Amanda ♥ Keay

Oil Painting. Traveling.

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Basic Brush Handling Techniques Oil Painting for Beginners

There are a number of factors why brushes create so many endless possibilities: the bristle type, the way you hold the brush, the brush size, and brush shape.  I’m going to explain the bristle types and how to handle the brush in this blog, this should cover the majority of the possibilities you can achieve with oil painting. 

Types of brushes:

There are two main types of brushes in painting, hard and soft bristled brushes. The stiff bristled brushes are mostly made from animal hairs such as hog. They hold more paint and also hold their shape while painting. Because they are more stiff, they allow more precise and bold marks in your paintings. 

The second type, the softer bristled brushes, made mainly from nylon, polyester, or sable, paints a lot smoother with cleaner strokes, which are great for rendering details and painting clean lines.

I won’t go over the details of different brush shapes, but if you are just starting off, I would recommend sticking to the filbert brush as they are the most versatile in painting organic objects, you can paint large areas, draw lines, dots, and different shapes with a filbert brush. I recommend choosing two large and two small filberts (size 4 and 2), so when you’re working on an area, you can focus on a dark and a light, working your way from big to mall.

How to hold your brush

How you hold your brush and where on the handle you hold the brush can yield many different possibilities. A mistake many artists make is holding their brushes the same way throughout all their paintings and the paintings end up looking very static, where there’s no contrast between bold and loose marks versus tight and small details. 

The key is that the closer you hold your brush to the bristles the more control you will have on the fine details. And vice versa, when you hold your brush further back, you’re able to create more bold and assertive straight lines, which are best for sketching out masses of shapes. 

Holding The Brush Near The End

This is usually best applied with a stiff bristled brush, where you are holding it like a magic wand for bold paint marks. This is great for line control, and allows you to focus on the proportions and angles of what you’re painting. You’re using your whole arm, and some artists even prefer standing, to be able to capture the full image of what they’re painting. You’re really sculpting an image onto your canvas

Holding The Brush Near The Middle

This can be a hard or soft bristled brush. When you’re holding it near the middle of the handle, you are also focusing on proportions and lines but with a lot more control. You can hold it like a pencil or a wand. The wand grip allows you to maintain that control over proportions and angles, where the pencil grip allows you to focus on details. When you are holding the brush handle near the middle, your arm is stabilized and your movement comes from your wrist.

Holding The Brush Near The Bristles

This is typically with a soft bristled brush, where you are holding it like a pencil, and focusing on fine details, precision marking, and rendering. This is the most intuitive for most people because it’s similar to how we write. One thing to keep in mind is to not start your painting with this grip because you always want to paint from big to small.  

As a tip for stabilizing while you’re rendering, you can use your other hand to prop up your painting hand, or use a Mahl stick to allow your hand to rest, which allowing more stable rendering without touching other wet areas of the painting.

How to use brushes with paint:

In terms of what you can achieve with the brush, here are the different possibilities: you can do an under sketch, apply a thin layer of paint, apply medium thickness of paint, apply very thick paint, glaze, and you can also dry brush

Sketching When you are sketching, using a hard bristled brush, hold the brush near the middle to the end of the handle, especially if you are painting from life and need to focus on proportions and angles. 

Thin coverage - When you are painting a thin layer of paint, for example in the initial layer of your painting, using a hard or soft brush, hold it at a right angle to the surface. If you are painting on canvas, you can scrub the canvas and really push the paint into the creases, this makes sure the surface is fully covered. If you are painting on wood, don’t scrub too hard because it will dull the brush really fast.

Medium thickness - When applying a medium thickness of paint, you can use a hard or soft bristled brush. You don’t have to scrub, but instead brush the paint in an alternating direction, at an angle that’s smaller than a right angle. You can still feel the canvas under the brush as you paint. 

If there’s wet paint underneath and you’re holding it at a right angle, you might be scraping the paint off. That’s why when you’re layering paint on top of existing paint, be mindful that you’re not scraping wet paint off of the previous layer.

Very thick paint - When applying really thick paint, you can use a hard or soft brush. In this technique, you can barely feel the canvas as you paint, the brush is almost flat against the canvas as if you’re applying icing on a cake.

Glazing - When it comes to glazing, I recommend using a soft brush to avoid brush marks on the painting. This is when you are painting with more proportion of oil medium to oil paint, using a transparent color. This allows you to add a transparent layer of color to existing dry paint without covering it completely. 

Dry Brush - Dry brushing in oil painting is a technique where a dry soft brush is lightly brushed over existing wet paint to smooth out unwanted brush marks, or to fuse colors together. I recommend using a dry sable brush and remember to always keep it dry, wiping it clean after every stroke and wipe it thoroughly after every use on a towel. Never clean it in solvents. This brush must always be kept dry. 

