Sunday, December 20, 2009
How to do a detailed oil painting: Entry 1
I decided to do something different and post a series of blogs on how I do a detailed oil painting entitled "Lunch with Grandpa". This approach will be different from my approach of doing a typical landscape. I will try to post updates of this painting as often as possible. But, this type of painting takes many, many hours and probably will take me a couple of months to complete. So...be patient! STEP 1: composition. This is a critical step as your oil painting will only be as good as your initial composition. Try to be as detailed as possible. It is OK to use technology such as a projector, as many artists use this approach to make sure perspective is correct. Now, another important consideration for a detailed painting with people is the type of canvas to use. I prefer in this case to use a cardboard panel, because they are very smooth and therefore easier to do your composition and to paint detail. For a landscape, this is usually not the case and one can use a stretched cotton canvas. For most of my landscapes I may only spend about 30 minutes more or less on the composition. This particular composition took me numerous hours as every square inch has to be accounted for. The next step once you have the drawing complete is I like to spray it with fixative so that the pencil rendering does not smear. Once dried, I then will apply a very thin layer of transparent iron oxide. In fact, I do this step for every painting I do, as it ensures a nice coverage of paint on the entire canvas. Anyways, I would recommend covering your canvas in this way always. OK, my next post probably will include some of the background painting once it is done.
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