1oilpainting.com | oil painting techniques and lessons » Uncategorized

Oil painting formula – table of contents

Ethan — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:23:37 +0000

One of my students who has “Oil Painting Formula” took it upon himself to make a table of contents for the program. Something I forgot to include.

Thanks Phil S. from Australia. He’s a designer so he even put “crop marks” on the design so it can be printed.

You can see EXACTLY what is in “Oil Painting Formula”

He also sent me this email…

Thanks very much for your ‘Oil Painting Formula’ DVDs. They are brilliant and my work has improved 200%.

If you don’t mind a comment that I would like to pass onto you about your DVDs. Attached is a table of contents that would help customers from having to go through each DVD to find specific information that they need immediately.

Since you have 7 DVDs in 8 sleeves, the extra sleeve left over could contain the table of contents. I’ve advanced all my DVDs to have the contents on the first sleeve.

Hope this helps.

Phil S

—————

Thank you Phil.

Begin an Oil Painting

Ethan — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:36:31 +0000

I made this sample video special for this blog. It was made to give you a sense of the beginning steps of just 1 variations of the process part of “Oil Painting Formula”

You’ll see placement, drawing, and underpainting. 3 key steps in the oil painting formula that will have you painting with confidence, knowing exactly every stage of the painting process.

oil painting techniques procedures and methods

Ethan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:56:03 +0000

Here is a video explaining all the parts of the oil painting formula

Click Here to see the oil painting formula video training program in detail

Click Here to download the Oil Painting Formula Procedures “Cheat Sheet”

Take a Shopping Trip With Me

Ethan — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 12:31:54 +0000

When you take up oil painting, you’re going to have to have to buy oil painting supplies. Some of these supplies can be quite expensive. Especially if you want to make good paintings.

Now, some of you might have received supplies as a gift, or have them laying around for awhile. That’s fine too, but not all supplies are created equal.

For example, I was at my in-laws place for the holidays and they had a dinner party. One of the guests prepared soup from scratch. It was delicious. They made the broth from a bunch of chicken bones. It takes hours to make and it was well worth it as it was delicious.

We all started joking about his soup being good, but it can’t compare to campbells or progresso. Those soups would have taken just a few minutes to heat up from a can, but they wouldn’t have been near the same quality as the home made soup.

To make the home made soup, one needed to buy special ingredients, that perhaps cost more than a few cans of progresso, but it is the only way to make that delicious soup. You’d never get that from soup in a can.

It’s the same with oil painting supplies.

Also, if you think you can learn to oil paint without spending a decent amount of money on supplies, you are mistaken.

I thought you might want to come with me on a shopping trip for oil painting materials and see how much is spent.

Let’s buy our supplies

I don’t want this to be a huge shopping trip. After all, I don’t have a lot of money to spend, right? So I will start with brushes.

In bristle brushes, I need to get two number 4 brushes, a new number 6 and two number 8’s. I also need 2 new small sable brushes.

I need some paints too. Some more flake white, a cadmium red, and yellow ochre, and a burnt umber.

I need canvas. I personally buy rolls of unprimed canvas as well as oil primed canvas. I never buy pre-stretched canvas in a package, as these canvases are junk to be honest. Actually, it’s not the canvas that is junky, but how they are prepared.

“But, I don’t want to go through preparing a canvas and all that…It’s too complicated and too much work”

I know that argument, but listen…If you paint on crappy surfaces, you’re going to have crappy paintings. The old master paintings you admire are not on crappy canvases. You will never achieve the look of those paintings with cheap and badly prepared canvas – plain and simple.

At the very least you could buy pre-packaged canvas and add extra priming layers to it. Oil Painting Formula covers a complete video demonstration of this plus so much more.

You’ll be amazed at the immediate difference in the look of your paintings and the ease of painting.

So for the sake of this article, let’s say I need to buy 4 canvases all mid size, around 18 x 24 inches. You will also need a can of priming paint to prepare these canvases.

And let’s say I need a bottle of oil as well.

Ok, let’s total the shopping trip. I’ll use Mister Art as the store I am buying from.

They are a pretty popular online store – and a discount store. Now, I personally do not order form them. I just about always get my materials in person from stores in my area. But I wanted to do this experiment so anyone can follow my experiment for themselves online and even try it for yourself.