Keep in mind that this is different from blending colors, because you are not using this brush to mix two colors together. The key to oil painting is not to blend colors on your painting, but to apply every changing color individually, and using a dry brush to smooth it out if necessary

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How to Apply Fat over Lean | Oil Painting For Beginners Basic Techniques

The beauty of oil paint is you can push and blend the paint and sculpt it to a desired thickness before it dries, it really is the best tool to create a masterpiece. A properly finished painting is flexible and won’t crack. This is where the concept of fat over lean comes in.

You want more flexible paint to dry over less flexible layers, while making the painting thicker and thicker. Paint that has more oil content dries more flexible and paint with less oil content dries more stiff. Whenever anything that’s more stiff is dried on top of a flexible surface, it’s more prone to crack over time. Think of a flooring where cement is paved over epoxy, the cement floor will eventually crack because epoxy is more flexible than cement.

So this is not just for the purpose of making your painting last longer without cracking and damaging over time. 

In a painting with multiple layers, you want the earlier layers to dry before the subsequent layers. Applying fat over lean will enhance your ability to achieve this, with the initial layers being thinner and drying faster and the subsequent layers being thicker and drying slower. You end up with a painting that is sculpted to your artistic style, from a fluid consistency for expressive markings to a stiff paste for creating thick, crisp marks.

To understand more about how oil mediums and paint thinners work, please check out my video and blog on oil mediums. For this tutorial, it’s important that you understand what fat and lean means, and what oil content and painting mediums refer to. 

When I say painting medium, I am referring to the solution that I am dipping my paint in to mix my colors. Oil content means the amount of oil that is in your paint. Oil color just means the paint that is straight from the tube. Anything that’s more fat = more oil Content in your paint. This can be Galkyd, walnut alkyd medium, linseed, stand oil, or poppy oil. Anything that’s more Lean = not adding any oil medium into the paint or paint that has a thinner mixed into it. 

There are two ways to apply fat over lean and I’ll demonstrate both approaches.

First Approach

The first approach uses varying amounts of the same painting medium throughout a painting. Since oil painting mediums are fat, when you add medium to oil color, the oil content increases. In the initial layers of a painting add a minimal amount of painting medium or none at all; then increase the amount of painting medium as you build up paint layers. The ratio of medium to paint increases as you continue painting.

Second Approach

The second approach requires you to mix your painting medium. Using the same ratio of painting medium to oil color throughout a painting; however, the fat content of the painting medium is modified between each paint layer. In the initial layers, the oil medium (fat) is mixed with Gamsol (lean). As you add layers, increase the oil content of the medium by adding Walnut alkyd medium. The bottom layers will have more Gamsol and less oil. The top layers will have more oil and less Gamsol.

WATCH FULL VIDEO | HOW TO APPLY FAT OVER LEAN

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Oil Painting Supplies for Beginners | Oil Painting Starter Kit

Oil painting can seem overwhelming because we’re all so used to painting with water since we are young. Water was always the solution to cleaning, diluting, and almost everything in conventional painting. Whereas with oil painting, we have to stay away from water, and use oils, paint thinners, and other solutions to change the properties of oil paint. This actually makes oil paint less messy and lasts longer; you get more time to bend and shape the paint to your desired liking before it dries. Compared to acrylic paint, you won’t need a lot of different supplies for oil painting other than the paint, oil mediums, and solvents. Here’s a list of supplies you’ll need for start oil painting.

Canvas

There are a number of options as to what you can paint on. Always make sure that the surface you’re painting on is primed so the paint doesn’t get fully absorbed into the surface. Linen or cotton wrapped canvas are great for starters. If you don’t want to commit to a canvas, you can purchase a stack of canvas paper (without the wooden frame). This is a great option to practice on multiple sheets without feeling like you have to commit to a finished painting.

You can also paint on wood panels. Store bought panels are usually made from birch wood. You can purchase wood panels primed or unprimed. If it’s unprimed, make sure you seal it yourself with a matte medium.

Easel

An easel is necessary so you can adjust the angle and height of the painting. The type of easel that you want really depends on your physical environment. If you don’t have a table to place the easel on for a long time, you would want an easel with legs. The little shelf that pulls out can also hold a small palette or brushes while you’re painting so it’s less invasive to your living space

Paint

Gamblin paints are great for starters, especially the introductory sets where you have all the essential colors that you’ll need for any painting.

Brushes

Oil painting brushes are usually divided into two types based on the type of hair; hog or synthetic brushes. Hog brushes are made from hogs as the name implies, and it’s a lot tougher. They tend to hold their shapes really well and also holds a lot of paint. Synthetic brushes are man made, usually made from nylon. And they are a lot more soft than hog brushes. 

