Picking an Oil Painting Subject

Series Summary

Painting is the art of using a pigmented medium to create a picture of reality filtered through the imagination, the senses, emotions, and life experience. Artists the world over have multiplied the uses of painting as a vital mode of human expression, whether recording history, retelling myth and legend, expressing religious fervor, or exploring the unknown. From early history to the present, we have records of men and women making graphic representations of their world, showing their understanding and their curiosity. In this free video series, our expert artist will show you how to make a landscape oil painting. This complicated art takes practice and instructions from an expert is usually necessary. You will learn how to pick and prepare your oil paints and paint brushes, as well as how to pick a subject for your oil painting, in this case a landscape. You will then get step by step instructions on sketching out your oil painting, blocking colors and adding large portions of paint to the canvas. You will get tips on adding detail and highlights as well. If you love oil painting and want to try your hand at a landscape picture, let our expert take you through the steps.

Video Transcript

"Hello, I'm Stevie Moore. Welcome to my studio here at the Art Ecstatic in Lexington, Kentucky. In order to do a studio painting in oils, we're going to need good reference materials; it's probably the paramount of importance in achieving a good painting. This is not a plain air painting, in which we would be painting outdoors in real time; but rather a studio painting in which we're going to use reference materials in our studio, in order to realize a wooded scene in oils, later. These are my photographs that I took; the front range of the Denver Colorado Rockies, this is a place called Argentine Pass. When you select your subject matter of a wooded scene, make sure you take into account the fact that you're going to want three plains in your photograph or picture that you select. You're going to want a background, mid-ground, and a foreground. Theses will become very important when we actually start laying down color and forming paint on the canvas. Make sure you also don't infringe on any copyright laws when reproducing a painting or a photograph. I try to use my own photographs as much as possible. Make sure you have good color balance and good contrast; always good things that you want to see in your painting, look for that in the photograph you select. Make sure you don't select a bland and boring photograph and expect to make an interesting painting from it. Interesting paintings come from interesting photographs. And also, don't feel that you have to use one and only one photograph or picture as a reference material. You can use hundreds if you like, for different portions and different sections of the painting, to achieve your end result."