My Very First Oil Paintings

Hi everyone, 

As you will see in today's Youtube video in a few hours, I finally got round to trying Oil Painting!

I've had oil paints for a long time now, since we use them in the prosthetic make-up industry extensively, to paint silicone pieces, such as heads, limbs, creatures...etc...
The use of oils for that type of application is hardly "typical" however, since we tend to dilute the paints with A LOT  of white spirit (or similar thinner), to use it in very, very, subtle thin washes (think watercolour liquid inks, but with oils). It also allows us to airbrush the paint. So, although we use oils in those cases, it in no way familiarised me with using them as a fine art medium. 

So I decided to give them a go the other day, in a proper way. For the very first time.
And let me tell you, I was so excited (still am, to be honest)!

I don't really have any intention of switching to oils as a medium, for various reasons, some of which I'll talk about later, but the main reason being that I am tragically impatient with painting, and the idea of having to wait days, weeks, months, to finish a painting, would drive me a bit insane. 

However, I had no doubts that I would enjoy oil painting, as, setting aside the tediousness of the set-up and the toxicity of some of the components, oils are generally a very forgiving and easily malleable medium, hence why it has been used so widely and extensively for a very long time. 

As I mentioned, I have owned a set of oil paints (traditional oil paints) for a few years now, but as I was always in flatshares, living in one room, I couldn't attempt to use oil paints, as I didn't really want to be sleeping in delicious toxic fumes. I was already doing that for my day job, so I didn't want it to extend to my living quarters. 

✦ Now however, I have a room dedicated to my work, which makes things a little easier.
I am still not keen on using all the toxic products that can come with traditional oils though, so I decided to invest in a starter set of Winsor&Newton Water Mixable Oil Paints.
And then, when those arrived, I also got myself some Daler Rowney Georgian Ivory Black and Payne's Grey (because I wouldn't be me if I didn't get myself some Payne's Grey, would I). 

✦ The basic W&N kit also comes with a small bottle of Linseed Oil, and from the research I did, it is recommend as a thinner for the paints.
As the title of the oils does say, the pigments can absolutely be mixed with water instead of thinner, and it will thin the colours just as well (it really does, it's quite impressive), but from what I understood, the water can affect the final result, and can dull the colours, so a lot of artists I watched, recommended using an oil thinner instead of water, and keeping the water to clean off the brushes.
Which is what I did. 

✦ When it came to painting surfaces, I had a few things already available to me.
I had purchased a pad of Fabriano Canvas Grain paper when I was on a work trip a couple of years back, and I also had some old canvas boards, which I had gessoed to smooth them out and cover whatever I had painted on them already.
Plus, I also wanted to try painting in my sketchbook, so I gessoed a page of it and gave that a try. 

✦ For my brushes, I had a smattering of stiff bristled cheap brushes I wasn't doing anything with (which I hardly used in the end), and I had also bought a couple of Raphael Symbiose Mixed Media brushes. Dagger brushes. Because obviously. (That's all I paint with in gouache, and I'm addicted to them now, so I had to get myself a set for oil painting too. Had too. XD). You can see those in the bottom right, the ones with blue handles.
I also dug out some Boldmere palette knives that were hanging around in my make-up bag from my years in prosthetics. I ended up hardly using those at all, because I don't really like pre-mixing my pigments, and I don't really care if my colours are really evenly mixed either. 

✦ As my palettes, I used some sheets of waxed paper (again, dug out of my prosthetics kit), and a couple pieces of cheap photo printing paper. They worked a charm.

✦ As an experiment, because I had read it somewhere, I also poured myself a cup of coconut oil, as I'd heard it was quite good as a non-toxic brush cleaner. Turns out it worked quite well, although I'd recommend living in a warm country to do that, because mine solidified in about 10 minutes, hahaha. XD
I mostly used water in the end, it was just, if not more, effective. Less expensive than coconut oil too, haha. 

To get used to the medium, its texture, thickness, flow, pigment...etc...I started off with some swatches, with a limited colour palette of French Ultramarine, Titanium White, and Payne's Grey. 

I also did a small, very, very quick (under 5mins) painting, no ref, just instinct. I'm not entirely sure if it's a water droplet or a crystal ball, but it was fun! 

