GETTING STARTED WITH OILS

hey guys in today's video I wanted to talk to you about how to get started with oil things if you think my art before you know that I like to work with as many mediums as that can get my hands on and one of those mediums is oil paints and I personally am NOT the most versed in oils and I just know a couple of things that work for me and so I'm going to be telling you my advice on how to get started with oil paints I just wanted to give a disclaimer that I am NOT like a professional and I don't know a lot of technical aspects about oil painting I usually just use mediums that feel very comfortable for me and I go with the feel of them rather than technical aspects of how they are made but I have gathered a bunch of research and with help from Kerry from gamblin thank you so much I'm going to give you a lot of tips and advice on how to get started with oils if you are completely new to the subject this video is not sponsored I was send some supplies from charcoal and gamblin because I really love them and they spoiled me with lots of new paint and some new supplies and so I'm very thankful for them but it is not a sponsored video there is going to be a link in the description right at the top for a coupon code for Trico if you want to check that out I will have all the information down in the description and this is one of the videos that I would really recommend that you check out the description because I'm going to be leaving a lot of resources for where to find things so first off we have to talk about the materials that you'll be needing first we have brushes so long handle brushes are better for big paintings and short handle brushes are better for small paintings I personally prefer short handle brushes since my paintings are fairly small I like looking very close to my painting having a long handle kind of just like pokes me in the eye and then this piece I actually only used three brushes I used trekker brushes which are my absolute favorite I used a filbert size 10 for the base wash as well as the final rough brush strokes then I used a round size 6 for laying down colors and blending and finally around size 1 for details so I only used three brushes it was extremely simple and I can 100% recommend travel brushes if you'd like some really good quality brushes in general I really do like golden taklon brushes and so yeah link will be down in the description you can grab them with discount with the code down in the description and it's not an affiliate link or anything so I do not get a cut up money if you will buy these products I just really like them and I'm really happy that they gave me just count for you guys definitely you'll need a surface to mix your paints on I've mainly used wooden pallets before but glass is also a good mixing surface in this video I'm using some gray paper pallets up to meet at my trickle and I love them just because I don't have to worry about cleaning them up after I finish painting usually whenever I'm letting the painting dry I sort of forget about the palette or some of the paint on the palette is already dried and it makes removing the paint a little bit difficult for me you can also use a glass palette you can make it from a picture frame just use the glass and that and put a sheet of grey paper behind it and tape all the edges around with masking tape or with duct tape to make sure that you don't get any cuts that's a very inexpensive makeshift palette and you can just use like one of those little pallet scrapers to get rid of any dry paint on that palette but I personally can recommend these paper palettes if you're beginner I just think that they're super quick and easy to use and it's low maintenance next I would recommend a pallet knife they are very helpful when I started out I did not use the palette knife and I just mix with my brush but I don't really recommend that just because it will fray your brushes a tiny bit and when you make things there will be pain that'll be caught up right at the top of the brush and so it'll make the brush is a lot more difficult as well as not ensuring that the colors will mix very well so whenever you're going to be mixing all of your colors on the palette to begin with I would recommend using a palette knife and then as you're painting you can use your brush to mix colors on the palette but it's not going to be an intense amount of pigment that you need to be mixing I bought a super cheap set of palette knives off of Amazon I'm going to leave the link down in the description if you want to go check it out but I would recommend these they do what they're supposed to do and so I don't really have any complaints with them next you will need a surface to paint on I personally don't like stretch canvasses at all my very first oil painting was made on a stretched canvas and I didn't enjoy it and I personally prefer canvas panels to stretched canvas but in general I do like working on wooden panels the most if you're using a surface that has not been just sewed you will have to do it yourself usually you will have to sand it down so that me so you don't have the strokes from that gesso um the reason you will use gesso is to stop oil paints from penetrating into whatever surface you're going to be using and it will help the paint's adhere to the surface properly and give the painting longevity so because oils are not my main medium and as I said I am NOT extremely technical with my mediums and what I use I do usually buy already pre gesso boards or panels anything that I use I will buy it pre-primed basically because I don't really want to worry about doing that all myself so that's what I would recommend for you as well unless for some reason you want to just the light yourself I don't really know but I definitely always use something that is re pre-primed in this painting I'm using an oil gram panel for the first time which is interesting it is a 1/4 inch Baltic birch from truckle it is an amazing board this is the first time I'm used it and I really like the texture of it in general my ampersand boards that I use I use felt like a beauty quality I believe or it's their economy quality at any rate they are kind of smooth which is just a little bit difficult to get used to because the paint doesn't grip is properly on the surface and so for this board the paint does sort of adhere to wherever you put it it doesn't slip around they're not expensive either so I definitely recommend that you check out some of their birch panels or wooden panels at any rate I really like them you can also paint on linen but I've never done it so I can't really recommend it finally you're going to be needing paint and mediums and solvents I'm using artist grade gamblin paints and the reason that I can 100% recommend