Oil painting feels delicious. That’s the main reason I continue to do it.
My approach to it as a beginner was completely different from other mediums where I wanted to learn everything correctly and overwhelm myself when I couldn’t grasp the multiple techniques. This happened with watercolour, gouache and ink.
When I bought an oil paint set, a small Artisan Water Soluble Oil set, I thought, I’ll just get this urge to try oil painting and return to watercolour.
I think I looked at the Winsor and Newton website to get started and immediately made my first painting on non-primed paper. I had no idea about anything. I didn’t know you had to prime your paper, that canvases were already primed, or that oil paints took forever to dry and would probably always remain sticky.
I tried to avoid tutorials but I researched the basics. I learned a bit about mediums, how much to use, and how to avoid toxic products, I stupidly bought odourless mineral spirits which are still toxic. I tried painting on canvas which I never do. Finally, I tried wood panels which I loved but posed a problem with space and framing and all the rest.
All those things are technicalities. When I started with oil pastels, I had the same approach: avoid tutorials or how-tos until I wrangled the materials myself and when I got stuck I looked up a few things.
Learning step by step is, to me, a long road. I need to feel the material first. I need to see for myself what it does and how it behaves, how colours mix (very differently from watercolour) I need to see the contrasts: in watercolour, you begin with light to dark. In oil painting, you begin from dark to light. With gouache or acrylic, it doesn’t really matter.
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