils-over-acrylics/ Greg Watson states that the painting support doesn’t play the major role leading to oil paint cracking, rather it’s the application of oil paint itself. “In testing if cracking happens, it happens during the early stages of drying – as the paint transitions from being wet to touch dry. Fast-drying colors like Mars Yellow or colors that are susceptible to this type of cracking like Ultramarine Blue, may develop hairline cracks within a day or two. Slower drying colors can take weeks or even a month to show any issues, if ever. It appears this cracking does not develop further once the color is fully touch dry.”

Also “cracking is mostly happening in oil paint or oil ground with no oil or solvent added, applied directly out of the tube or container over the acrylic surfaces. These oil applications are roughly between .05mm and .25mm, which is the thickness of 1-5 sheets of office paper. Layers that are thinner or thicker do not seem to crack. Glossy acrylic mediums and gels are associated with the most cracking in lean oil layers applied on top.”

elizabeth le brun-madame daguesseau de fresnes-closeup detail-1789-veronica winters art blog

Prevention

So use three layers of gesso to paint with oils or acrylics. If you oil paint over acrylics, wait for 3 days to do so, then use the oil painting medium ( linseed oil) to dilute the oil paint some. And don’t paint over glossy acrylic mediums/ products! The oil paint doesn’t stick to the surfaces that are too smooth or glossy.

1. Frame art with real wood frames that provide lots of support. Use cross braces if oil paintings are large to prevent twisting and warping of stretcher bars.

2. Keep your room temperature & humidity levels stable.

3. Avoid strong, direct light or sunlight. Oil paintings may fade, especially if they were painted with cheap oil paints.

4. Panels provide a much better support than canvas. Aluminum, wood panels, copper panels, etc.

5. Ask the art dealer, gallery owner or artist how art has been kept before you take possession of it. Inspect the art yourself looking at the back of canvas as well as at the front. If canvas has small holes they could be fixed by gluing a piece of canvas on the back.

6. One more thing, don’t hang original art in bathrooms. Moisture, temperature and high humidity may change in these rooms several times a day as you take a shower or bath leading to fast deterioration of oil paintings.

Art collecting is a lot of fun. Just be aware of the problems that could arise with paintings and make informed decisions buying oil paintings. Are you a collector of art? Share your experiences: nika@veronicasart.com

Check out visionary art for sale

To read more:

What is lightfastness of oil paint? 4-step guide

https://veronicasart.com/fixatives-varnishes-what-you-need-to-know-to-preserve-your-art/

ow to use graphite transfer paper for drawing and painting

How to use graphite transfer paper to trace your outlines in drawing and painting

Posted on July 13, 2020November 16, 2023 by veronica

Most realist artists use this drawing technique to have a perfect and clean outline drawing. There are several old-fashioned ways of image transfer like the oil transfer, charcoal powder transfer, etc. I find that using graphite transfer paper is the most efficient way of transferring your designs on paper and canvas. The image looks clean and clear.

You must have perfect outlines to begin drawing realistically. When your drawing is complex, it requires sketching, erasing, and sketching again. It ruins the paper’s surface that must stay nice and clean for even shading in graphite or colored pencil. That’s why I often sketch my idea on a separate piece of paper that matches my canvas (or drawing) size to transfer these outlines onto my drawing paper. This image transfer technique was called “cartoon drawings” by the old masters. Classical painters spent weeks doing studies and drawings before transferring them onto panels and canvases.

How to use transfer paper to trace your outline drawing

You need the graphite transfer paper for precise tracing of your lineart or cartoon drawing. If your art is very complex and you wish to keep the working surface clean, use this technique for your advantage.

Graphite Transfer paper brands and features

Saral Graphite Transfer Paper

Comes in 5 colors! Blue, yellow, graphite, white red
Saral transfer rolls are wax-less, non-toxic, and do not contain acid. The paper allows you to transfer your design from a sketch, pattern, template or by hand to almost any surface. May be used with acetate overlays, plastics and enamel, metal, cloth, wood, fabric, ceramic, canvas, stained glass, tole paintings, architectural work, scrapbooking, watercolor, fine art, and more.
Shows up equally well on light or dark surfaces.
12 inch x 12 foot roll; comes in a roll (similar to a wax paper roll).