I like to use Princeton Synthetic brushes in the Aspen 6500 series, because they really have the benefits of both hog and synthetic brushes. They are soft like synthetic but also holds its shape and control like hog brushes. I prefer these brushes because I personally like how they feel when painted on wood, they’re not too hard where the bristles scrape against the wood or too soft where the wood bends the bristles.

Princeton Synthetic in the Aspen 6500 series Filbert Brush

Princeton Synthetic in the Aspen 6500 series Set of 4

Palette Knife

A palette knife is great for mixing a decent amount of paint without diluting your brushes. When you’re starting a painting, and you need to prepare a number of colors on your palette, use the palette knife.

Oil Medium

Oil mediums are great for glazing and achieving fat over lean results. Walnut alkyd medium can be used to add more oil content into your paint, which allows you to create thick paste looking finishing results and leave meticulous brush marks in your painting.

Gamsol

Gamsol is a paint thinner that is odorless, it’s one of the safer paint thinners out in the market. You will need this for cleaning your brushes. You can also use it as part of your painting medium. Optional: mix equal parts of Gamsol and Walnut Alkyd Medium to make a lean painting medium for your initial layer of paint.

Glass Palette

Grey palettes offer a toned, neutral background that lets the artist see the colors as they will appear on their paintings. A white palette will create too much contrast between your colors and the palette. A grey palette darkens the background when you’re mixing colors without adding chroma to it. Tip: Use the glass from a picture frame and paint the back with grey acrylic paint.

Palette scraper

Vaseline

For preventing your brushes from drying completely after cleaning and before storing them away, coat the bristles with a thin layer of vaseline. Make sure you wipe it off thoroughly before using the brush to paint.

Brush Cleaning Container

Place Gamsol into a brush cleaning container with the paint separator inside. The separator is used for scraping paint residue off your brush to allow the paint to settle to the bottom of the container. I prefer stainless steel cleaning containers over glass as these containers do not spill when tipped over.

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10 Mistakes Artists Make When Starting a Painting

The beginning of a painting is exhilarating; you’re finally putting your idea on canvas. Before you jump into making your vision come to life, there are a number of factors to keep in mind, so that your idea doesn’t get lost along the way. Many artists rush into starting a painting that they forget about the most crucial parts of the beginning of a painting. Here are 10 mistakes that artists make when starting a painting.

Poor Reference

A common misconception that people have is that a photo that they really like will look good as a painting. But what looks good on paper, your phone, or your computer, might not necessarily transpire into a masterpiece. A poor reference photo is a photo that is overexposed, has a lot of noise, grainy, too dark, or doesn’t provide enough detail for you to follow. This also includes portrait shots that are front facing and front lit, it can’t get any more boring than that. A good reference should have a large foreground, medium middle ground, and small background. The lighting should come from the side, not the back or the front. In portrait shots, there should be an obvious light source that’s not coming from the front like a picture taken with a flash. The person shouldn’t be facing straight into the camera, but at least slightly tilted. This is called an oblique angle.

Selfies taken by a phone only look good on your phone, because parts of the person is usually chopped off. When it’s in a painting, it looks way too zoomed in, and it’s very weird for a portrait to have parts of the person drifting off the canvas.

2. Wrong canvas size or proportion

The canvas size and proportion should be relatively close to your reference. If the canvas is a lot bigger than your reference photo, then you won’t have enough detail to fill the space. If the proportion is drastically different, it can also completely change how your painting looks. Say you’re painting a wide angled field with a barn, then you paint it on a square canvas, the barn will suddenly look boxed in. So choose a canvas size that you are able to fill in the space and proportion that mimics your reference.

3. Unclear direction and lack of planning before starting the painting

There’s a difference between finding spontaneous happy accidents and just winging it without visualizing the final product. Having a plan will give you a sense of direction and the steps to turn your vision to fruition. Mapping out the steps will also prevent you from having too much re-work or painting too thick to begin with.

4. Biting off more than you can chew

The beginning of any project can be such an adrenaline rush that you feel like you can tackle the world. Let it be a painting with a lot of detail or a massive painting, a project that has too many new challenges for you can overwhelm you in the process. A lot of paintings end up unfinished for this reason. It’s a good idea to write down your learning objectives and break them down into small projects. For example, if your goal is to learn how to paint portraits, you can do a series of small paintings of lips, and a series on eyes; breaking down the anatomy so you’re not tackling a whole face to begin with.

