Answering your questions about oil painting | Mediums, varnishing, layering, and more!

Hey, welcome back. In this video, I'm going to be answering some of the technical questions that I usually get about painting. We're going to be talking about working in layers, using mediums, varnishing, and things like that. And if you're new here, my name's Christina Kent and I'm an artist based out of San Francisco. Now these are some of my most common questions, but if I don't answer a question that you have, feel free to leave it in the comments and maybe I'll answer it in a future video. So first question, how long does it take for my paintings to dry? And this is a common question about oil paint because a lot of people have the perception that oil paintings take a very long time to dry. And it's true, at least from what I've heard, that an oil painting itself can take anywhere from like six months to a year to even longer if it's really thick paint to be completely dry. But what people don't usually mention is that oil paintings are often dried to the touch very quickly. So for all of the paint layers to be completely dry, that takes a really long time. But the top layer actually dries first and so you can actually kind of touch the painting with your hand without messing it up, like touching it lightly without messing it up, usually pretty quickly. For my paintings, because I'm usually not painting super super thick or with lots of slow drying medium, my paintings are usually touch dry within about a week. And here it's important to note that this can depend on the conditions in your studio or in your space. If you're in a humid space or if you're in a cold space, that can impact the drying time of the paintings. So I'm painting here in California, usually painting around like, I don't know, between around maybe 70 degrees Fahrenheit. So that's kind of the space that I'm in, and I'm in a pretty dry area. So if you're working in different conditions, then drying time for you might take a little bit longer. So another common question that I get is, do I varnish my work? And yes, I do. I think it's important to varnish your work because oil painting can be really sensitive. And from my understanding, if you have a layer of varnish on the painting, that just helps protect the painting itself from damage over time. And now you may have heard that you have to wait six months or a year or longer to varnish a painting. That's because a lot of these final varnishes, like Damar varnish, you have to wait until the painting is fully dry, not just touch dry. But the varnish that I use is a type of varnish that you can apply as soon as the painting is touch dry. Specifically, I use Winsor & Newton's retouching varnish, but I know a lot of other people like to use Gamvar. And both of these varnishes are ones that you can apply once the painting is touch dry. And they're pretty easy to apply. They are a sort of glossy varnish. So if you're going for a matte look, you might want to try something else. Like I've heard people using cold wax medium to kind of protect their paintings. I haven't tried that personally myself. I kind of like the glossier look. So yeah, I use retouching varnish or heard good things about Gamvar as well. But both of these are types of varnishes that you can apply as soon as the painting is touch dry. And that brings me to another question I get. How long do I wait before finishing a painting and putting it up for sale? And usually the process for me is pretty fast. I let the painting dry, I varnish it, and then as soon as the varnish is dry, which takes like a day or so, I can put the painting up for sale. And that's great if I want to be selling a lot of paintings because that means that I'm able to move pretty quickly from finishing the painting to actually selling it. Another question that I often get is about mediums. What mediums do I use? And one thing I've noticed with mediums is that a lot of them seem to have toxic fumes. This definitely isn't the case for all mediums. So it's, you know, it's not a blanket statement. But a lot of the mediums that I had tried out in the past, like Liquin, had some toxic fumes and you really weren't supposed to use them in an enclosed space, a space without good ventilation. And for a lot of my art career, I've been painting at home. It wasn't until more recently that I just got a studio. So I started painting trying to use just as few toxic materials as possible. And that means that I decided to paint without medium. I also like painting without medium because I feel like it just kind of simplifies the painting process. All I have to think about is the paint itself and just working with the paint. And that being said, as I paint more, I'm getting more curious about trying different mediums. Now that I have the studio space with good ventilation, it's getting me even more excited about maybe doing some experimenting and seeing what effects I can get. But honestly, I really enjoy painting with just the paint and I think that you can make really beautiful paintings without any medium at all. Another question I get is about my painting process itself. Do I work in layers? And there's kind of multiple answers to that. For small paintings, usually I'll do, if anything, I'll kind of sketch out the design as like a small underpainting as one layer and then I'll just go in directly with paint in like an alla prima style. But in my larger paintings, I often follow kind of a different multi-step process where I first sketch out the design, do my underpainting in kind of a monochromatic, like usually a brown. And then usually I have a second step where I put in a thin layer of the colors for the main shapes across the entire canvas. And so for larger paintings, this kind of allows me to get a sense of how the overall color relationships on the canvas will work before I go in with thicker paint. Then for the last step, I'll go in with a thicker paint and I'll try to paint everything in an alla prima style. If the painting is really large, this means that I'll usually work in sections so that for each section, I can work it in this like alla prima style, which means that I'm working it while the painting is still wet. Now this also means that I, because I like working with the paint while it's still wet and not doing like many layers on top of each