I then moved on to something a little more complicated, but with the same colour palette. 

This one was a lot tougher, and I got a lot of the values wrong, but it was still great fun. It took me about an hour, maybe a little bit more. I struggled a lot with the fact that I was painting on wet colours that mixed in with my new layers, but I slowly got used to that as I kept going. 

I did all of these studies you'll see in this post in one day, so didn't wait for any layers to dry. (Re : Impatient.).

I painted this bottle study in my gessoed sketchbook page, and it was really nice to work in.
I'll be honest, it makes the page feel really heavy, and its really satisfying. Makes me feel like I worked hard, haha.
I was a little worried about the gesso, and I didn't know if I had put enough on, but so far so good, 3 days later and still no bleed through!

And then, finally, I decided to jump into something a little more complicated.
Something I was always excited to try with oils were skin tones, so I decided to try a portrait.
I chose a very popular online image, I believe it's a portrait of the model Marina Nery (I don't know the photographer, couldn't find his name anywhere with reverse search.).

And here was my final result!

It's a big wonky and all, and her eyes are much bigger than real life (which isn't unexpected of me to be honest) but I wasn't really trying to get her likeness right, I was just enjoying myself with the values and skin tones.
I couldn't scan this obviously, so I took a picture, hence the slight glare (sorry!). 

I painted it in about 1h30, on one of my pieces of gessoed canvas board.
I started with a burnt umber sketch and under painting (went straight in with paint, no pencil sketch), as I had seen that done a lot with portrait oil paintings, and it did really help with the final result, in placing my values, and giving the whole piece a warmer final look than a white background would have (which I think was one of my mistakes with the blue bottle, and my issue with values with it).  

When I got to the proper colour stage, I struggled with the fact that my underlayer was quite fluid (it was done with a water/burnt umber wash) and was sliding around when I attempted to add layers on top, but after adding a few layers of thicker oil paint, it settled down and I gained more control. 

Overall, it was incredibly fun. 

I used a very basic palette for the colours, with (blobs of paint on left side of palette, apart from yellow in bottom left) (Top to bottom) a big dollop of Titanium White, some Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Red Hue, Burnt Umber, Yellow Ochre, French Ultramarine, and Payne's Grey. And Lemon Yellow. 

Mixing oils is a little more frustrating than mixing watercolours or gouache, as the pigments are a lot thicker (hence why a lot of people like to use palette knives), but you get used to it, and, to be honest, it really worked well with my tendency to like roughly mixed colours, and paintbrushy style of painting!

So here's a little break down of the pros and cons for me so far with oils (and yes, I know they are water mixable oils, not traditional oils, but from what I understand, they really are just like oils. I'll get back to you on my point of view on that if I ever try traditional oils too) : 

✦ PROS : 

- Dry so slowly that they are almost infinitely reworkable. If you are careful, they are a lot more difficult to muddy up than watercolour or gouache.
- So opaque that you can fix mistakes very easily, and add beautiful highlights on the darkest of colours.
- One tube will go a long way, I could probably do a very big painting with 2 tubes of this stuff, for the equivalent of 10 gouache tubes. That's cool.
- The fact that you have water mixable oils paints that you can clean up with water, is insane. It is just amazing. 

✦ CONS : 

- They dry tooooooooo slowly! It's excruciating! Especially for someone used to gouache and watercolour! Oh my god! Where am I supposed to store them while they take their sweet old time drying? I ain't got that much space! XD
- Although they aren't as pungent as my traditional oils, they still smell a little, which is fine for short amounts of time, or if you have somewhere to store them, or a well ventilated area, but in my tiny studio, is not ideal.
- Mostly the drying thing though.
- They take so long to dry.
- Too long.
- Dear god. 

Honestly, the thing I am the most excited about, is varnishing. I want me some of that gorgeous varnish porn because YUM. 

Anyway.
I told you I was excited.

I got all hyped up, and I'm pretty sure it means I missed about a dozen talking points, so if you have any questions, leave them in the comments, and I'll get back to you asap! 

Thank you for reading,
I hope you enjoyed this post, and that you'll enjoy the video also!

Love ya all,
Take care,
M