Rare Footage of a Dutch Master – Classical Oil Painting Techniques

What you're about to see is rare footage of a true master of classical still life painting. A fascinating look at the techniques, precision, and craftsmanship behind some truly remarkable works of art. It's not every day we get to watch a master like this at work. For anyone passionate about traditional oil painting, this is something truly special. This is Henk Helmantel, a Dutch master of classical still life painting. Despite his reputation, there's very little footage showing his actual painting process, so I've put together clips from several rare videos. The quality varies, so please excuse that, but I think it's absolutely worth watching. Helmantel begins with a simple pencil sketch, followed by a thin, full-color underpainting diluted with turpentine. In the second layer, he builds up the forms and refines the details. Finally, he uses transparent glazes to deepen the colours and bring the painting to life. Of course, every still life begins with the composition. Helmantel prefers to collect fruit from his own garden, rather than buying it at the supermarket, where everything often looks a little too perfect. He appreciates natural imperfections, the little irregularities that give each object its own character. Then comes the arrangement. He's looking for that classic balance between unity and variety, creating a composition that feels natural and pleasing to the eye. What I particularly like about this still life is the contrast between the blue drapery and the bright yellow pumpkin. That beautiful colour contrast immediately draws our attention, making the pumpkin the natural focal point. And of course, the lighting is classic. A single light source coming from the side and slightly from the front, beautifully revealing the volume and three-dimensional form of each object. Once he's satisfied with the composition, Helmantel makes a preliminary sketch on paper to work out the overall arrangement. Once everything looks right, he draws the composition again, freehand, directly onto his painting surface. And as you can see, he's working directly from life, carefully observing the shapes, proportions, and relationships between the objects. Now, something interesting about his technique is the painting surface itself. He prefers Masonite panels, although he occasionally works on canvas. These panels are carefully prepared and sanded to create a smooth surface, ideal for the kind of precise, detailed painting he's known for. But here's something that personally surprised me. Despite painting in the tradition of the Dutch Old Masters, Helmantel actually begins directly on a white ground. Now that's quite different from many traditional approaches where artists often use toned grounds, imprimaturas, or monochromatic underpaintings to establish their values before introducing color. Helmantel takes a more direct approach, but still builds his paintings through carefully controlled layers. And as we can see from the final results, this method is incredibly effective. So, let's take a closer look at this first stage. He's working with oil colors thinned with turpentine, applying the paint fairly quickly and loosely. At this point, he's not concerned with tiny details or perfectly blended transitions. Instead, he's establishing the basic color relationships, the light and shadow patterns, and the three-dimensional forms of the objects. Essentially, this is a classic blocking in stage, but he's already working in full color. And notice how some of his brushstrokes remain clearly visible, especially in the background. The paint isn't perfectly smooth or uniformly blended, and that's absolutely fine. In fact, there's no reason to overwork this first layer. Its purpose is to establish a solid foundation for the more refined painting stages that will follow. Here's a small but really interesting detail in this footage. Originally, the top of this grape was touching the edge of the plate, creating what we call a tangent in composition. This is something we generally try to avoid, because it can create an awkward visual connection between two separate objects. And notice how Helmantel corrects it. He slightly adjusts the upper contour of the grape by painting over it with the white of the plate, creating a small but important separation between the two shapes. This kind of adjustment is known as a pentimento and it reminds us that even a master painter doesn't treat the original drawing as something set in stone. One advantage of his relatively direct approach is that these corrections are easier to make. In more complex layered techniques, especially with monochromatic underpaintings, changes can be more challenging because earlier shapes may eventually become visible through the upper paint layers, and that's actually something we can observe in many historical paintings. Now, as we move into the final part of the footage, Helmantel is already working with transparent glazes. It looks like we're missing most of the second stage, where he would normally refine the forms and develop the details. My guess is that the filming took place over several sessions, so we're jumping from the initial blocking in to a much more developed painting. But there's something worth mentioning here. Although we described his process as three main stages, blocking in, refining, and glazing, in practice these stages aren't always so clearly separated. Some objects may need several passes, while others might already look convincing after the first or second layer, requiring only a few final adjustments. And that's perfectly normal in layered oil painting. Now, let's look at what he's doing with these glazes. By applying thin, transparent layers of color, he can deepen the shadows, adjust the saturation, and subtly refine the modeling without covering the work underneath. You can see this particularly well in the blue drapery, where the glazes help create richer, deeper shadows while preserving the underlying forms. And here's something really interesting. Notice how he uses a palette knife to manipulate the paint over the textured surface. The earlier brushstrokes have left tiny ridges and irregularities. By gently dragging the knife across the surface, he can redistribute the glaze, allowing pigment to collect in those little recesses while removing some of it from the raised areas. This creates a beautiful, subtle texture that would be difficult to achieve with perfectly smooth blending alone. And of course, there's the optical effect of glazing itself. Think of a transparent glaze almost like a piece of colored glass. Light passes through the transparent paint layer, interacts with the underlying colors, and some of that light returns to our eyes through the glaze. The result can be an incredible sense of depth and richness that is difficult to reproduce by simply mixing the same color directly on the palette. And that's one of the things I love most about layered oil painting. You're not just mixing colors, you're building them, optically, layer by layer. If you would like to see more of my painting process, tutorials, and complete video workshops, you can join my YouTube channel membership, Old Masters Tier, where you will find many full lessons I've created for you. And if you want to go even deeper, you can also join me of course on my Patreon. where I share more in-depth content, extended lessons, and additional workshops designed to help you take your painting further. You can also visit my website if you're looking for some cool art merch, prints, and more. And if you decide to grab something, don't forget to use code M8SALE at the checkout for 10% off your entire order. You can also find me on Instagram and Facebook. Thanks for watching and see you in another vid.