Trying to get into oil painting

>>2916783
I suggest the Flemish Technique. I have been doing portraits for about a year and I like it better than alle prima.

>>2916783
I also only work with Red, Yellow, Blue, Burnt Umber and titanium white but I use zinc white for glazing.

>>2916929
I will one day upgrade to other colors, but I have learned the basics of color mixing this way. I also use Linseed oil and a glazing medium and mineral spirits for my under painting.

How do you prepare the canvas? And what is your usual process with the layers? Thanks for all the help!

There's a ton of different methods to the medium, as someone suggested earlier, the Flemish technique is a good starting point if you feel totally lost.
Generally though, the only really important thing to keep in mind is to paint fat over leaning, meaning your thinnest layers should be beneath your thickest layers.
Other than that just explore and play with what feels natural. After an underpainting, I prefer direct painting, working with color relationships and values until I find an image I like. A lot of the times I'll work some parts of the painting as wet on wet, and other times I'll wait for it to dry to come back in and fix or redo an area.
I work with the zorn pallet, which is super handy because it's just titanium white, ivory black, cad red medium, and yellow ochre. This makes it easier to think about value and color relationships than getting a particular color "right".
Here's an example of some of my in progress work.

Portrait looks great by the way!
Good painting takes good drawing.

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>>2916971
accidentally uploaded a huge file

For small and medium works always use a panel, like wood, instead of canvas.

Listen to this.

http://www.suggesteddonationpodcast.com/blog/2014/5/13/episode-5

>>2916976
Looking great! Was that using the Flemish technique you mentioned?

>>2916990
Thanks. I bought two small unprepped canvas, but I do not enjoy the way it bounces on the brush.

>>2916992
>>2916971
Flemish technique is a needlessly intricate meme that isn't really that accurate to the working practice of Flemish and Dutch paintings during the Renaissance, and even if is remotely similar, the materials used, most importantly the white pigment, are different.

It's also quite limited in that it concerns for the most part how to paint flesh.

>>2916992
Thanks!
This is a more direct method- after I did the underpainting, I went directly to color, and didn't bother with a grisaille. I basically work somewhere in between an alla prima method and a more sustained method.
Check out draw mix paint on youtube- they give a good introduction to oil painting, and also look up sean cheatham's demo on youtube, he does a quick portrait in oil and uses a direct method as well.

>>2916990
I would also say to prime some heavy weight watercolor paper with gesso and use that. It's really inexpensive and has a nice feel to it as well. It's good for when you're learning and don't want to throw a bunch of money at practicing.

>>2917020
A step up from that is canvas paper.

>>2916921
Hell, no. Alla Prima is at least 10 times as much fun.

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>>2917020
Or just buy these and tape them to a board.

>>2917029
>>2917077
Canvas texture is not good for small paintings. The details won't look as sharp because of the bumps.

Go to a warehouse store, get some cheap wood or masonite and have them cut there, then gesso them.

Thank you all for the feedback! The two canvas I bought were a bit expensive seeing as they were both thrown away due to poor comprehension of the techniques. I will buy some canvas paper to practice first before moving to boards.

>>2916969
I use gesso on the canvas and before every layer I wipe it with oil and spirits. Light over dark, thick over lean. Thick meaning more oil mixed with the paint.

>>2917062
It is, but one cannot capture the kind of detail depicted in the attached drawing without successive layering.

>>2917808
Yes, that is the thing. I wanna pursue detail in paiting, and alla prima to me sounds more suited for sketching. Nothing wrong with that, but at the moment detail is what I am more inclined towards.

>>2916783
You must read theoil painting book by Harold Speed. It will show you the way.

>>2917062
Many fun things that yield bad results.

>>2916921
>>2917808
>>2918254

Are we really doing this now? Alla prima is shit, why paint like Rembrandt did and leave those sexy paint strokes, better spend weeks to layer stuff and wait for paint to dry.

>>2917808
>>2918254
>>2918202

You can also depict detail in alla prima.Its just harder, because you have to get it pretty right the first time. If you want to layer paint, use acryllics imo.

Also, on a taste kind of basis, it just looks better imo. But you do you my man.