gamblin paints and mediums is that they are as non-toxic as possible there's kind of a misconception that when working with oil paints they are going to be toxic for you and a lot of oil painters professional oil painters anyway they will use gloves to protect themselves and the great thing about gamblin is that there is non-toxic as possible when working with oil paints sometimes there will be some minerals that are toxic to use such as there will be lead in some White's or Naples yellow in different brands because lead will kind of add a worm tone to the paint so that it's good for figure drawing but gambling does not use LED in their products and same with cadmium or Cobalt usually these pigments are pretty toxic and that's why a lot of professional painters will wear gloves when painting and the paint tubes are required to have like a little health warning on the back of them but the way gamblin formulates its paints is it cobalt and cadmium are both dangerous if inhaled and so they make sure that it doesn't flake and the only way that you can actually be harmed by these is if you inhale them so either if you spray them or if you stand them yourself and so for academy and you can even eat it and it's not going to affect you of course you're not supposed to eat your paints but you can which is interesting and the only color that can actually be pretty harmful even it's going to be the cobalt violet because there are going to be traces of cobalt left in your system but of course don't eat your paint because I don't even think it would taste that great the way they're formulated is that it can't actually seep into your skin and cause any damage that way and so I don't ever wear gloves because it doesn't harm my hands at all and you can just remove it with soap and water I don't know all the details so you can check their website out for more information but all in all they're pretty safe to use their mediums and solvents are also odorless and made as naturally as possible they use a lot of natural oils instead of mineral spirits in their mediums and solvents and so I actually in my last video I said that gamsol was highly flammable which is actually not the case it's not flammable and a good reason teams gamsol which is the one solvent that I 100% recommend if even if you don't buy gamblin paints I would recommend you get game salt because it is odorless and it's non-toxic as possible in general I would recommend that you try out gamblin products because of the fact that they're non-toxic especially if your skin is a little bit more sensitive it is a non-toxic brand and they try to be as healthy as possible so gamblin does offer student grade paints which are the 1980 aisle colors and they do have a beginner set that comes with a birch panel and a solvent free gel so that all costs 30% less than if you bought all the paints individually and that doesn't include the panel I will have a link to where you can get that as well and so that has all the colors that she would probably need as a beginner so I just want to talk briefly about why I do not recommend cheap oil paints and turpentine to use as your solvent because when I started our oil painting I used some very cheap oil colors that came with an easel you know how you can buy a non-professional easel and it'll come with some pretty inexpensive oil paints I'm not 100% sure of those were actual oil paints or if they were water mixable just because the packaging didn't say those colors felt very like glue and they were extremely chunky and hard to mix and even with the turpentine which has a lot of vapors and has a very strong odor and you really need to use in a well-ventilated area or it will make you very lightheaded the combination of all that did not help to create a good experience with painting and the color payoff for those paints was horrible you really needed to use basically the whole tube to get any color so I definitely recommend some brand name student quality paints rather than some very cheap no-name brands usually I do advocate for spending less on art supplies but I think that oil paints are the exception because you're still going to be paying a pretty big amount of money on whichever oil paints you are gonna buy so you might as well buy a brand name and the student grade quality paints rather than something that is just not gonna work for you and if you do not want to get student grade paint and you want artist grade I'm not 100 percent sure about the difference between those next kind of paint but I know that any paint that has the word hue in it in general it's gonna be a little bit less expensive and that can be for one of two reasons it either has a lower concentration of pigment and more filler in them so you do get a little bit less of a color payoff but as a beginner that's totally fine with you or it can actually be because the color has been mixed from a couple of different pigments and it closely resembles the original pigment while not using that pigment so that can be because either the original pigment is toxic such as in cadmium red deep cadmium can be toxic so Academy and red deep hue is going to be made with different pigments but mixed to resemble the original one or it can be because the original pigments are very rare nowadays and they can't be found so they just make something that's what substitute whatever you decide to buy I would rather recommend student quality paints or paints that are a little bit cheaper with the word hue in them rather than really cheap paints for mediums and solvents you'll basically means gamsol it thins your paints and increases transparency and decreases dry time it will clean your brushes and your palate and it is also reusable I've been using Hanzel for since I switched off turpentine because that was horrible and for this piece I also we used gal kit for the first time which made the paint thinner but at the same time still very opaque and I know it's supposed to increase transparency but for me it just kept a paint pretty opaque which I liked and I don't know why I probably used it wrong I have no idea but I just I still liked it and it will decrease the dry time a lot it kind of has a consistency like a very light syrup so it's a little bit more sticky and incorporating it is a little bit strange just because this is the first time that I've used it but I will definitely be incorporating it again into my paintings just because it kind of adds a creamy texture to the paint's rather than how cam'st all just spins them out when setting up your palate it's useful to set it up chromatically I'm left-handed so I started it the opposite way that a right-handed person would started with so I started with a black white agreeing and then I worked my way to a yellow if you're