Oil Painting Project: A Study Trying Different Strokes
Oil Painting Project: A Study Trying Different Strokes
The project in this section allows you to try as many of the fancy ways of putting paint on a canvas as possible. The best way to try various brushstrokes and glazing methods is to work on an old painting. By now, you probably have a canvas that didn't turn out well maybe an abandoned first effort, or a painting that you completed but just isn't strong. Be sure that the canvas is completely dry. It can't be tacky or even a bit soft. The experiments that you're going to do can soften the old paint up again and interfere with your tests.
1. Assess the overall painting. In our example, the underpainting on most parts of the canvas is good, but the lower portion is completely bare and the color is inconsistent in the sky. The image is good, and nothing needs to be corrected in the drawing, so we started the painting from this point. If your drawing or image needs to be corrected, you can go ahead and start the project anyway and make the changes in the drawing or image as you go. This is a great project to try to save an otherwise discarded painting.
2. Start your painting by adding color to areas that need a change or an additional layer of color. In our example, we started the painting by adding a new layer of pale blue to the sky and parts of the water. We thinned the light blue with a painting medium to allow the underpainting to show through in places. We also painted over the water with a glaze of Prussian blue, viridian, and cobalt blue. For the reflection of the green hill in the middle of the painting, we used a glaze of viridian and Prussian blue to paint over that area of the lake. In your painting you may want to start with an area of color that you can adjust in a similar manner, such as a background in a still life.
3. Find an appropriate place in your painting to practice flat, horizontal brushstrokes. When you're painting anything that lies on the face of the earth, such as water or roads, try these flat, horizontal brushstrokes. They make the surface lie down and look believable. We applied the brushstrokes for the water in strokes parallel to the horizon. This can also work for the flat surface of a table in a still life. You can also add other types of brushstrokes if you don't have something flat in your painting. For example, you can enhance the appearance of the leaves of a tree or flower by adding spots and dashes of color to improve the look of the texture of the form.
4. Practice the scumble technique. We applied a scumble to the face of the dune. For the sand, we mixed together raw sienna, burnt umber, and white. The color was too vivid, so we grayed it down a touch with some purple that was left over from a previous painting. We applied the scumbling and then scraped it off with a palette knife to give the sand dune its distinctive texture.
5. Practice dry brush techniques. For this layer, we started with the same paint we used for the scumbling in Step 4. For the dry brush techniques, we added more white to this sand color, and we applied it to the sand dune using a dry brush.
6. Hold the brush loosely to achieve a natural look. We made the tree at the top left of our painting by using a small round brush that we twisted between our fingers to make the limbs and leaves appear random. When you're painting something natural, making it look like it grew in a normal way can be difficult. The more you try to get it right, the more control you exert, and the tree ends up looking fake. By holding the brush loosely and slightly twisting it in your fingers, you have the least control, and your form has a more natural look.
7. Dry some paint, transfer it back to your palette, and apply the stiff paint to your painting with a palette knife. We made the dark green in the foreground with burnt umber, viridian, Prussian blue, and a little cadmium yellow light. We put this paint on a piece of drawing paper (computer paper works too) and let it dry for two hours. Then we transferred it back to the palette and used it to paint the dark green juniper shrubs. We scratched some of it away using the sgraffito method. We applied the rest of the texture with a combination of dry brush and sgrafitto and then blended a bit with a dry brush.
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