Loew-Cornell Black and White Graphite Transfer Papers

Waxless, greaseless, smudge proof, erasable
Doesn’t bleed through paint, and it doesn’t smear.
Works for drawing and painting but not recommended for fabric and porous surfaces
Ideal for large projects due to its size. You can also cut it for smaller projects.
Reusable! I’ve been using my two sheets of graphite paper for years, and it still works fine!
Comes in as a single, large folded sheet of paper in one package. You need to buy two packages to have different colors. Package of 4 Sheets— Each sheet measures 9″ × 13″ | Single Sheet Package — One 18″ × 36″ sheet

Royal & Langnickel® White Graphite Transfer Paper

It doesn’t smear, having no wax or grease
Comes in one 18 x 36 inch sheet of white graphite paper per package.
Erases similar to a pencil and is very similar to the Loew-Cornell transfer papers.

How to use transfer paper in your art projects

I sketch out my drawing on a sketch paper and then transfer these outlines onto drawing paper using an HB graphite pencil or a ballpoint pen. You can replace the pen or pencil with a stylus if you want to preserve your original reference sketch/photo for future projects. Check out the Soft-Grip Embossing & Stylus Set Complete by Royal & Langnickel (3 Pack) for that.

Is it cheating?

A lot of artists, especially beginners skip the sketching step, transferring the image direct from a photo onto the drawing paper. While it’s totally possible, beware that many pictures have lens distortion that’s especially noticeable in anatomy and photos with linear perspective like cityscapes. So you end up transferring the distortion into your art.

Also, you don’t learn basic drawing skills by simply transferring the image and not learning how to sketch it freehand. However, if your drawing skills are good, this drawing technique is very helpful speeding up the entire process.

Pick the right color of the transfer paper for your project

Basic steps in scratchboard art. In the first image you can see the use of white transfer paper on 5×7″ scratchboard. You can read about the scratchboard art here: https://veronicasart.com/how-to-start-scratchboard-art-tools-techniques-tips-to-make-fur-texture/

For transferring designs to both white and dark paper white transfer paper is ideal. Also, use the white or yellow transfer paper for your watercolor painting. Black transfer paper’s line doesn’t erase completely and is not suitable for watercolor painting!

Use black transfer paper with caution in your colored pencil drawing as well. I mostly use this black transfer paper for tracing my designs onto canvas/panels, and I often use white transfer paper for my colored pencil drawing, especially when I draw on colored paper because these white outlines show up well and blend with my subsequent shading. White graphite line will show up even on white paper, but you’ll have to observe your lines at a specific angle. I also love to use white graphite transfer paper to transfer my designs working on scratchboard art because the surface must be very clean!

To buy the graphite paper

Amazon
JerrysArtarama
DickBlick
Michael’s & other craft stores

Video courses

If you draw in colored pencil, I invite you to watch FREE previews of some of my lessons in my course titled “Veronica Winters complete colored pencil techniques in 90 days.”

https://veronica-winters-art-school.teachable.com/ Watch video lessons previews FREE!

5 Tips that’ll make you better at oil painting

Posted on September 23, 2019November 14, 2023 by veronica

#1 Think of your idea & design

Idea, color, and design are three main variables of every painting I create. I sketch a lot and play with images in Photoshop to come up with my imagery. Nowadays I find that I’m more efficient when I use Photoshop to cut, paste and combine images to create a visual story that has visual balance, color and clarity.

As for images, I mostly use my references. As I travel, I collect my visual inspiration and organize them on folders on my computer. However sometimes I find a specific model/ picture on a copyright free sites- Pixabay, Unsplash. Freepick has beautiful images too. These are great free resources for artists! For example, I don’t do underwater photography and I can find the right reference there. So if you need pictures for reference or drawing, you may find lots of inspiration there.

#2 Study the anatomy daily

When I began my artistic journey two decades ago I thought I would never paint people. I sucked at it!!! I used to draw stick figures. Over the years I took more figure drawing classes than many of my peers in college. When I was in class, I saw how talented some students were and the only way for me to catch up was to double down on drawing the figure from life. I miss my studio time in New York. It was liberating and fun. A lot of learning happened there. I must say no art class can replace practice. Being alone in your studio painting for weeks, months, years is necessary to develop a unique voice.