5. Bad easel or working equipment

Your hands and your mind need to focus on the painting and not reaching too far to grab paint or holding your canvas up. The tools that you are using should be visible and within arms reach, like your brushes, palette, thinner, medium, paper towels. And your equipment, like your easel, table, and chair, should all be static and stable. Good working equipment means less distraction, and more attention and time spent on your painting.

6. Bad lighting

Nothing is worse than having all the proper tools and the perfect painting, but the lighting sucks. Bad lighting means a light bulb that’s too warm or cool, the light being too dark, or even colored walls that are distorting the colors in your painting. The perfect light bulbs to use are 5000k bulbs, lit in a neutral colored environment. For more information on the perfect type of lighting, visit my blog post on The Perfect Studio Lighting

7. Thinking the painting sucks during the ugly stage

Every painting goes through a rougher “ugly” stage at some point. This stage is actually essential for the painting to come to life. You can’t just hold onto rendered detail all the way through. Details are created starting from average shapes and forms so the proportions and compositions are correct first. You don’t paint the eye lids before you have the eye socket shape down. That’s why planning is so important, so you don’t get lost and discouraged during the ugly stage.

8. Including everything you see

Less is more. When you include everything you see and it all has the same level of detail, then the actual focal point ain’t a focal point after all. Everything becomes the centre of attention. When you blur out the hair instead of painting every strand, it sets the hair back and puts more focus on the face. Be selective with what you include and what you leave out.

9. Painting with small brushes

With small brushes, you can only paint small things. Painting with small brushes will prevent you from massing in shapes at the beginning and lead you to focus too much on the details.

10. Worrying about results

Don’t forget to have fun! Paintings rarely turn out exactly like you expected, every single one goes through twists and turns. In art, the journey outshines the destination.

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How To Transfer Drawing Onto Canvas

Don’t have a projector or tracing paper at home? Don’t sweat. Here’s a solution to transferring your image or sketch onto your canvas or wood panel. For more information on my full supplies list, please visit My Supplies List

1. Sanding - if you are painting on a canvas, there’s no need to prime the surface. If you are painting on wood, you need to sand the surface before we paint. 

2. Rub off with a damp towel so none of the grain is left.

3. On your computer monitor, pull up the image that you want to paint. If your image is a sketch on paper instead of a digital picture, scan the sketch or take a picture of it, then pull it up on your computer monitor.

4. Adjust the size of the image so that it’s true to the size of the canvas or the size that you want to paint. Just make sure it fits inside your intended canvas!

5. Hold the canvas beside the monitor so that the length and the width fits into the canvas. 

6. Turn off any nearby lights and close your blinds of your windows, and turn up the monitor light. 

7. Tape a piece of paper onto the monitor over the image; you should still be able to see the image. 

8. Using a pencil, lightly trace the drawing.Outline the main shapes of the image. Don’t worry about the blotches of shapes in the background.

9. Once the tracing is done, peel the paper off and turn the paper over

10. Using a pencil, color the back of the image. 

11. Use masking tape and tape the drawing on your wood panel or canvas. Use a pen and redraw the outlines of the drawing.

12. Once the drawing is on the wood panel, use a matte medium or clear gesso to prime the wood panel. This helps protect image from smudging and protects the wood so the oil paint doesn’t get completely absorbed into the wood. 

Side Note: Priming the Surface with Matte Medium or Clear Gesso

When choosing a matte medium or clear gesso, make sure it says “dries transparent”. Matte medium dries a lot smoother than clear gesso, but clear gesso is thicker in terms of protection. Clear gesso has a grainy and rough feel when it dries and can dull the brush. If you are using clear gesso, use a level 220 sandpaper, which has really fine grains, to smooth out the surface and wipe it down with a damp towel.

For more information on my full supplies list, please visit My Supplies List

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Color Wheel 101

A color wheel or color circle is an abstract illustrative organization of color hues around a circle, which shows the relationships between primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors, and complementary colors.

They key takeaway from your initial learning of the color wheel is to remember:

Primary Colors (the red, blue, yellow)

How to mix the Secondary colors (orange, green, purple) 

Pairs of Complementary colors, which are opposite of each other on the wheel

The colors on the first half (red, yellow, orange) are typically your warm colors and are used for objects that are closer to the light source. Colors on the other half (blue, purple, green) are your cool colors. Colors are used for objects further away from the light source or in shadow.

Essentially, colors diagonal from each other on the color wheel, strips the color out of each other. Meaning to tone down, or create a grey shadow a color, you add the color that is diagonal to it on the wheel. 

For example, if I’m painting a red rose, for the shadow of the rose I would add green to the red to make a dark grey red. If I’m painting a banana, for the shadow parts, I would add purple to yellow to create a yellow grey.

