Video: How to Start an Oil Painting

Learn how to start an oil painting this free instructional video art lesson on oil painting.

Video Transcript

Okay, so to start the process, I'm working on a panel, a canvas panel. And this is canvas mounted on a board. That's our cogel. A lot of plener painters use it, a lot of miniature artists use it as well. I'm taking another look at my image. I'm using a little bit of mineral spirits on my brush. I'm going to start out with thin paint. I don't want to get too thick. This isn't....I experiment sometimes with jumping in with a palate knife, but unless I want to keep the initial paint kind of thin, I've got a little ultramarine and white is all I'm using for this first look at it. So that's pretty loose pain and I'm looking at...how light is that area going to be that's in the distance, very far in the distance. I'm kind of starting up in that corner. And I'm just looking at blocking in and a little bit of drawing where the big shapes are. I'm squinting at the photograph, trying to just get these large shapes as I work. I've got some dark shapes in the foreground here. And I'm going to start seeing that figure...I like the way it's placed out of center on that third of the painting to the right. I'm kind of looking at where that figure is going to live here.

How to Start an Oil Painting

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