Oil Paints and Painting

Artists’ oil colours are created by mixing dry powder pigments with particular refined linseed oil until the substance reaches a stiff paste texture and then grinding it with powerful friction in steel roller mills. The smoothness of the shade is important. The common standard is a smooth, buttery paste, not stringy or long or tacky. When a more flowing or mobile quality is required by the artist, a liquid painting medium such as pure gum turpentine has to be mixed with the mixture. If the artist wants to expediate drying, a siccative, or liquid drier, is usually used.

Top-grade brushes are sold in two types: red sable (from varying members of the weasel family) and chemically whitened hog bristles. They are made in in numbered sizes for each of four regular shapes: round (pointed), flat, bright (flat but is shorter and not as supple), and oval (flat shape but bluntly pointed). Red sable brushes are usually used for a smoother, detailed type of brushwork. The painting knife, a finely tempered, skinny version of an palette knife, is a useful item for painting oil colours in a robust style.

The usual support for oil painting is a canvas created from pure European linen of strong close weave. A canvas is cut to the desired size and stretched over a frame, usually a wooden frame, to which it is secured with tacks or, during the 20th century, by staples. If the artist desires to lower the absorbency of the canvas fabric and to create a consistent surface, a primer or ground might be applied and allowed to dry before painting begins. The most generally seen primers for this are gesso, rabbit-skin glue, and lead white. If density and a smooth consistency are preferred rather than elasticity and texture, a wooden or processed paperboard panel, sized or primed, will be used. A number of other supports, like paper and different textiles and metals, have been tried.

A layer of paint varnish is usually set on to a completed oil painting to protect it from atmospheric attacks, minor abrasions, or an injurious accumulation of dirt. This varnish might be removed safely by experts with use of isopropyl alcohol and such household solvents. The varnish film also brings the surface to a full lustre and takes the tone and colour intensity virtually to the vibrancy first formed by the artist in wet paint. Some contemporary painters, especially those who don’t favour deep, intense colouring, and prefer a mat, or lustreless, finish in the oil paintings.

The majority of oil paintings created prior to the 19th century were created in layers. The first was a blank, uniform field of thin paint known as a ground. The ground graduated the gleam of the primer and formed a base of colour on which to paint. The shapes and objects in the painting would be roughly blocked in with shades of white, along with gray or neutral green, red, or brown. The eventuating field of monochromatic colours were termed the underpainting. Forms could then be given definition using either paint or scumbles, which are irregular, thinly applied layers of opaque pigment that can impart a whole lot of effects. For the final stage, transparent layers of pure colour called glazes could be employed to create luminosity, depth, and brilliance to the forms, and highlights could be defined with thick, textured patches of paint known as impastos.

Oil as a medium for painting is recorded circa the 11th century. The technique of easel painting with oil colours, however, came directly from 15th-century tempera-painting techniques. Simple improvements in the process of refining linseed oil and the availability of volatile solvents from 1400 coincided with a need for some medium other than pure egg-yolk tempera, to meet the contemporary requirements of the Renaissance (see tempera painting). Initially, oil paints and varnishes were used to glaze tempera panels that were painted with their typical linear draftsmanship. The technically vibrant, gem-like paintings from the 15th-century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck, for example, were perfected in this new technique.

Throughout the 16th century, oil colour emerged as the fundamental painting material in Venice. At the end of the century, Venetian painters had become proficient in utilising the fundamental aspects of oil painting, notably in their employment of a number of layers of glaze. Canvas, after a long era of growth, topped wood panelling as the preferred support.

A 17th-century master of the oil technique was Velázquez, a Spanish painter in the Venetian tradition, whose highly economical but certain brushstrokes have often been copied, notably in portraiture. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens challenged the norm in the style in which he loaded his light colours opaquely, to juxtapose his thin, transparent darks and shadows. A third remarkable 17th-century master of oil painting was the Dutch painter Rembrandt. In his art, a single brushstroke can effectively depict form; cumulative strokes give great textural depth, with a combination of the rough and the smooth, the thick and the thin. A field of loaded whites and transparent darks was fully enhanced by glazing, blendings, and highly controlled impastos.

Other notable influences on easel painting are the smooth, thinly painted, deliberately planned, tight appearances. A great many admired works (e.g., like those of Johannes Vermeer) were completed with smooth gradations and blends of tones to achieve subtle forms and delicate colour variations.

The technical requirements of some schools of modern painting cannot be achieved by traditional genres and techniques, however. Many abstract painters - as well as some contemporary painters who use these traditional styles - have expressed a desire for an entirely different plastic flow or viscosity that cannot be created from oil paint and its conventional additives. Some want a wider range of thick and/or thin applications and a quicker rate of drying. Some have mixed coarsely grained materials with the colours to create textures, some are using oil paints in heavier thickness than before, and many have turned to the use of acrylic paints, because they are more versatile and dry speedily.

Interested in oil painting? For art supplies Brisbane, including canvas art supplies and artists supplies, visit or call the Discount Art Warehouse.

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