Artists’ oil colours are created by combining dry powder pigments with special refined linseed oil until the mixture reaches a stiff paste consistency then grinding it by strong friction in steel roller mills. The smoothness of the hue is important. The usual feel is a smooth, buttery paste, and not stringy or long or tacky. When a flowing or mobile aspect is needed by the artist, a liquid painting medium such as pure gum turpentine needs to be mixed with the mixture. If the artist needs to expediate drying, a siccative, or liquid drier, is generally used.
Top-class brushes are produced in two types: red sable (using numerous members of weasel) and whitened hog bristles. Both can be purchased in numbered sizes for each of four regular shapes: round (pointed), flat, bright (flat shape but shorter and less supple), and oval (flat but bluntly pointed). Red sable brushes are widely chosen for smoother, detailed kind of technique. The painting knife, a declicately tempered, limber version of an artist’s palette knife, is a convenient utensil for applying oil colours in a robust way.
The standard support for oil painting is a canvas made of pure European linen of sturdy close weave. A canvas is cut to the necessary size and stretched over a frame, commonly wooden, and secured by use of tacks or, since the 20th century, by use of staples. If the artist wants to reduce the absorbency of the canvas itself and create a glossy surface, a primer or ground can be applied and is allowed to dry before painting begins. The most usually utilised primers for this are gesso, rabbit-skin glue, and lead white. If stiffness and smoothness are preferred rather than elasticity and texture, a wooden or processed paperboard panel, sized or primed, will be employed. Many other supports, for example paper and various textiles and metals, have been tried out.
A finish of varnish is often set on to a finished oil painting to protect it and prevent atmospheric attacks, minor abrasions, or an harmful accumulation of dirt. This painting varnish might be taken off safely by experts with isopropyl alcohol and other such household solvents. The varnish also brings the surface to a uniform lustre and takes the depth of tone and colour intensity basically to the look initially created by the artist in wet paint. Some painters today, particularly those who don’t favour deep, intense colouring, and stay with a mat, or lustreless, finish in their oil paintings.
The majority of oil paintings made before the 19th century were created in layers. The first would be a blank, uniform field of thin paint called a ground. The ground lessened the white gleam of the primer and allowed a gentle colour on which to start painting. The shapes and objects in the painting were then roughly blocked in with shades of white, as well as gray or neutral green, red, or brown. The eventuating mass of monochromatic light and dark were called the underpainting. Forms could then be defined using either the paint or scumbles, which are non-uniform, thinly applied layers of opaque pigment that displaying a whole lot of effects. For the completion point, transparent layers of pure colour known as glazes were then used to cast luminosity, depth, and brilliance to the forms, and highlights would be effected with thick, textured patches of paint called impastos.
Oil as a painting medium is chronologised as early as the 11th century. The technique of easel painting with oil colours, however, came directly from 15th-century tempera-painting styles. Basic improvements in the refining of linseed oil and the availability of volatile solvents from 1400 coincided with a desire for a medium other than pure egg-yolk tempera, to meet the contemporary desires of the Renaissance (see tempera painting). Originally, oil paints and varnishes were employed to glaze tempera panels that were painted from the common linear draftsmanship. The technically gleaming, crystal-like works by the 15th-century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck, for example, were done in this new way.
Throughout the 16th century, oil paint became established as the basic painting material in Venice. From then, Venetian painters were proficient in the use of the essential traits of oil painting, especially in their application of successive layers of glaze. Canvas of linen, after a long era of growth, replaced wood panelling as the most commonly used support.
One of the 17th-century masters of the oil technique was Velazquez, a Spanish painter in the Venetian tradition, whose remarkably economical but certain brushstrokes have commonly been emulated, especially in portraiture. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens challenged the norm in the method in which he loaded his light colours opaquely, juxtaposing his thin, transparent darks and shadows. The third remarkable 17th-century master of oil painting was the Dutch painter Rembrandt. In his artworks, a single brushstroke could effectively depict form; cumulative strokes give great textural depth, with a combination of the rough and the smooth, the thick and the thin. A system of loaded whites and transparent darks is finally enhanced by glazed effects, blendings, and highly controlled impastos.
Other basic influences on easel painting techniques are the smooth, thinly painted, deliberately planned, tight styles of painting. A great many admired works (e.g., those from Johannes Vermeer) were completed with smooth gradations and blends of shades to cast subtle forms and delicate colour variations.
The technical requirements of some schools of modern painting cannot be achieved by use of traditional genres and techniques, however, and many abstract painters – and to some extent contemporary painters in traditional styles – have demonstrated a desire for a totally different plastic flow or viscosity that cannot be had in oil paint and its conventional additives. Some need a wider variety of thick and thin applications and a more rapid rate of drying. Some have mixed coarsely grained substances with the colours to create texture, some have applied oil paints in much greater thickness than traditionally, and many have started using acrylic paints, because they are more versatile and dry quickly.
Interested in oil painting? For art supplies Brisbane, including canvas art supplies and artists supplies, visit or call the Discount Art Warehouse.