General Painting Tips

Use white spirit to thin oil for 'underpainting'. This can be used to dilute oils for thin painting also. Underpainting is when you map out in thin oil or thin acrylic your composition in a tonal way, i.e. when you put in the dark and light bits of your composition.

Use Artist's medium for extending oils. You can use white spirit or turpentine also, depending on the effect you want to achieve and how deep your pockets are!

Use Liquin for glazes.

REMEMBER Use thin paint first and then build up layers using thicker paint. This method is called 'fat over lean'. If you need to adjust colours after the thick layers have been put on you can do this by using a glazing medium. Usually Liquin will do the trick. If you try to use just thinned oil paint it will crack as the thick layers dry out underneath, this is advice for oils. You can underpaint using watered down acrylic paint and then, when it is dry you can use oil paint over it. Do not use oil over thick acrylic as this is a recipe for disaster. It just won't work. The acrylic will cause all sorts of cracking problems. You cannot use acrylic over oil.

One common problem for beginners is where one patch of colour lies next to another giving the impression of 'painting by numbers'. Use your fan brush to blend the lines so that they blur slightly. The fan brush will become your true friend when using oil, in particular, as it is useful for areas of painting that are required to be smooth and uniform. Put the colour or colours on and blend them on the support using the fan brush.

When you have finished a painting session using oil paint you can take off the excess oil by putting a sheet of newspaper over the painting and gently pressing it onto the painting. Then you carefully take off the paper. This is called 'tonking' after a Royal Academician called Tonks who used this method. It makes it easier to work on the painting the next time you want to.

It will repay you to try mixing colours just to see what happens. Firstly, try using a colour and white only, you would be surprised how they differ then try mixing just two colours together and then three. Keep a small swatch of each attempt and label them with the colours you have used to make that particular mix. You can do this on pieces of paper.

Keep your palette simple. Use as few colours as you can get away with, this way you won't get overwhelmed and confused.

If you're not sure how a colour will look on a picture, mix it on the palette and put some on the palette knife. Hold the knife near to the place you want to use the colour and see how it looks against the others. Also, you can use the same method holding the knife in front of the thing you are trying to portray and see how the colour compares. Sometimes it helps if you paint a small piece of paper with the colour and stick it on the painting. Go away for a few minutes and then have a look to see if it's the right colour and tone.

When trying to get tones set up on a work, move back several paces from the painting and half close your eyes. Look at the subject you are painting and then at the painting itself. It helps enormously to keep moving back and forth when working on a painting as this gives you a better impression of the work in progress and allows you to balance up the tones and colours.

Do not work exclusively on one part of a painting for a long time, try to see the painting in an overall way and work on different areas simultaneously. Look upon it as a series of light and dark areas, as an object in itself and not a depiction of something i.e. don't think of a vase of flowers as a vase of flowers, think of it in terms of shapes, tones and colours, this way the painting will build up more easily. Do not concern yourself with detail too early on, let this come as the painting progresses. Remember to keep half closing your eyes and stepping back from the work from time to time. Sometimes it will feel more like dancing than painting.