Aphrodite, basic proportions of the female (and male) head

When you draw people, line up all the facial features, preserving proportions. This image shows you how to divide the face. It also shows how the eyes, nose, lips and eyebrows move because of the head’s tilt and rotation. You must keep checking the line up as you paint at all times. As the face turns, we see foreshortening of some features but the line up remains the same. One eye can’t end up on the forehead (move higher or lower) because of the rotation. I use my brush’s handle to check the line up when I paint.

oil painting techniques painting face — Here I check the line up of the eyes as I begin painting the face.

#3 Understand how color mixing works

Color is like a thread that holds all elements together to reveal beauty in art. I used to be a very chaotic painter with somewhat intuitive understanding of color and its importance in art…

I think of my color scheme before I begin painting. It helps me create visual unity in the end. However, I also allow myself to deviate from the plan if I see it’s working in a new way. Sometimes I repaint the entire painting like that, and other times I just follow the reference photo 100 percent. My understanding of color and color harmony keeps evolving year after year. I discover fresh color combinations by extrapolating and simplifying the information I see in front of me.

Study art history to create beautiful contemporary art

I often study paintings created before and during the 19th-century to understand the use of color harmony by great artists. There are different approaches to color mixing in oil painting.

The_Inspiration_of_Saint_Matthew_by_Caravaggio By Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/caravaggio/matthew.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=136502

The old masters painted with black and browns for the most part, placing one strong color front and center to make a statement. Notice how red fabric revolves around the figure moving us around the painting in a spiral. In this painting by Caravaggio you can see that he creates strong contrast. White and red appear much stronger due to value and color contrast made with brown-black.

Diego_Rodriguez_de_Silva_y_Velázquez_-_Infanta_Margarita_Teresa_in_a_Blue_Dress s d — Velázquez, Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress | Here the leading color us blue…

I don’t know how Velasquez or Caravaggio would have worked without the use of black. Their high-contrast paintings taught me to focus on placement of shadows, not the details. I also learned to have have 1-2 “leading” colors muting the rest of them with the use of greys and browns.

woman holding a balance Johannes Vermeer, 1664 — Woman holding a balance Johannes Vermeer, 1664

Both Vermeer and Ingres had subtle, controlled palettes that revealed beauty through color unity and softness. Vermeer painted cool light coming from a single window illuminating the figure. His figures are not illuminated by the candle light, rather they bath in natural light.

Kramskoy_forest ranger close up , russian painting — Kramskoy, forest ranger close up | 19th century Russian art | This is one of the greatest Russian artists who painted life-like portraits of common folk. Here we focus on intense gaze of the man because his face has a lot of detail, light and color while the rest of the painting has soft edges and muted background.

ClaudeMonet-The-Houses-of-Parliament-at-Sunset-1903

The Impressionists painted without the use of black. Their paintings taught me to see color in shadows. Blues and purples in the afternoon shadows… Greens in the face…

mary cassatt — Sleepy baby, pastels, 1910 by Mary Cassatt. I like the energetic strokes in this painting and layering of colors.

Godward, lady in purple — Godward, Lady in purple

Painted by John William Godward, this painting is a great example of artistic excellence that shows us how the artist controls his color palette skillfully. Beautiful purples of the dress harmonize with the model’s scarf and flowers, blooming behind her. Her blue sash harmonizes perfectly with the color of the sea and the sky. White marble creates contrast and separates the figure from the background. Placed at a diagonal, a dark fan harmonizes with the woman’s large pillow set behind her.
The diagonals of her legs, torso and arms create a subtle movement inside the picture that lets us travel across the painting. Every element is in such balance and relationship to one another that we perceive it as an absolutely beautiful painting, admiring the realistic details we can all see. Such beautiful realistic paintings set a very high bar for any contemporary realist artist to live up to.

Color mixing in contemporary art painting

Color mixing is the hardest part to master in oil painting, in my opinion. Even when your drawing is pretty good, oil painting can still be a huge challenge because of a different approach to color mixing. That’s why even when you get the exact list of colors used in artist’s artwork, you can’t really re-create the same beautiful result you see on YouTube on in art museum.

Artists have various approaches to color mixing. Some paint in full color from the start, others work on detailed underpainting before moving to color. Some pre-mix colors, others prefer using tube colors. There is no wrong or right approach. The oil painting technique comes with experience and varies in accordance with artist’s personality.