Buying brushes and paint

The brush sizes I wanted were not all in stock (see, I didn’t cheat for this) so I ended up getting the following:

3 – number 3 bristle flat,
2 – number 10 bristle flat
1 – number 12 bristle flat.

I also got two number 4 real sable brushes. Ok, that’s it for brushes. Not a lot at all. And I am getting them at a discount art supply store, and my total so far is $46.29

I got the 4 tubes of paint I wanted. I chose grumbacher for this experiment. They are not usually the brand I buy, but they are popular and they were discounted more than the others. For this experiment, I am trying to spend as little as possible.

Also, they didn’t have a large tube of flake white (the white I prefer) so I substituted Titanium white. And you always buy a larger tube of white because it is used so much.

So, the total so far is $80.13.

Buying canvas

I got 4 frederix pre-streched canvases. 2 16×20 inches and 2 18×24 inches. I highly do not recommend these canvases, but for the sake of this article I wanted to keep it cheap. My total is now $106.63.

But, remember, I would recommend buying a roll of canvas, but that’s more expensive but, of course, makes better paintings and makes the painting process easier. You be the judge if it worth the extra money. You already know my opinion on this.

Remember, when you buy pre-stretched canvases, you absolutely MUST add a priming layer to them. If you don’t, I have to conclude that you are not following the instruction I am trying to give you.

It’s also then likely you are not following other parts of my instruction. Just picking and choosing which you will follow, and then you will not achieve the results you are after.

Many times, people who do this can’t figure out why they are not achieving the results they want and my instruction gets branded as “didn’t work”. You can be sure nobody wants that.

So back to the shopping trip…

I added a small 8oz can of oil priming to my cart. I also added an 8oz bottle of refined linseed oil and my total comes to $131.71. Add in shipping and my total comes to $145.69

So, I went shopping for just a few supplies and spent $145.69.

If you have no supplies at all, these are not enough to get started. This is just a shopping trip of someone who is looking to add to the supplies they already have.

If you have to start from scratch, you will spend more, perhaps double.

So I just wanted to take you on a real life shopping trip and show you how much you will easily spend.

Of course, now that you have all these supplies most people are never taught how to really use them.

I know you don’t want to just play around with this expensive stuff like a kid. You’ll end up wasting the supplies and getting nothing out of it.

You’ll use up the paint, wear out the brushes, and waste the canvas on another bad painting. and have nothing to show for it. Not a painting you are proud of or even some newly acquired knowledge that you can put to use for your next painting.

This is why it pays to take time and invest some money in good oil painting training.

Especially if you consider this more than a hobby.

There are plenty of other sites online that will teach you to make “hobby” paintings. Those 27 minute landscapes that don’t distinguish between cheap quality materials such as cheap paint and real artist quality paint.

But, that’s not what this is about. This is about traditional oil painting. The way the masters did it.

——————–

For more information:

Click Here If you’d like to see a free trailer of my newest complete oil painting training program – “Oil Painting Formula”

What medium should I use?

Ethan — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:30:45 +0000

I received a great question from David about mediums. I thought I would answer this for all of you who are having the same confusion as him.

Q: Some people use paint directly from the tube with no medium while others use a mixture of linseed or stand oil and turp adjusted for the fat over lean process if building up layers. Still others use Liquin. There are so many mediums out there. My question is: What do you think is the best medium for building up layers of paint and how would you adjust it for the fat over lean process?

First, mediums is one of the most confusing things for people to learn about oil painting. After all, when you learn to draw, you just grab a pencil, paper and go. But medium makes oil painting a bit more complicated.

First, you must make sure you understand what medium is. Medium is simply something you add to your paint to change it’s characteristics.

Now, there is another way to use the word medium. And this is for what the binding medium is that you are adding to pigment to turn the pigment into paint. Acrylic paint and oil paint use the same pigment. But one is acrylic medium and the other is oil medium.

For painting with oils though, the “medium” people have questions about are the mixture you add to your paint.

May times, people just use a basic mixture of turpentine and oil. Some people will mix turpentine with stand oil.

Other people add other ingredients to their mixtures.

They are all fine. The main thing is, you have to know what effect you are after.

Do you want your paint to dry faster? You would add certain ingredients. Do you want to slow down the drying of your paint? You would add a different ingredient.

Do you want your paint to dry with shine? This would demand using a certain ingredient in your medium. If you want to thin down your paint so it’s more watery, a different ingredient would be needed.

