1. Project 1 Basic Paint Application
1.1 – Getting to know your brushes
In the past I have mostly used acrylics but found them a bit restrictive for the work I like to do. I really like the effects produced with oil paints though I have little experience with them, and the smell of the solvents doesn’t agree with me. I decided therefore to experiment with water mixable oils (WMO) on oilpaper for the exercise.
I collected all the brushes I had at home and tried to use each one in several different ways, and in doing so I learned a lot about the types of marks that can be made with each type of brush, how the quality of brush can make different effects, and that the usefulness of a brush is not necessarily linked to the price – depending on the effect you are trying to achieve a cheap brush may sometimes be more useful than an expensive one. I also learned that some acrylic brushes work well with WMO and others don’t.
1.1.a A Landscape from Memory
I based the exercise on a landscape I did in Drawing 1 which was still fresh in my mind, choosing WMO with thinner as my medium, and using acrylic paper. I tried to give the impression of different types of foliage using different brushes at different angles - round #4 and #6 brushes for the foliage of the green tree on the right, a filbert #6 for the orange on the right, and a flat #8 for the foliage on the left.
I noticed that the acrylic paper curled a bit as I painted whilst in the previous experiments oilpaper didn’t.
1.1.b A piece of fruit
At the time of the experiment I was researching oil painting techniques and I found a video of how to do glazing that I really liked, and I used that technique in the exercise. I chose A4 canvas board as my support and WMO Lamp Black, Burnt Umber, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow and Viridian Green, applied with filberts #2, #6 and #8.
I did a loose outline of my subjects – an apple and a lemon - with willow charcoal and applied the first coat of background in black with thinner and a filbert #8, which was the biggest brush I had. This was still too small however as it was difficult to get even coverage.
For the detail I used the smaller brushes and the side of the #8, and once I was more or less satisfied with my tonal painting I started applying thin layers of colour using a fast drying medium, leaving each layer to dry for a day or two, until after five layers I was happy with the colours of the apple and the lemon.
My final work was:
I really like the result I obtained with this technique; the colours are quite vibrant, somewhat like the old master paintings, and in the past I've struggled to achieve vibrant colours. Using this technique it was much easier to make the colours darker or lighter as required.
I didn’t however pay enough attention to the background: if I had applied the underpainting with a bigger brush I would have achieved better and more even coverage and would have produced a better result.
Updated on February 2020
Reference:
MKL Fine art - Oil Color Glazing like a 'Master' - How to glaze / Tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgakFbraBT0
1993, Chancellor press, P Manohan, P Seligman, W Clouse, 1993 Art School- a complete painters course