Here is a quick cheat sheet on how to mix the colors on the color wheel and how to mix other commonly used colors as well. This cheat sheet can come in very handy when you are painting. Even if you aren’t mixing these particular colors, it’s a good reminder of how different colors mix with each other.

Red & Blue = Violet

Red & Yellow = Orange

Blue & Yellow = Green

Brown = is a type of Orange or Red

In reference to the color wheel:

Red & Green = Grey Red or Grey Green

Yellow & Violet = Grey Yellow or Grey Violet 

Orange & Blue = Grey Orange or Grey Blue

Tips on how to mix colors:

Keep in mind the color that you are trying to mix, whether it is either a primary color or secondary color 

Refer to the primary color combinations to mix if it’s a secondary color 

Then refer to its complementary color on the wheel to tone it down

You can add white to lighten it, but that usually flattens it and makes it chalky 

You can darken it with a dark color (black, paynes grey, violet, blue, alizarin crimson)

You can add a warm tone to warm it up, this typically lightens it at the same time

You can add a cool tone to cool it down. 

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Oil Medium 101 - What is Oil Painting Medium and What is it Used For?

The main ingredients of oil paint are pigment, oil, and damar crystals. Pigment is made of a variety of substances like metal and precious stones, oil is extracted from trees and plants such as linseed, walnut, poppy. Damar crystals are made from tree sap and gives a siccative and very sticky property to the paint. Damar crystal is what makes the paint stick together and to the surface it’s applied to when it’s dried. It is one of the key ingredient in oil paint, and it also speeds up the drying time

The natural consistency of paint fresh out of the tube will differ depending on the color. Some paints are more fluid than others, some are more thick. That’s why artists will mix in oil mediums into their palette of colors as they are mixing colors. The oil medium changes how the paint feels while painting and how it dries, and also how it looks after it dries. Different oil mediums that you purchase from art stores usually contain a mix of oil, damar crystals, thinner, and other chemical properties that make the paint bind together. 

Changes consistency - More oil medium gives the paint more body and less oil makes the paint more fluid

Drying time - More oil medium makes the paint dry faster and less oil makes it dry slower

Finishing results:

Luster - depending on the type of oil, it can dry glossy or matt

Oil Content - The more oil medium makes the paint fat, the less oil content makes the paint lean

**Here’s a great video that explains the properties of different oil mediums. I found it super helpful!

General Uses of Oil Medium:

Stick to one oil medium such as walnut alkyd medium throughout the painting

Use a thinner with an alkyd medium; mix it yourself in different proportions as the painting progresses to achieve fat over lean results

Specific Uses of Oil Medium:

Mix thinner with paint at the beginning to create thin underpainting

Glaze by mixing oil medium with a little bit of paint to achieve transparent colors at the rendering stages

Mix oil medium with paint to create thick impasto results. (impasto means paint that laid of very thickly so that brush and palette knife marks are apparent on the painting. Here are other ways to add particles to thicken your oil paint)

Oiling out - Glaze a thin coat of oil medium on dried surfaces to bring out darker colors and to allow wet-into-wet results

A lot of the oil mediums that  you buy at art supply stores contain different proportions of oil and thinner, and they are usually marketed as quick dry or slow dry. And you can typically eyeball how thick it is in the container. For my demonstration in my Beginners Course to Oil Painting, we are going to use Gamsol thinner and Walnut Alkyd Medium. You can also use Galkyd instead of walnut alkyd medium.

So what does it mean by fat over lean? When we say more oil, it doesn’t mean pour more oil into the paint, what this means is as the painting progresses, the proportion of oil to thinner increases. Remember, it’s the proportion of oil to thinner, and more oil will make it more fat, more body, dry faster, and more glossy, and vice versa with less oil. Bottom layer should dry before the top or else it can crack. Lower layers should always have more thinner and less oil medium while upper layers should have more oil and less thinner.

It’s common for artists to mix equal parts of oil medium and thinner for their mixture in the beginning stages of their painting, and then slowly use less thinner in the mixture during later stages. And then for finishing, use oil medium only in the mixture for the finishing stages.

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Making Brown Paint with Basic Color Theories

In this blog, I talk about how to mix brown using three different methods. The first is using complimentary colors, the second using black paint, and the third using primary colors. In the video (below) you can see that I’m mixing the colors and then add white to it so you can see it in its dark and light form. I explain

Before I begin, I think it’s important to understand what brown really is. I mean it’s a pretty confusing color to define isn’t it? Here’s a rule of thumb, think of brown as a type of orange. So simplifying this, I know that orange is made of red and yellow, and that red and yellow are warm tones. In order for a color to look brown, the warm tone must be the predominant tone, if the cool tone is stronger than the warm tone, then the brown can turn blue, purple, or green. To visualize this more, you can see the different color mixing proportions and combinations in my color mixing cheat sheet.