right-handed you will just set it up the ups away from a yellow to the white when mixing paints it's important to remember the fat over lean is this big concept in oil painting you use more solvent for the thin under layers and as you paint more layers on top you begin increasing the fat by using color straight out of the tube with a medium rather than with Jamsil for instance you use Galkin instead of gamsol so after you have all of your supplies and everything set up you're going to want to have a base sketch for your painting and then use a light wash of color made with a lot of solvent to begin establishing tones I would recommend that or even buying boards that have a gray or a cool brown tone to begin with because it is much easier to have tones that are correct on a medium neutral kind of colored surface rather than on white if you paint directly on a white a lot of times it's a little bit more difficult to mix properly because you always have a feeling that the colors that you're mixing are a little bit too dark and so you will tend to lighten up the colors until they are too light in the grand scheme of things they would be too light and so it's pretty important to lay down your darkest darks when painting at the beginning just so that you can gauge the contrast between the colors that you want in your piece and for me personally whenever I started mixing oil paints I would always mix them a little bit too light just in general I do that I mix skin tones a little bit lighter than they're supposed to be so whenever I mix think the gray paper will help balance that off so I don't have to mix on a white surface and also I always mix a little bit darker than I think I need and in the end that turns out to be exactly what I do need so I don't really trust my instincts I mix the color a little bit darker than I think I would need when putting down colors I try to set colors where I want them to be and then I'll blend the edges between those colors this is much easier than setting down a base color for all the skin for example and then trying to go in and add shadows and highlights if you do that if you try to mix over top of that the shadows and the highlights will be much harder to achieve because they will mix in with the tone underneath and in general I like to paint Alla Prima so everything all in one sitting I don't exactly like to wait for layers to dry in my paintings and so I don't know what you would prefer but personally that's what I prefer and so whenever you are painting especially Alla Prima it's nice to set down colors exactly where you'd want them to be and then you just blend to the edges between those different tones after you finished setting them down I would also recommend using reference for your pieces and trying to isolate colors when you want to mix them don't be distracted by what you think the color should be just try to analyze undertones for the color that you're gonna mix for example when painting darker skin tones like in this piece I try to analyze what colors go together to create the different tones in the piece so I did not just use a straight-up Brown for the whole piece obviously and I didn't just add white to lighten it or black to darken it for instance I added a lot of greens purples and blues and even reds and yellows to the Browns and the whites to be able to create different tones with a lot more interest in the piece so I would recommend that you do ahead to green and blue sparingly into your skin tones they will mute them a little bit if you just use the red and the yellow and white you're going to have a very saturated skin tone and adding some green is going to tone it down a little bit and make it a little bit more lifelike I would also recommend having a brown such as a burnt umber burnt sienna or asphaltum to mix into your skin tones it's going to make it a lot easier to for me personally use a burnt sienna with a little bit of a white a little bit of a green to create the skin tone rather than just having to mix from a red and a yellow and a white and then a green and a blue so I find that having a brown to begin with is going to help you a little bit lastly to varnish your painting I would recommend camphor the thing about varnishing paintings is a lot of times on Instagram you see all the artists that do the really pretty pouring varnish unto the canvas or your surface and then they use a brush to spread it around and that's actually not a good way to apply your varnish so what I just wanted to show you that the proper way to do it is to get an actual proper jar and took up a varnish brush put the varnish in the jar use the brush to grab the varnish and then you paint it onto your surface so I just thought I would give youth a little tip the little Instagram videos are actually not really great for the painting and that's not the best way to apply the varnish so there you go so I'm sorry this video is really long I just talked about the very basics about getting started with oil paints if you'd like a part two in which I discuss more mixing colors or what colors you can get started off with if you don't want to buy an introductory set and you want to buy your own individual tubes let me know down in the comments and I will possibly make a part two including some color mixing theory and some more tricks about how to actually paint I hope this video was helpful for you and it gave you a little bit of a push in the right direction if you'd like to try some oil paints I can just say that I personally do really like to use gamblin paints a lot of professional artists will use gamblin paints and I do like try Co brushes if you've seen me the past I do like them for their quality however there are going to be some cheaper alternatives out there although both gamblin and trickle are not expensive brands you know they're just good quality they're a little bit more pricey than your average seller on Amazon but they are extremely good quality and so I would recommend them so yeah links will be down in the description please check everything out because I'm gonna have a lot of resources to how to set up your pallets what colors you need and paints and where to get your pallets and all that jazz and thank you for watching this was a really long video I hope you enjoyed it if you did please leave me a thumbs up and subscribe for more videos because I put them out every single Sunday I will talk to you guys next week bye

Channel: Sara Tepes

Views: 606,508

Rating: 4.9750719 out of 5

Keywords: art, drawing, painting, oils, oil painting, beginners art, art for beginners, art tutorial, oil painting timelapse, art timelapse, art process, oil painting process

Id: J5ZNBMMhbLo

Length: 18min 32sec (1112 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 30 2018