Over the years I learned different ways of painting and I use them in a combination. I suggest learning from several artists that you admire by taking their workshops, classes or online courses. And then practice, practice, practice!

Oil painting in full color is much harder than drawing. Why? Because artists have to match color, color temperature and value in one stroke as opposed to achieving the same result via layering in colored pencils or watercolor. Therefore, we must have a system in place to make these decisions consistently as we paint.

Drawing in colored pencil leads to color vibrancy naturally because colored pencils don’t mix to gray. However, oil painting is a lot more complicated because the artist needs to give “light” to the paint. A few pure colors become beautiful by juxtaposing them with grays and neutrals, not by painting everything screaming bright with out-of-the-tube colors. This took me years to grasp!

1. To organize myself, I often paint in full color over the underpainting. Underpainting is like a good set up to establish line drawing and contrast.

2. I premix batches of color for large areas to have consistency and color unity throughout my painting.

The strip of grays represents the value scale. It’s mixed from 3/4 ivory black+1/4 warm brown with the increments of titanium white. I use the grays to neutralize my tube colors! It’s rare to see vibrant (high-chroma) objects. So most colors must be toned down to give realistic effect.

3. I premix color strings for skin tones as well. Colors vary depending on my project.

4. I use few colors to achieve colorful result. Less is more in oil painting. So, I know what color mixes I get by mixing them with each other daily. I used to keep color strings to remember my results. Now it’s intuitive based on my experience.

5. Use your palette knife, not the brush to mix the color strings. It’s the only way to mix large, clean batches of color.

6. To keep color mixtures fresh for more than one day, I wrap them up in wax paper. Airtight oil paint stays fresh for 3+ days on average.

Glazing is one of the old masters techniques when artists glaze transparent colors over the refined underpainting to build up hues in progression. One area can be glazed several times to increase depth and to enrich colors. Artists wipe off the extra paint to increase transparency and even application. Glazing darkens the surface, so artists must think of the end result in advance of using this technique. I show this oil painting technique in detail in my online class. Click on the link to see a preview.

7. I step back from my painting often to see major shapes and contrast as opposed to focusing on details.

8. I use a wide, soft brush to blend the strokes in the end of every painting session.

#4 Use good brushes

If you’ve tried painting, you know how hard it is to find a good set of brushes. Many of them are flimsy or too soft to spread the paint around. Or they shed hairs like a cat.🐈 Others don’t keep the fine point necessary to paint the details. I went through so many brushes trying to find something that really works for oil painting. You have no idea!

1. Use stiffer, synthetic brushes for your underpainting because the first layer doesn’t go smoothly and can be spread out with a bit of a solvent (Gamsol), not the medium. Both the solvent and textured canvas surface wear out fine brushes super quickly!

2. When you layer oil paint over the underpainting, it layers smoother but still needs just a bit of medium to have the flow. This is the stage when having good brushes is critical to painting subtle transitions and details. Here are a few cheap buys that work. I find that Simply Simmons brushes are cheap but durable and have a good spring to them for painting. For detailed work I really like Ebony Splendor by Creative Mark. This brand has a variety of small brushes. Rosemary brushes are fabulous. Also I find that painting on large canvas is much easier with W&N Galeria brushes.

3. I find that the length of the brush handle makes no difference in painting. In fact, if you do detailed work, you want to minimize your hand’s movement to remain precise. I don’t see how long handles help artists with that.

4. I keep a wide, super soft brush (3/4 or 1″) for blending large areas to soften everything before I quit painting for a day. It doesn’t matter what brand it is as long as it’s soft like watercolor brushes are.

5. It’s important to take care of your brushes to make them last. I’ve noticed that solvents tear them down quite quickly. That’s why I take the paint off with a paper towel and then use a soap bar to clean them after every painting session.

#5 Be kind to yourself

If you’re like me, I’m very hard on myself doing, well, anything. I try to do my best and if it doesn’t come out any good, I often feel devastated. By being aware of this problem, I try to refocus and see what I actually did right. I also enjoy the very act of painting. Every painting makes me one step closer to my goal. I’m lucky I can paint and it makes me feel grateful that I have this opportunity. What about you?

