How to Use Oil-Based Paints
Oil paints became popularly used during the Renaissance, when a growing need for realism in art rendered tempera paints insufficient. Artists made their own oil paints by grinding pigments and mixing them with oil. By the mid-19th century, oil paints were commercially available in tubes, making them a convenient medium for all painters. Today, the process of painting with oil is much the same as it was a hundred years ago. For some, it is intuitive, while others are intimidated. Oil paints do require some knowledge of the process, although with some experimentation, using them should begin to come naturally.
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Instructions
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Set up your materials in a well-ventilated space. Oil paints and turpentine have a powerful smell that may be overwhelming in small, indoor spaces.
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Practice on canvas board instead of professional-grade canvas. Canvas board is cheaper. Prime the canvas with an application of white acrylic paint. When painting with oil paints on canvas, always buy preprimed canvases, or prime the raw canvas yourself before using it. Over time, oil paint will degrade an unprimed canvas.
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Apply oil paint to a canvas straight from a tube or mixed with other oil paints. You can also thin it with turpentine or mix it with "medium" (oil) to spread across the canvas easily. Experiment with these methods before beginning your first painting. Oil will change the consistency of the paint in a way that is visible on the canvas and noticeable while you paint. Turpentine will cause oil paint to become runny and transparent. However, oil paint applied directly from a tube may not spread easily onto a canvas. This will cause paint to be unevenly distributed and it may waste paint.
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Paint fat over lean. "Lean" paint is paint that has been thinned with turpentine, and "fat" oil paint is paint directly from the tube, or paint that has been mixed with oil. Fat dries slower than lean. If your top layers dry faster than your layers underneath, when the layers underneath finally do dry (and shrink), they will crack the layers on top. So, the layers on the bottom must be faster drying than the layers on top, and fat must be painted over lean. Start with the primary colors, as well as black and white, and mix them to your desired colors.
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Scrub your paintbrushes with turpentine before soaping them up at the sink. Turpentine will remove the majority of the paint; water will not. Oil paint left on paintbrushes will ruin the brushes.
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