Top 5 Oil PAINTING Techniques Every Beginner Should Know

Hello and welcome back to my studio. Today we're painting some important techniques that every oil painter needs to know. In fact, if you paint with acrylics or gouache, these techniques will also be useful to you. So sit back and see what five essential painting techniques you should know and apply as often as possible. OK, all these techniques are important and you'll use some a lot, others not so much. I'll probably use four out of five of these very often. You'll probably guess what it is when you go through the five techniques with me. So let's begin. The first technique is using underpainting, usually a monochrome. I'm using burnt sienna, a little bit of ultramarine to create a dark underpainting, a little bit of white spirits or some type of medium to loosen the paint up, and this helps you create the big mass shapes and composition right from the start. You can go over this with your colours as you develop the painting, of course. But at this early stage, just big shapes, get rid of the white canvas and get in a composition early on. You can take some tissue or cloth, rub out where the lighter areas are going to be in and already you're starting to create, as I'm doing here, a line of trees with a field in the foreground. Next technique is glazing, commonly associated with the old masters, where you glaze a transparent layer of paint over some dry paint. But I'm using it for an impressionist technique as well. And that is to just warm up some colour. Using a glazing medium I've made with 50% turpentine and 50% linseed oil, using a bit of transparent yellow. You can lift off some of the oiliness if you want. But you can see how it warms up this rather cool area of grass. But don't add white paint or anything too opaque. That will make it no longer a glaze, but more like a tint. Nevertheless, you can actually still use almost transparent tint like this, maybe to create some mist in those distant trees, but not strictly a glaze. So understand that glazing is a transparent paint over dry paint. Next important technique is alla prima, which means completing the painting in one session. Something I do very often, almost every demonstration I show you is an alla prima painting. You just get in, start the painting and work right through to its completion. Great technique for smaller works, of course, and it creates a lot of energy and spontaneity in your painting. Number four is impasto. Impasto is the application of a thick layer of paint over existing paint. Not necessarily dry paint. As I've done here, I've worked wet over wet to create these thick and juicy colour notes, and it creates some texture and three dimensionality in your painting. You can start your painting with thick paint, but generally I work thick over thin. The concept of fat over lean, where thicker paint is applied over the thinner paint. Next up is scumbling, a very useful technique, taking a lot of wet paint and dragging it over some dry or semi dry paint. And this creates a broken colour effect. So I'll just drag it like this and I get that sort of sun over grass effect. You can do this over landscapes like I'm doing here. You can do it over water as well. Imagine this dark over here is water. So let's just imagine that. And I'll drag some white or light coloured paint over it. And you can imagine that is sparkling water. All right, so scumbling, very important. It can also be used to create highlights on the side of a tree. Maybe branches as well, catching a lot of sunlight. So it's kind of like starting off with your impasto layers. A lot of paint on the brush, but now you are dragging it to create broken colour and letting the colour below show through here and there. A beautiful technique. Use scumbling as often as you can to get that broken colour and sparkling light in your landscapes. Especially if you're a beginner, you'll want to take a note of these techniques and practise them often. For me, glazing is one I use very seldom, but it is handy even for an impressionist. You can still glaze certain parts of your painting where perhaps you need a little richer colour or you change the colour temperature. That to me is the most important reason. For the rest, though, all nice juicy paint brush strokes you can create and use your paint for amazing effects, richness and texture. OK, I hope this helped you. And please ensure you have subscribed to this channel so you don't miss the next video. And there's your free painting course waiting for you in the link up here or in the description, and you can start that course within minutes. So be sure to try one out. All right. Until next time, happy painting and cheers for now.