Basic Art supplies:

Transfer paper:

Loew-Cornell C101-1 4-Piece Grey Transfer Paper https://amzn.to/2Zx3Wyv

White transfer paper: https://amzn.to/3gAaPFo or https://amzn.to/2XMdBPg

Panels: Ampersand gessobord: https://amzn.to/2WWioP1

Da Vinci pro Panels: https://amzn.to/36qrgQf

Jack Richeson panels: https://amzn.to/3gfk6CI

Mono eraser: https://amzn.to/3e6SHRw
Kneaded eraser: https://amzn.to/3gaZWtH
Don’t buy the cheapest canvases! Their gesso is (white ground) is very low quality that affects everything from paint application to oil paint adherences to archival properties. Affordable, good canvas: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-9265447-13717235?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dickblick.com%2Fproducts%2Ffredrix-gallerywrap-cotton-canvas%2F%3FclickTracking%3Dtrue%26wmcp%3Dpla%26wmcid%3Ditems%26wmckw%3D07106-1002&cjsku=07106-1002
Oil paint: Gamblin intro set: https://amzn.to/2zt5gbd

Linseed oil: https://amzn.to/3ebrixQ or https://amzn.to/2LWkdoP

Varnish for oil and acrylic paintings only: https://amzn.to/3bUJ2fh

Messenger, colored pencil drawing with glitter and resin, 16×20 inches, a close-up

If you find this article helpful, forward it to a friend. thank you! 🙂

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How to paint realistic still life step by step: oil painting techniques tutorial

Posted on October 14, 2015November 3, 2023 by veronica

6 steps to learn realist oil painting techniques

If your goal is to learn realist oil painting techniques, you have to paint from life. For that artists set up a still life of various objects under controlled light in front of their easel. The artist studies the light and shade by developing a complete drawing and then transfers the outlines onto a canvas or panel to paint. Because it’s a controlled set up, the light remains unchanged and the artist can work on his/her painting almost indefinitely.

1. Draw from life

If you want to become a realist artist, please draw from life as much as possible. You can’t skip this step! Numerous problems can be resolved by learning to see the shapes and proportions, by designing compositions, and by shading your objects from life. Later you can partially substitute life drawing for painting from your pictures. Just be aware that pictures distort reality. We respond to the information in front of us very differently when we paint from life.

2. Make a shadow box

To set up a still life, make a shadow-box out of black foam board (see the pic above). The color of your background can be changed at any time by placing some fabric, colored carton, or any other colored paper you like to paint as your background color. The size of the shadow box can be changed as well, depending on your space and the size of your still life.

Put a direct light source-the lamp next to the shadow-box ( it’s located to the left here), and play with the light, looking at changes in the cast shadows and highlights on objects. It’s much easier to paint objects with dramatic light as opposed to even, diffused light. While the diffused light can bring a different mood with soft and subtle shadows creating peaceful atmosphere, it’s much harder to control and paint these subtle shifts in color and tone for beginners.

If you have no time to build the shadow box because you itch to draw and paint now, make a set up with a simplified background space that cuts off all the unnecessary information behind your still life. In the photo below you see a small box placed behind the starfish that’s covered with some fabric.

3. Make a preliminary sketch

It’s much easier to begin painting when the artist has done the prep work. Work out the outlines on a piece of sketch paper of the same size as your canvas. When the outline looks correct, transfer it onto canvas using either white or black transfer paper with a pen (image 2 & 3).

4. Create the underpainting (indirect painting)

The strip of grays represents the value scale. It’s mixed from 3/4 ivory black+1/4 warm brown with equal increments of titanium white.

After you have transferred your drawing, check for mistakes one more time. Fix them in 2H graphite pencil. Now you’re ready to paint.

Indirect painting means creating an underpainting in one color first and then layering paint in color. The underpainting can be done in black-and-white called grisaille, in green tones or in warm browns. Here I'm showing you the grisaille method of painting. The grisaille method is useful for still life painting and although many old masters painted the figures the same way, I find the gray underpainting to be too cold for the depiction of skin tones. I have a YouTube video titled "keeper" that shows this method of painting in greater detail.

Mix the value scale (titanium white or lead white+ ivory black+ a touch of brown to warm up the black) with a palette knife. No color is added at this point. Begin painting your objects using the grays. Focus on shadows and paint them first, then create transitional values leading to the lights. By painting in grays you focus on tones/values as opposed to color. As each color has its own value scale, you train yourself to convert the colors into the tones. This is not easy to grasp and requires practice.

