Everyone has seen an oil painting, and most people can even say that they have seen a beautiful oil painting. Oil paints have been used to create some of the most beautiful and intriguing art works in the world today. Paintings created with oil paints can have a great deal of detail, or very little, they can be dark, or colorful, oil paints truly allow the artist to create whatever he or she wants. Although oil paintings are undeniably beautiful, they are not as easy to create as they are to look at. Here are some tips for the artists who might be struggling a bit with their oil paintings.
Canvas
A common mistake of beginning artists is buying their canvas before deciding on what they are going to paint. This can cause a problem because sometimes what the artist wants to paint does not fit the canvas. Be sure to choose what you want to paint, or at least have an idea, before you go out and purchase your canvas. There are many different sizes and shapes of canvases so you have to know what you are going to need before you buy the canvas.
Paintbrushes
There are so many different paintbrushes to chose from that it can get to be a little overwhelming, especially for a beginner artist. The thing about oil paintbrushes is that, unlike most other paintbrushes, they cannot be used for other types of paints. For beginners, obviously, purchasing every single type of paintbrush is not a good idea. Instead, look for the most useful paintbrushes, look for at least one of each size, small, medium, and large. Also be sure that you have a round brush and a square brush, especially if you are planning to paint a lot of details.
Erasing
As many people already know, you can just grab and eraser and get rid of something you don’t like with oil paints. Although it isn’t as simple as just rubbing an eraser, you can “erase” mistakes. If you use a very small amount of paint thinner on your brush and apply it to the area that you want and it should remove the paint and allow you to start over.
Details
Details are important with any painting. With beginners, details can be a little tough, which makes sense considering they are not very experienced. A lot of beginners have a tendency to try and rework the small things, such as the edge of a building, over and over again, which actually hurts the painting. By going over the paint over and over again, the paintbrush will begin to reabsorb the paint and remove it from the canvas, causing the artist to have to start that part of the image over. It may be hard to leave things as is, but no painting is perfect, and trying to make it perfect will make you crazy.
Drying
When you are ready to let your painting dry, whether it be because you are finished with the entire painting or just one paint layer, do not stick you painting in a dark room and leave it. Letting a painting dry in the dark can actually cause it to look yellow.