As far as fat over lean. I have never had any paintings of mine crack due to bad use of medium. Unless things are taken to extremes, I would not worry about this too much.

In case you do not know. The fat over lean rule means that the layer you are currently painting should have more oil in it than the previous layer. And, unless you are taking it to extremes, this will not be a problem.

If you are painting over a layer where you used a lot of oil in the paint, the surface will be greasy and it will be hard to get paint paint to stick to it. The dried surface will be very shiny. This will present more of a problem than cracking from not following fat over lean.

Renoir, at least in his later years, according to first hand witnesses like his son – used a simple mixture of turpentine and linseed oil for his beginning layers. As the painting advanced, he would use just pure linseed oil as his medium. This made it easier to paint over his underlayers which were done with a slightly “leaner” medium. This produced some “greasy” paint surfaces in the later layers of his paintings, but he liked the feel of it and it the effect he was after. Renoir knew all about his supplies so he knew exactly what to use to get the effect he was after.

There are different ingredients besides regular oil, like sun thickened oil and stand oil. These have a honey like consistency and add a quality to your paint that makes the paint “stand up” from the surface and makes it easier to apply one color over another without making mud.

Like I said, there is no right answer to “what is the best medium” because I don’t know what you after. The effects Monet was after (dry matte surface) is certainly not what Rubens was after (shiny surface, fluid painting) so they would not use the same medium.

In my home study course, I go over exactly what each ingredient will do to your paint. This way you can choose exactly what to use for your mixed medium to get just the effect you want.

You’ll never have any more confusing questions when you know exactly what to use.

What’s in the box?

Ethan — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 14:33:32 +0000

Hey – don’t be jealous of the professional camerawork of this video. I *just* got this box in the mail and needed a cameraman – My 4 year old son.

Anyway – opening the package was exciting.

The new format makes super easy to use at your easel. When you get your copy, you don’t have to film it, just put the information and techniques to work for you.

You can leave a comment below

The Insider Guide to the Secrets of Oil Painting teaches traditional fundamentals of oil painting, from the masters to the impressionists.

It’s all a scheme and my mothers death was fake?

Ethan — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:57:35 +0000

Yes, this is what some people are calling my oil painting lessons. Some people say they are worthless…and some of these same people even say I made up the story about my mother’s death as part of a grand scheme.

I’m wondering if I should post my mother’s death certificate on the blog.

How to paint a landscape

Ethan — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:58:52 +0000

Back in school, I used to see people painting landscapes that they worked on for weeks. The funny thing is, the painting seemed to get worse the longer they worked on it.

They would just muddle through and scrub and wipe, never knowing what they were really doing. They would just spend weeks scrubbing on a store bought canvas…

NOTE: (if you know me, you know how I hate those canvases…you’re making it 100 times harder for yourself by using them)

And at the end, they had a landscape that they were never happy with, with no luminosity, no depth,and that was the result of all that time and effort.

That’s ridiculous and a waste of effort!

What if you could paint a complete landscape in 2-3 hours instead of weeks?

Oh…and what if you knew what you were doing?…Not just muddling through and hoping it all turns out well in the end.

Well, go watch the preview of my DVD…”How to paint a landscape”…the price is ridiculously low.

I have to mention…this offer is ending tomorrow or possibly before, depending on the amount of orders and administrative work it causes.

Want to know how to begin from a blank canvas? you’ll get this
Want to know how to glaze in a landscape? that’s there as well
Want to watch a 2 hour painting appear before your eyes? you got it
Want to see a landscape created in more than 1 sitting? You got it too.

So, run and get this DVD if you care to paint landscapes that will have you beeming with pride.

NOTE: This ships to anywhere in the world. There seem to be a few people who write to me and tell me things like…”I’d like to study from your lessons, but I’m in Australia”. This is a total misconception. I am not advertising in person lessons…all my products are lessons you work on in your onw home.

A Time Out

Ethan — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:57:44 +0000

If you are dealing with someone close to you who is dying, here is a great article.

My Youngest Son Turns 2

Ethan — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:11:19 +0000

If you are a member of my mailing list, you may remember I told you that my son’s birthday was yesterday Dec. 18th.

Allow me to be a proud papa and post some pics for you guys to see.

Happy Birthday Matt.

He didn’t quite understand the concept of blowing out candles.