Let your first layer dry. Complete the second pass of black-and-white painting, refining edges and tones.

5. Paint in full color

Paint in color by glazing and layering paint over the grisaille layers. I usually have 2-3 color layers in my painting. I finish up by adding texture in my last, top layer.

6. Varnish

After the gazillion of hours spent on my painting, it’s finished! I let it dry for 6-12 months before varnishing the oil painting.

Interested to learn more?

If you’re interested to learn more about the indirect method of painting step by step, glazing and color layering, you can watch my video course I recorded a decade ago that shows these concepts and a lot more!

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What is lightfastness of oil paint? 4-step guide

Posted on October 10, 2015November 3, 2023 by veronica

While I’m not an expert in art conservation, I am a full-time artist. After years of painting, conversations with other professionals and some research, I can guide you in choosing your oil paints for your art. Feel free to research this topic further via my references at the bottom of this post or by contacting the products’ manufacturers. A lot of information listed here is coming from podcasts with the Natural Pigments’ director George O’Hanlon.

Picking the right brand of oil paint can be a challenge. Some brands are promoted so heavily by the art supply companies that artists buy their paints without having a second thought. When I was a student, the quality of paint hardly ever mattered to me and my most common determinant was the price. Today as I take care of my art my buying choices are strongly influenced by the overall quality and lightfastness of oil paint.

There are several important properties of oil paint artists should pay attention to. The most necessary information can be seen written right on a tube of paint. Don’t buy the paint that doesn’t have the following data printed on it.

1. Transparency vs. opaqueness of oil paint

While some oil colors are transparent, others are opaque or semi-opaque. If you see an empty square, or a half-empty one, or a filled square on the back cover of oil paint, it gives you information about the transparency of oil paint. Some brands just say “Transparent” or “Semi-opaque” as opposed to assigning a specific symbol to it. So when I chose my paint for glazing, applying the transparent layers of paint, I look at the square/ or a note on transparency to determine if my paint is naturally good for glazing. Some transparent colors are Gamblin’s ultramarine blue, Michael Harding’s bright yellow lake. The transparent colors look almost glass-like when mixed with linseed oil.

Opaque or semi-opaque colors are often good for scumbling, layering light opaque paint over the dark area.

2. Pigments used in oil paint determine the lightfastness (resistance to light) and longevity of your art.

This is the most important principle in choosing your paint. The pigments used in oil paint are described in letters and numbers. For example, PB15-phtylocianine blue is rated lightfastness I. PW1-lead white is lightfastness I. PR2-Napthol red G- lightfastness II, etc.

While some basic colors have just one pigment, there are many colors that consist of several pigments mixed together along with oil, fillers, and binders. These “new,” not historical colors give artists a lot more color choices, but every pigment present in such paint tube should be checked for lighfastness separately. For example, Winton flesh tint has 4 pigments in it (PW6, PW5, PY42, and PV19).

Here is extensive pigment information database that lists oil paint properties including the lightfastness of paints: http://www.artiscreation.com/

Each company performs its own tests. This information is written on the tube, and it reads either as +, ++ or +++, or lightfastness I, lightfastness II, or lightfastness III and so on. The higher the number (3-4) the less lightfast the paint is.

By nature, browns and ochres are often more lightfast than some funky colors, like alizarin crimson or turquoise. Those colors that have lightfastness 3-4 are fugitive and fade pretty quickly. If you paint professionally, those colors should be avoided.

Artists can perform their own tests by exposing 1/2 of paint to the sun (while the other half is covered by black tape or cardboard). Lift the tape in a month of continuous light exposure to see the change in color. Artist Virgil Elliott has tested numerous colors of various brands. You’ll find a lot of useful information on painting in his book Traditional oil painting and in his facebook group.

3. Type of oil mixed into the paint.

All tubed paints have some oil mixed into the paint. Linseed oil is the most stable oil that is also used widely as paint medium by artists. It’s long-lasting and dries quite quickly.

Safflower oil, poppy oil, and walnut oil are less stable oils often used as vehicles that are mixed into the oil paint. Avoid using safflower oil.

4. The amount of fillers and binders added to oil paint.

Various amounts of fillers and binders are mixed into the oils as well. They dilute the pigment by “stretching” the paint, making it cheaper to the consumer. Such pigments have a much longer shelf life. Fillers and binders greatly affect the consistency and texture of paint. It could affect the drying speed of paint as well.