Mixing Brown using Complementary Colors

The first method is to use complimentary colors on the color wheel; looking at the color wheel, the complimentary colors are the pairs that are directly across from each other. These are red and green, orange and blue, purple and yellow. When mixed together they cancel each other out, meaning you create a greyscale, and in some instances you will get different shades of brown. 

Red and Green

The first color I'm mixing cadmium red with emerald green. Because the green is a light and soft green, this yields a nice reddish brown, for all the colors that I’m mixing here I’m going to add white to it so you can see it more clearly

The second color, I want to just give you perspective of what the brown would look like if the cool tone is too cool.  I'm mixing alizarin red with phthalo green. This high intensity color yields something close to black. When I whiten it, it looks like a grey purple. So this shows that in this case, phthalo green is too intense and cool to make brown.

Orange and Blue

First I'm mixing cadmium orange with ultramarine blue. Which yields a very earthy brown

Second color, to give you perspective again of what it will look like if I use a very intense blue. I’m using phthalo blue which is a very intense and warm blue that makes very vibrant greens. As you can see when I mixed it with cadmium orange, it looked green. 

Purple and Yellow

First I’m mixing quinacridone violet with cadmium yellow light. This yields a red brown, I could've used for yellow here to make it more orange. But quinacridone tones yellows down very well.

Lastly I’m using dioxazine purple, which is a very warm and true purple in itself; when mixed with cadmium yellow light, this yielded a very earthy brown.

2. Using Black to Make Brown

For the second method, I’m mixing ivory black with Cadmium colors. My go tos are always cadmium red and orange, but I will show you how it looks with cadmium yellow as well.  Cadmiums are very rich in color and ivory black is a very earthy black and they combine really well to make a dark and rich browns.

So the first one I’m mixing ivory black with cadmium red. And this gives me a very nice red brown

The second one I’m mixing in cadmium orange, which yields a cool earthy yellowy brown 

The third one is just to give you perspective; when I mix ivory balck with cadmium yellow, it turns green. And that is because black is considered blue in a tonal study. In a colorless study, the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue, are painted with burnt umber, raw umber, and black respectively. Since blue and yellow make green, black and yellow will also yield green.

3. Mixing Primary Colors to Make Brown

For the third method, I’m mixing the primary colors together in different proportions. This is my favourite method because this gives me more flexibility to adjust. 

The first is ultramarine blue, permanent rose and cadmium yellow deep. Because permanent rose is the strongest color in this combination, this fields an earthy red brown

The second is cadmium red, cadmium yellow light, and ultramarine blue. Cadmium red is pretty well balanced with cadmium yellow so this combination yields a very nice orangey brown

The third combination, i just realized i had the wrong color here, where it says phthalo green, it should be cobalt blue. So after fixing this up, I’m mixing alizarin red, with cobalt blue, and cadmium yellow light. This combination yields a very nice earthy brown that’s not too orange or too red, it’s just in between the previous two that I just mixed

So these are the different methods of mixing brown paint. As you can see there are a lot of different ways to do it, as the color brown has such a wide spectrum. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, let me know of any questions in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching I’ll see you next time

[amanda-keay]

Anatomy of Lips Study - Oil Painting for Beginners

Anatomy of The Lips

Here is the anatomy of a pair of female lips. I find that lips are best painted when this whole area is worked on as one section (minus the nose), they make up the total area of the lips. I like to start with the main shadows of this area, and then outline the tubercle of the upper lip, then outline the wings on both sides. This forms as a curtain that falls onto and shapes the lower lip.The lower lips start with the groove, which protrudes out of the centre of the lower lip, and then eases into the lobes on both sides. And lastly, I fill in the red margins of the lips which are usually the mid-tones that I’m painting the lips with. This will give you a fairly realistic looking pair of lips; from here you can render little details and add highlights to make it come to life.

#1 Determine where the light and shadows are

Every set of lips are different, and every oil painting portrait has a different lighting composition. So the first step is to look at your subject and determine where: the light is coming from, the shadows are set, and where the reflected lights are coming from. For this particular female portrait painting, the light is coming from the top right of the model, the shadow is cast on the lower and outer corners, and is more prominent on the top left side of her lips.

