Painting Process - Step 1 - Tools Of The Trade

There are a few standard tools and materials which I feel are essential for painting with oils.
1.A good-sized wooden palette. Some artists prefer disposable paper palettes, however I feel mixing paints on white surfaces can make it too difficult to mix tones and hues. As the image below demonstrates, high contrast backgrounds can effect the way a colour is perceived (i.e. colours look darker on lighter backgrounds, and inversely look lighter on darker backgrounds).





2.Paint mediums. There are various oil paint mediums available on the market. I use linseed oil as an additive to my oil paints when I need to slow down the drying process. It also adds gloss to colours.
3.Solvents. I use odourless solvents to thin my paint as well as cleaning my brushes.
Apparently turpentine is quite toxic so I avoid it. Combining paint, solvent and a bit of linseed oil is great for glazing.
4.A palette knife is a great tool for mixing and applying paint to a surface. As a painting implement, it's great for slapping on and scraping paint to produce interesting results. I've only just started experimenting with palette knives. So far the results are promising.
5.There are a myriad of different brushes on the market: synthetic, sable, hog, filbert, round, square, etc. At the moment I'm mainly using synthetic square and round brushes and a few hog bristle square brushes. I'm very rough on my brushes usually, which tends to wear away the hogs bristles very quickly.
6.Paints. I won't go into brands; there are many and you always get what you pay for. What I will talk about is the basic oil paint palette or range of colours. Every school of art has its own range; some more traditional than others. As a result of my own experimentation, my basic palette consists of ivory black, burnt umber, yellow ochre, raw sienna, cobalt blue, titanium white, cadmium red, cadmium yellow, alizarin red, ultramarine, cerulean blue and terre verte. Of course, I own more colours, but they are not used as frequently.

7.Painting surfaces. Prehistoric man used ground minerals mixed with water and saliva to paint on cave walls. For better or for worse, we can now basically paint on anything that can be tied down for a few minutes. I'm a fan of canvas boards and stretched canvas. It's traditional and not so exciting, but at the moment the surface is not a priority in my art. However, preparing the surface is very important. An acrylic primer should be applied to a non-primed surface to prepare it for the oil paints. If you don't, the paint will bleed into the canvas. The more coats of primer, the less the canvas weave will be noticeable and the smoother the surface.

In my next post I talk about subject choice for a recent painting.