Journal of My Oil Painting Techniques

I am writing more about the still life oil painting techniques I have started yesterday.

As I was working more on the piece, I realized how difficult it is to achieve the accuracies without any means of measuring and just by using your visual analysis. I thought still lifes should be easy for me since I have been practicing mostly with the complex form of the human figure, but I realized I was wrong.

I struggled with the drawing a lot, trying to make it as accurate and realistic as possible. I had to go through a lot of series of corrections and alterations. I learned that it makes a huge difference when you look at the painting from a distance, instead of always working right in front of it. So I set the easel at a distance from me and observed it from the distance and went up to the canvas to make a couple marks. I believe this was one of John Singer Sargent’s oil painting techniques.

Observing the painting from a distance forced me to omit the small, insignificant details and look for the marks that would really matter and make the most difference to the piece. The progress is very slow with this method, but I think it is the best way to achieve accuracies without the measuring tools.I feel that it is impossible to get everything very accurate right in front of the canvas, unless you are working very small.

The method helped me fix a lot of mistakes and gave me a new simplified vision of the objects in front of me. The paint layer is becoming rather thick and creating a lot of textures. It became harder to define the piece in detail due to the thick and muddy paint layer. I think I may have to wait till it dries completely before continuing again.

I worked the most on the brush, the top part of it. The hair of the brush would need a lot more detailing to make it look convincing. I have long ways to go with this still life painting. I think it would be important to work on the texture variations, the wood, plastic, hair, metal, etc.

Nonetheless, I am learning a lot about oil painting techniques from this painstaking process of correcting and refining.