#2 Determine your foundational palette of oil colors - and keep it minimal 

In order to keep a minimal palette, it does not necessarily mean use only the primary tubes of colors. You can see here that I have many colors, but my palette is still minimal. What this means is to premix a palette, using whatever tubes of color you wish, that yields no more than five foundational colors, and stick to mainly these colors when you paint. These five foundation colors should include: 

1. Mid-tone of the flesh around the lips

2. Shadow color of the flesh around the lips

3. Shadow color of the lips

4. The outline color of the tips

5. Mid tone of the lips

Once you have your palette determined, stick to this palette and make small variations from these foundational colors

#3 Paint around the lips

When I’m painting portraits, as I’m approaching the mouth, I put a lot of attention on the area around the lips. As this paves  way into how the lips will come to life, that’s because this is essentially two different types of flesh that fuse together on the face, so there has to be meticulous and subtle blending between the two. So I want to make sure the shadows and the skin colors are pretty spot on before I start outlining the lips

#4 Paint the shadows of the lips  

When it comes to lips, I usually paint the shadows first because that defines the shape of the lips. Once I’m inching closer and closer to the actual lips, I’m going to paint the main shadows of the lips as that gives the most definition to it. So I’m painting the outer corners and the shadow underneath the lips. I’d like to note that whenever I’m painting a small area, I tend to start with the shadows because that not only defines the shape, it also prevents me from losing the drawing.

#5 Paint the Lip outline

The reason why I’m painting the outline before filling in the lips is because I want the outline to set underneath the red margins so they don’t look like lipstick liner. I’m painting the top outline of the lips starting with the tubercle and the left and right wings. Then I’m outlining it with a darker pink, and what’s going to make it look more realistic at the end, is to lightly paint over the edges with a flesh tone.

#6 Fill in The Lips 

After outlining the lips, I’m filling in the middle, which are the red margins, with a lighter pink. The middle of the bottom lip is usually brighter and warmer because it is receiving light. Where as the top lip will cast more shadow, and have reflected light from the bottom lip

#7 Render Small Details

After all the paint is applied, I’m rendering the details, adding more shadows. I’m using a small round brush with skin tone on it, lightly running over the edge of the lips so it fuses with the face. And I’m also adding in some highlights to really make it pop.

How the lips come together really depends on the shadows and how it blends in with the face in the end. The highlights and pinks of the lips are very subtle and actually worked on the least. I spend a lot of time blending the face with the edge of the lips and on rendering the shadows, because that’s what paves way to the actual shape of the lips.

I hope you found this blog helpful, let me know of any questions in the comments below. Thank you so much for stopping by, I’ll see you next time.

[amanda-keay]

Next Level Painting Skills To Improve Portrait Painting Techniques in Oil

This year I’ve taken a step back to explore some of the techniques that I learned when I first started taking lessons. I noticed that I started to pick up some bad habits in the last few years when I was rushing a lot of the paintings and getting ready for exhibitions etc. So this year I got in touch with my art teacher and I’m trying to focus on quality rather than quantity. One major change in how I’m painting now is that I’m using a physica  reference photo so I can color match and prove my colors. I find this a lot better to improve my color mixing abilities compared to looking at a monitor for reference. A screen monitor always makes a photo look more vibrant than it really is and it’s hard to understand the true colors of the picture, and you can’t put paint on your screen to color watch. So here I’m actually holding the photo in my hand (I’m displaying the model in the video so you can follow along with what I’m painting).

Shapes and planes

I love the photo that I’m working with because I can see so many different shapes and planes on the model’s face. And that gives me more to work with. I have to keep in mind that no matter what part of the face I’m painting, everything is three dimensional. Nothing is flat like a piece of paper, and this is a real person. It’s more intuitive if you imagine that you are painting a ball, the shape is obviously a circle, but the planes curve in all directions. Each latitude and longitude is different in color which makes it look three dimensional.

 Similarly to portraits, every part of the face, essentially anything that has a round surface gets cooler as it recedes away from the camera, and that it’s not just cut off like a piece of paper, this is really important in painting anything that has a curved shape. In this painting, the colors become more cool as it’s further away from the light source. So the plane change on the forehead is not only going from left to right, but it’s also curving up and back. This means that whatever color you use for the forehead, it doesn’t just meet the hairline all of a sudden, there’s actually another color there, a cooler tone that makes it look like it’s receding back before it reaches the hair. 

Color Strings

Knowing how the planes change on your subject will help you understand the colors that you should be looking for. Sometimes we have to know the subject first before we mix the color. I won’t be showing the color mixing palette in this video because I want the focus to be on brush handling, and this particular technique that I’m demonstrating is applying color strings. Imagine a curved surface with light shining on it from one side. The color on the surface changes as the planse changes, and each plane is a different color string. Going back to painting a ball; imagine a globe, we all know that it has latitudes and longitudes. If you were to paint the globe, each row of latitude is a color string, and so is every vertical line of longitude. Each one of those is a color string, and I am mixing and applying each string individually. 

