How to Paint Washes in Oils

Washes are a common technique used in the art of oil painting.

The style of wash painting in ink was developed by the ancient Chinese landscape painters. While it's usually associated with watercolor or ink, painting washes of color in oil has been popular since oil paintings' earliest days during the Renaissance. Painting in oil was first widely popularized by the Flemish artist Jan Van Eyck in the 1420s. According to the German monk Theophilus, oil painting itself was invented around 1100. Wash painting was traditionally used as an underpainting technique in realistic pictures of figures, landscapes and still lifes. Impressionists and modern artists produced finished wash paintings in oil. Pop artists and Abstract Impressionists, particularly the Color Field painters, made extensive use of oil paint color washes in their paintings.

Things You'll Need

• Oil paints
• Artist's brushes
• Canvas
• Paper
• Mixing palette
• Turpentine
• Linseed oil
• Glass containers

Instructions

1. Assemble your materials within easy reach in your work area. Use larger, flat-tipped brushes for washes. Keep the volatile solvents turpentine and linseed oil sealed in glass jars until you're ready to use them. Prepare your canvas ahead of time with gesso applied in successively thinner layers. Sand between the layers. Paint oil washes on thick paper, illustration board, masonite or canvas.

2. Mix up your paint on the palette with a large proportion of linseed oil or turpentine to oil paint. Dilute the paint with linseed oil for painting thick washes. It dries more slowly, but produces a nice finish to your painting. Use turpentine for very thin washes of transparent to translucent layers of color. Oil paint thinned with turpentine dries quickly with a watercolor-like appearance.

3. Load your brush up with the thinned-out paint and apply it to your painting surface. Spread out the paint in puddles of color that you push across the canvas with your brush. Control the pools of paint to stay within the drawing of your composition. Use the washes as an underpainting to provide the foundation of your picture or for later overpainting. Use muted earth colors and shades of gray when you paint in washes as an underpainted guide to the value and color scale of the picture.

4. Grade your wash when painting in large background areas, or blocking in color schemes and the tonal structure of your picture. Tone grade the wash by making one end darker than the other. Mix in darker colors while painting the wash to suggest shadows and the edges of forms. Lay in multicolored washes by adding different colors to the wash as you paint. Clean your brush between colors to avoid a muddy look. Paint wet-in-wet into the wash with different colors.

5. Paint over the wash areas with brighter, more opaque colors to finish your painting if you're using washes as underpaintings. Let areas of the underpainting show through to add colors and touches of drawing to your composition. Use the thin washes of oil paint in a glazing technique to build up your final finish if you're doing a wash painting from beginning to end. Paint layer after layer of pure color oil washes to build up your color effects. Use washes to form different color combinations without mixing your colors on the palette.

Tips & Warnings

• Study the work of Mark Rothko, Jules Olitski, Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler for ideas on how to paint washes in oil.

• Don't thin your paint too much, or the washes will get runny and hard to control.

References

• Wet Canvas: A Wash Technique of Oil Painting for Fantasy and Surrealism
• The Oxford Dictionary of Art: Color Field Painting
• Watercolor Pating: Painting a Graded Watercolor Wash