other, this means that I often work for these larger canvases. I work in like marathon painting sessions where I'll paint maybe for like 12 hours so that I can continue working with the paint while it's still wet before it dries. But that's kind of my basic strategy. And you can see more about my process for working on larger paintings in my video on painting large landscapes, which I'll link here. Another question I often get is what surfaces do I use? There's a lot of different things that you can paint on from paper to panel to canvases to like who knows what. So usually what I like to use is for smaller paintings, I like to use panels. Particularly I like ampersand gesso board, but any sort of like cardboard or like a primed wood panel works really well. And then for larger paintings, I like to use canvases. The reason I like to use panels for small paintings is because I, at least the ones that I get, they don't really have much texture. And I find that like the texture of canvas can be really distracting on a painting that's really small, at least in my opinion. So I really like the kind of smooth surface for the panels. However, as we get to larger canvases, panels can get really heavy. And one of the other things with panels is that if you are like say shipping a work internationally, you can't roll up, like with a canvas, you can roll it up and you can ship that to someone. And that's a pretty good way to ship a large painting safely versus with a panel, your only option is to ship it, you know, in its full size. And so you have to create it, it can get a little bit more complicated. But it's definitely doable too. And I know there are artists who work large and on panel. But also with some of the larger canvas, like for a larger painting, I often kind of like the texture of the canvas too. I don't like it for very small works, but sometimes I really enjoy it for larger works. So yeah, so that's kind of how I decide what sort of surface to use for my painting. If you want to work large, but don't like the texture of canvas, you can also cover the canvas with what's called ground. And you can get a really smooth finish on the canvas that becomes almost more like a panel. Another question I get is do I stretch my own canvases or prepare my own panels? And generally the answer to that is no. Thankfully here in San Francisco, and also through art stores online, I'm able to find super high quality panels and canvases that I absolutely love. And I also find that personally, I don't really enjoy the process of preparing the panels or the canvases. And it kind of takes a lot of time. So for me, I really want to kind of get straight to the painting process. And so I like to find ways that I can like save time in other parts of the process so that I can get right to painting. I love the panels and the canvases that I work on, and I don't think I could make them that nice myself. So I'm super happy to let the experts do it and appreciate their really good handiwork. That being said, if I'm traveling somewhere, like say for a residency, and I'm going to be working on large pieces there and wanting to bring them back home, my plan is to work on unstretched canvas so that I can roll it up, I can bring it on the plane. And then those I would stretch when I get back to my studio in San Francisco. Another question I usually get is what sketchbook do I use? Because if you see my sketchbook tours, you know that I do a lot of painting in my sketchbook. And not all sketchbooks will hold up well to paint. My favorite sketchbook is the Moleskine art sketchbook. Not the watercolor one, but like the regular art sketchbook that has pretty smooth pages. I like how it doesn't have texture, so it's really great for both like painting and drawing. But the paper is also thick enough that it seems to hold the paint okay, at least for the acrylic gouache paint that I use. And that brings me to my other question, what paint do I use in my sketchbook? And yeah, I use acrylic gouache paint, which is kind of a mixture of acrylic paint and gouache paint. It's basically like, it kind of dries with the texture, like the matte texture that gouache has, but it also doesn't reactivate with water, so you can layer it the same way that you would layer acrylic paint. And with this paint, I paint directly onto the sketchbook, I don't do any priming or anything like that. I just paint on the sketchbook and it actually works pretty well. Then the last painting process question I often get is, do I work from photos? So yes, I love to work from photos. And so many of the things that I like to paint, like a lot of cityscapes of San Francisco, or views of places like at golden hour, right before sunset, these are actually really hard to paint from life. Like a lot of my San Francisco scenes, the photos, I take the photos like in the middle of the street. So you really just can't set up an easel and paint that. Or they're like at sunset, which is very, very hard to paint from life unless you're really good. And especially for my larger paintings, even just like moving a four foot by four foot canvas to a certain location is very difficult. And then it takes a lot of time. So you would have to like move it there multiple days, which there are painters who do this. There are painters who will bring giant canvases on location and paint in multiple sessions. And I have so much respect for them. And I think that's amazing. But that is not part of my practice. For my larger paintings, I like to do them in the studio. That being said, I think it's so important to paint from life, to study the world from life. And so I do love to do plein air painting or painting still lifes in the studio. I think that that's a really great practice as well. And it's something that I try to do. But I mostly do that just for smaller paintings. So yeah, I hope that answers a lot of your technical questions on my painting process. If you have more questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments and I'll try to answer them as best I can. As always, a huge shout out to my supporters on Patreon. Thank you guys so much for supporting this channel and making these videos happen. If you like my art, if you like my videos, and you want to help me make more, check out my Patreon at the link. Thanks again for watching and I'll see you next time.