>>2918280
Rembrandt did not paint alla prima. Painting in layers does not only mean painting with thin layers of oil paint.
>>2918298
The advantage of oil paint is the richness of the oil paint and how light shines through the oil. No one really comes close to beating old masters in oil painting and yet the vast majority of them painted with layers. Of course, I don't just mean reworking a painting to make it more detailed or "correct" with each layer as many do now. That doesn't take advantage of the potential of painting with layers. Painting in layers takes much more knowledge about oil and pigments. The transparency of a particular pigment is of no special concern to the alla prima painter, nor which pigments have good bonding strength.

>>2918337
>No one really comes close to beating old masters in oil painting

wrong

>>2916783
Buy acrylic primed cotton rolls. Linen and Oil primed are expensive and unnecessary. Cotton is cheaper, but a good artist can still paint great things. Because of quantity, Canvas rolls are expensive, but more value per area and easier to store.

Cut out different sized canvases from canvas roll to your liking. Buy white acrylic gesso. Add gesso with a little water on a large cheap brush to prime your canvas to your liking (allows paint to stick better). Priming means slathering wet gesso

evenly over your canvas and waiting for it to dry. You don't need to prime if canvas is already primed when you bought it. Once dried use sandpaper to smooth irregularities. Tape it on some flat surface for painting.

Winsor Newton oil is decent. Get strong, chromatic primary colors such as cadmiums, and get ivory black. Add more depending on subject and how often you mix some colors. E.g., yellow ochre is popular for skin tones. Titanium white is a cool white, if

you paint portraits, you probably want a warm white such as Cremnitz White (lead white).

Get good, stiff brushes, you need several for oil painting unless you like breathing oil solvent (not healthy). Synthetics are cheap and good for oil painting.

Oil solvents (turpenoid) are used for cleaning brushes, keep them in an air-tight container. If you don't drink alcohol, it will make you dizzy. I killed a cockroach once brushing over it with turpenoid. I don't use solvent when painting, I clean

them with oil and make have different brushes for different tones. After you finish for the day you have to clean, this time you must use solvent otherwise your brush is fucked. To spend less time exposed to solvents when your brushes at the end of

the day, you can buy cheap oil as an intermediary cleaner to clean out the paint, then use solvent to clean the rest.

I recommend you try watercolor as well (less stressful). You can paint detailed watercolors too with just water, color, and brush.

Simple beginner palettes:

Minimum for layered painting.
lead white
yellow ochre
burnt sienna
raw umber
bone black


Minimum for direct painting
lead white/titanium white
yellow ochre
burnt sienna
mars black/ultramarine blue


Not including certain objects that would require more specific paints.

>>2918967
Solvent is not really needed for cleaning brushes. I've been a ble to clean my brushes with just brush-cleaning soap, and not even the more expensive sort that comes with its jar.

Unless you don't have enough brushes and have to use the same ones for different colors.

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>/ic/ discusses something they have no knowledge about
this thread is gold

Remember to oil out your canvas before painting, OP.

This guy has a lot of videos I have found pretty useful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGoOd5zz27I

>>2919026

>blending on canvas

>>2919033
>not blending on canvas

>>2919051

Blending on canvas, at least before covering your whole painting with paint is THE most n00b thing one can do and main reason for paintings not looking like anything at all.

>>2919073
>is THE most n00b thin
oh shit i'm sorry, didn't mean to offend the l33t painters of this board. What other piece of crucial info you picked up somewhere else and follow as the law?

>>2919020
>posts landscape painting that looks like it's made with photoshop texture brushes

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>>2918967
Wow, thank you for all the tips! I already have some basic supplies, and I bought the Fredrik pad someone mentioned in this thread. I really want to do what I do in charcoal, but in oil, and hopefully improve

>>2919000
Thank you! Have to look into the colors you mentioned. At the moment I will probably be only looking to work in black and white

>>2919020
>posts gouache

>>2920459
Is this your work?

Expect to be frustrated for a long time with oil. Patience is the key.

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>>2922405
Yes, the pic at the start of the thread and the one you asked about are part of my work. From my brief experiments with oil, I can see it is 1 - not straightfoward the layering as graphite is, as you have to take into account opacity and oil medium you use and 2 - the drying times.