Journal of My Oil Painting Techniques

I practiced the direct oil painting techniques by painting my friend Meredith for couple of hours today.

She had been hanging out at the beach and looked good tanned. Yesterday, I asked her to bring me some of her pencils because I originally was planning on doing a drawing, and she brought a bunch of nice pencils for me to use, but at the last minute I changed my mind as I suddenly felt the need to practice my oil painting techniques.

First I used a large filbert brush and with the burnt umber wash, laid in the overall gesture and the placement of the figure, focusing on the composition. I did not worry about accuracies or likenesses at this point, but rather tried to figure out how I would like the portrait painting to look at the end. I used the large brush to easily and quickly block in any tones or large shapes.

After that, I began to throw on the colors. It is a good idea to start the colors only after you have established a solid drawing, and there is even a quote by Ingres saying that the drawing is 80% of painting, or something like that, but I felt a bit impatient today and just took my chances. A lot of old masters’ oil painting techniques involved vigorous drawing or monochrome under-painting before proceeding with the colors.
I mixed the average shadow-side flesh tone, with cadmium red, ultramarine blue, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow light, burnt umber, and titanium white. I still did not care about likenesses or accuracies but just proceeded as if i was a sculptor throwing on globs of clay to start a sculpture.

I then modelled the face a bit more, mixing the average light side of the head, indicating the light side to separate from the shadow side to create contrast. I also began thinking more about achieving the likeness and tried my best to have the paints fall onto right places.
Then I observed her figure and mixed up a good portion of its averaged flesh tone. There was a lot of different colors and other variations happening within the body, but I just averaged it all out and blocked it in with that paint. This averaging out method is one of the most valuable oil painting techniques I have learned while studying at the Art Students League. It’s really a great shortcut, as it simplifies things and focuses on less is more, making the painting progress a lot faster.

Then I went back to the face and started really working on it. I added the features and more color and value variations. I also modelled the forms and planes of the face more. I used the number 2 filbert brush now, and tried not to go any smaller than that, using the edges of the filbert to do the details instead of picking up a tiny pointed brush (even though it was tempting). I find that using the edges of large brush for the details actually create much more sculptural effect.
Since the light was a natural light coming in from the window, I used the ultramarine and cereulean blue mixed with lots of titanium white to hit the lightest accents on the light side of the face. I also mixed the darkest tone using burnt unber and ultramarine blue, to hit some dark accents along the eyes, and the edge of the face on the shadow side, to have the face come forward more. I never like using the black paints but always mix dark complementing colors to create the darks.

I added the hair with simple indications, then went back to the figure, to model it out some more. I added more colors, values and some alterings on the drawing as well. I liked the tanlines on her breast region and used contrasting colors to achieve the tanline effect. I also started indicating some background as well because I didn’t want the figure to seem like it’s foating.

Then I just started to render things out a lot more, blending areas, polishing and adding more crisp details, varying the edge softnesses, etc. This polishing up stage is always the most time consuming but also the most easy and fun stage as well, since everything has been laid down and now all you would have to do is just try and make it look good and have fun with it.

It was nice working on this alla-prima nude painting and experiment with the direct wet on wet oil painting techniques. Next time, I will continue and try to make this piece more realistic. My paintings always start out sort of impressionistic then proceed to becoming more and more realistic as I keep working on them. That’s because I paint as if sculpting, starting out with a glob of clay, modelling it from there. I think this sculptor-like approach produce more life-like paintings than other methods that focuses on 2-dimensional aspects. But the best way is to combine them both, so I am kind of trying to learn those 2-dimensional approaches, such as measuring techniques, or any oil painting techniques that focuses on the shapes rather than forms.