Rublev colors, manufactured by Natural Pigments, don’t have any fillers in their paint, making the oils more stable and with high tinting strength. Like other professional-grade paints, they give artists a lot more pigment in a small tube as opposed to cheaper oil paint put in a large tube. But because NP have no extra binders, their shelf life is very limited and it’s best to use the paint within a year. I could barely squish the paint out of the tube after that.

Professional brands of oil paints include:

Rublev colors by Natural Pigments
Old Holland
Michael Harding
Gamblin
Chroma
Utrecht
dardecor (Spain)

These are great resources for further research:

The atelier movement– a closed group on Facebook-exists for artists interested in classical painting. The group’s administrator is classically trained artist-Graydon Parrish.
Artist Virgil Elliot: http://virgilelliott.com/
Douglas Flynt’ blog
“The artist’s handbook of materials & techniques” by Ralph Mayer: http://www.amazon.com/The-Artists-Handbook-Materials-Techniques/dp/0670837016
Sadie Valerie blog: http://www.sadievaleri.com/blog/
The Natural Pigments website: https://www.naturalpigments.com/art-supply-education/painting-for-posterity-with-modern-oil-paints/

Check out my oil painting video class that teaches classical oil painting techniques! I recorded it a decade ago but the rules are still the same.
https://veronica-winters-art-school.teachable.com/p/realist-oil-painting-techniques-secrets-for-serious-beginners-beyond

Listen to this video while you paint! The owners explain a lot about the properties of oil paint and the old masters techniques.

Free downloads

4 reasons to stop painting on cheap canvases from Michael’s, Hobby Lobby, Lowes & alike.

Affordable alternatives: paint on these high-quality panels instead

Paint on panels:

Paint on canvas:

Some art supplies available on Amazon:

Painting brushes differ in size, shape, and type of bristles

Size

Shape

How to pick a perfect brush for oil & acrylic painting

Types of brushes

First layer of painting: the bristle brushes

Second layer of painting: the synthetic brushes

Third layer of painting: synthetic and sable brushes

What about the brush handle?

How to clean the oil painting brushes

Technical reasons why Mona Lisa is still here

Mona Lisa in the Louvre

11 Classical Oil painting techniques rules

1. Invest in quality art supplies & understand their properties

Oil Paint

Panels & canvases

Brushes & mediums

Varnishes & palettes

2. Paint everything from life!

3. Precise prep drawing is a must to create realistic oil paintings

4. Direct vs. Indirect painting

Direct oil painting technique

Indirect oil painting technique

5. Combining the effects: sfumato, glazing & scumbling

What is a grid method in art?

How to use grids in art

Is grid art cheating?

Who invented the grid method in art?

Grids in Art History

What artists used grid method?

Art supplies:

What’s the difference between varnishes and fixatives?

3 reasons to varnish your art

How to varnish your colored pencil drawings, pencil and charcoal drawings, pastels and other dry media art

How to varnish pastels & charcoal drawings

How to store drawings and art on paper

Safe alternatives to traditional fixatives

How to varnish oil paintings

How to varnish acrylic paintings

References & resources:

Amazon links to art supplies I use the most often:

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5 tips to catch your drawing mistakes:

#1 Turn your canvas, paper or any other surface you’re using upside down.

#2 If you paint digitally, flip your canvas horizontally often.

#3 Check the accuracy of your drawing in a mirror.

#4 Step back to look at your drawing from the distance.

#5 Take a picture of your art in progress.

Check out my video art courses here: https://veronica-winters-art-school.teachable.com/

Art supplies on Amazon:

How color mixing works

#1 Do underpainting in one color first

Use warm brown underpainting

Use grey underpainting

Use green underpainting

#2 Use your palette knife for color mixing in oil painting

#3 Pre-mix your main colors

#4 Use grays to neutralize chroma in color mixing

Color harmony in oil painting from art history

Video explaining color mixing in oil painting:

Basic Art supplies:

Other helpful articles about oil painting techniques:

Why do oil paintings crack?

White paint

Mediums

Layering of paint

Surface

Climate

Oil paint application over the acrylics

Prevention

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To read more:

How to use transfer paper to trace your outline drawing

Graphite Transfer paper brands and features

Saral Graphite Transfer Paper