Oil painting is a very multifaceted painting technique. Oil paints can be written in many layers or in one layer, you can paint smoothly or pasty, you can paint for a long period of time with a deep detail or quickly a la prima.
Oil paints easily adhere to the canvas. Due to the fact that oil paints dry for a long period of time, you can easily return to the picture in a few days or a week and make the necessary adjustments. To do this, just take a palette knife and remove the layer of paint that does not suit you.
There are covering and glazing oil paints. Covering paints completely cover the surface on which they are applied. These are lead and zinc oxide, chromium oxide, cinnabar and others.
Glazing paints are transparent, their pigments absorb more oil, they are often put on covering paints to blur or, conversely, emphasize their tone or color. Glazing paints include lake, emerald green, ultramarine, etc.
Oil paints allow to make extremely thin and graceful color transitions, due to long work «on wet». In addition, you can apply one after another layers of painting as the bottom layer dries. This allows the paint not to mix and achieve the effect of translucency of the lower layers from under the upper ones.
Another undeniable advantage of oil paints is their light fastness, which makes painted paintings durable. For example, watercolor is incredibly sensitive to light. Watercolors by old masters are rarely exhibited in museums so that they do not burn out. Usually, they appear before the audience at specialized exhibitions. But paintings painted with oil paints are not so prone to burnout. All paint tubes have star-shaped markings that indicate the light sensitivity of the oil paint.
High-quality oil paints do not change color after drying. This is very important for color lovers. In addition, oil paints are easily mixed with each other on the palette, which allows you to get the desired shades of color.
There are several techniques for applying oil paints, including smooth and pasty. In a smooth technique, the paint is applied to the canvas in layers, gradually adding the desired shades. This is a rather complex technique, because you need not only to master the colors and brush, but also to understand how colors and shades are combined at different degrees of dilution.
The pasty or case technique involves applying the paint in dense layers, which makes the picture embossed. Smears are thick and opaque. In this technique, you can apply the paint not only with brushes but also with a palette knife, the colors are applied from dark to light.
In general, oil paints have many advantages. They are ideal for beginners. And if, in your endeavors there will be support of professional artists, the excellent result will not force itself to wait.
Paintings painted with oil paints will adorn any interior. Oil paints on canvas can be varnished to give them even more durability.
There are two basic techniques for working with oil paints. The first method is more classic and says that mixing paints on the palette allows you to get the optimal shade. The second reception came to us from the Impressionists. According to him, you do not need to mix paints on the palette, smears of pure color should be applied to the canvas so that they are mixed in the eye of the viewer.
To mix paints, artists use a special tool – a palette. For example, adding white to the blue color can get a light blue color on the palette. It is from such simple techniques that the basics of oil painting technique begin.
Our art studio advises to start with a simple one: a landscape, not a complicated still life or a copy of an impressionist painting. Drawing on canvas for beginners is a new, exciting experience that should be primarily fun. Oil painting classes in our art studio are designed so that you immediately apply the theoretical rules of oil painting in practice. Oil painting from scratch is our profile. 90 percent of our guests have never held a brush before.
Guests who come to a master class in oil painting for the first time often ask where is the water for washing brushes. Let’s find out if you need water for oil paints? The only thing that can be useful water – is for the final washing of brushes. And the oil paints themselves are not water-soluble and are diluted with special solvents for oil painting.
Oil paints are dry pigments with the addition of organic oil, which is able to dry well and form a thin film on the surface. Accordingly, oil painting is a kind of artistic technique using these paints.
Scientists claim that oil painting has been discovered many times, and it has happened in different countries around the world. The oldest use of oil paints dates back to the seventh century BC, such drawings are found in modern Afghanistan. For a long time, the pioneer of this artistic technique was considered to be the Dutch artist Jan van Eyck, thanks to whom oil painting became widespread in Western Europe in the early XV century.
However, later in the Afghan province of Bamiyan found images on the walls of caves made in the VII century B.C. Analysis of the paint showed that it contains oil and resin, and the drawings are multi-layered with a top layer resembling varnish. So people knew about pigments, oils and varnishes long before Jan van Eyck. Written evidence of oil painting dates back to antiquity. The encaustic paints used at the time contained wax and linseed oil. In Europe, oil paints were reinvented in the XIII-XIV centuries. However, none of the work survived, possibly because the paints were washed off with water. Van Eyck’s merit is that he invented durable oil paints, combining linseed oil, turpentine and pigment. Such paints did not crack and did not burn out in the sun, dried well and remained, so oil painting began to gain popularity.
In fact, oil painting has gained general recognition and popularity due to the convenience of its technology and advantages over other techniques:
To learn oil painting, you will definitely need brushes, canvas, and a palette knife. The palette knife is a special steel tool used for mixing oil paints or for cleaning the palette from paint residues and erroneously applied smears.
Any painting begins with the construction of a composition on canvas. It is desirable for a beginner to draw the main compositional elements with a pencil. The next step is to work directly in color from dark to light color. Experts from the art studio «Lihtaryk» advise: the only thing a beginner should not do is to be afraid. If you have perseverance and inspiration, then everything will definitely work out, and the technical details will be suggested by professional artists of the studio. You can learn these same subtleties at a three-hour oil painting master class at the art studio «Lihtaryk», where you will not only receive professional artistic advice from experienced artists, but also immerse yourself in the creative atmosphere of the studio. So come and make sure that in three hours you can paint a picture with oil paints.
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У меня синдром Стендаля сегодня. Утром ходили в Падуанский баптистерий. Смотрели фрески Менабуя. А после обеда у нас было посещение каппелы Скровеньи. Теперь я понимаю , что сделал Джотто для мира. Очень меня все это впечатлило в живую. Привет передала.
Мир прекрасен. Падуя очень понравилась:) спасибо за лекции Света!
Lily Golovchak
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