How to Use Oil Colors

Try Oil Colors

Would you like to try painting with oil colors, but you’re not sure how to get started? Here are some basic materials and techniques for preparing, mixing and applying oil colors.

Things You'll Need

• 8 to 12 small tubes of oil colors
• Large tube of titanium white oil paint
• Palette board
• Palette knife
• Small to medium glass jars
• Variety of brushes from ¼-inch to 1-inch wide in different shapes
• Stretched white canvas
• Easel
• Small table or snack table
• Roll or stack of paper towels

Instructions

1. Prepare a palette to mix oil colors on. A piece of eighth-inch thick foam-core poster board about 8 by 10 inches is ideal. You can buy palette liner sheets to make it reusable by taping sheets onto your palette board.

2. Mix oil painting medium in a small glass jar or metal cup. Use an even mix of low-odor turpentine or mineral spirits and purified linseed oil. Pour a couple of ounces of low-odor mineral spirits in medium jar to clean brushes between color changes.

3. Squeeze a few inches of titanium white oil pigment into a mound on one corner of the palette. Squeeze blobs about ½-inch or less of each color pigment you plan to use, along the back edge of your palette.

4. Take a palette knife and scoop up a blob of white oil paint and place it near the front of the palette. Wipe of the palette knife and scoop a small blob of each colored oil paint you plan to mix.

5. 

   Dip your brush into the painting medium and saturate it. Use the moistened brush to start mixing colored paint with the white. Dab bits of color into the white and mix thoroughly with the brush. Continue adding different colors until you are satisfied with the hue.

6. Paint areas of the canvas that you’ve mixed the color for, using enough painting medium (turpentine or mineral spirits and linseed oil) to spread the paint to the desired thickness. Rinse your brush out in mineral spirits and wipe on a paper towel when changing oil paint colors.

7. Mix dark shades first when painting gradients or shadows, like the darker sky blue high above the horizon. Start with the darkest blue you need, then mix in more white as you paint down toward the horizon.

8. Use multiple colors when mixing, to achieve a wide range of hues. For example, make a sky blue with cerulean blue and ultramarine mixed in with white.

Tips & Warnings

• If you are mixing colors for a large area, like the sky, try to mix up enough paint for the whole area, so you avoid having to re-mix another matching batch.

• Cover your palette with plastic wrap when you end a painting session. Larger blobs of paint will be usable for a day or two if wrapped up.