Choosing the right reference photo and model

So it’s kinda like sculpting with oil paint. Instead of doing what I usually do, which is applying paint on the whole area and then mixing additional paint on it while it’s wet, here I’m treating each plane change as a different color. Now this works particularly well under the circumstance that the lighting and angle of the model creates very dynamic colors. You don’t want to choose a photo that’s over exposed, like with a flash cam, which flattens out a lot of colors and you lose the beautiful natural facial structures and features. You want the model’s pose to be anything put straight up front facing, like a passport photo. It can even just be a slightly tiled face. This will create a dominant side of the model's face and the photo to have one dominant light source. You also want to be able to see everything in the photo without it being over exposed, or too dark that you can’t see what's going on in the shadows. That way you will be able to see the model's face like a 3D structure with different colors on each plane.

Edges

The way that each area of the face fuses with each one another creates edges. These are the boundaries between two areas. This can be the area where a shadow meets light or when an object meets a different object. I want to focus on areas where dark meets light because this is easily missed, usually there’s a warm color string in between the dark and the light. Shadows never just go from dark to light, there’s always a warm and more neutral color there. It’s very small, and ignored by a lot of people because you can usually get away with leaving it out. But if you try to paint it in, your subject will look that much more three dimensional. That’s the difference between a face that just looks like a face and a face that is really coming alive. You can see this example where I painted the hair that’s casting a shadow on the side of the cheek. there’s a warm shadow before the flesh tone begins. Same thing with the crease on the cheek beside the mouth, there’s a warm tone beside the crease before it transitions into a highlight color on the face. And this happens in creases and wrinkles in all sizes. Now I know this can be a challenging addition to what you’re used to painting, but what you can do is start looking for those colors. Train your eyes to start seeing them first then it’ll be more intuitive to paint.

Order of operation:

Another technique that I’m demonstrating here is how I’m painting outside in. Meaning I’m painting around the face and working my way into the focal point of the painting. Sometimes I do like to start on other areas like the eyes or whatever pops out at me the most. But for this particular technique, one of the reasons for painting around the focal point is because of the emphasis on edges. The area around the edge that you’re painting needs to be wet in order to blend and fuse together. You should never lay wet paint on a dried surface of a different color. So for the first part of the painting, I am working on the hair, the hairline, and the edge of the cheek together. Another reason why I’m working outside, going from big to small is because typically the closer to the center of the painting, the more fine details there are. Because that’s where the focal point usually is. And therefore you waste less time if you have to change or redo something along the way that has less detail, than to render a lot of fine details for a long time and then having to change it after.

Brush Handing:

You’ll notice I’m applying paint with a very small brush, essentially painting each plane, and then softening the edges with a dry nylon brush. You’ll notice I Labeled Dry Brushing in all the areas where I’m doing this blending technique. The most important thing about this is always keeping the nylon brush dry. After every softening touch, wipe the brush on a paper towel to make sure there’s no paint on it, and then keep blending and softening the painting. When it’s over softened, you come back to apply more paint, to make certain parts stand out more. Dry brushing is not only to blend but you can also move the paint around to change the shapes on your painting. This technique is amazing, and it’s basically my get out of jail free card that I picked up on since I started painting. Because sometimes the brush that I’m painting with is hard to get it right from get go. And having a dry brush will allow me to move the paint around, or blend without adding more paint or making it more messy. This dry brush will allow you to carve your subjects with more precision especially when you’re painting small and detailed areas of the face like the eyes and the mouth.  

In summary these are the main techniques that I’m demonstrating throughout this painting. Always analyze the subject you are painting whether it’s a face, fruit, landscape, or florals. Think about how the subject bends and how all the planes are changing, and work in sections so you can really understand the structure of that area. Whenever a dark and light color converge, look closely and apply the warm mid tone that’s in between the light and shadow. Working outside in, apply each color string separately and then soften the whole area with a dry nylon brush. And last but not least, keep practicing. Because that’s how you will continuously evolve and rediscover yourself as an artist.

[amanda-keay]

Wood Wisdom of the day: so I used to stain my wood panels with acrylic paint mixed with water, but too much water made the wood fray on the surface. For this new series I used a quick drying liquin mixed with oil paint to stain. It takes longer to dry than acrylic but protects the wood like magic! . . . #mandiekeayart #oilpainter #oilonwood #woodstain #woodstaining #beautifulfigures #beautifulportraits #yogapose #buddhapalm #mandalalotus #goldleaf #artistico #artistic_dome #artistic_unity_ #artistic_nation #artcurators #artcollectors #artbasel https://www.instagram.com/p/BzQyWPHBMHH/?igshid=1tbdndsu41sfx

[amanda-keay]

Progress of this painting before my Italy trip, it looks so different after being a month apart lol Now..let’s carry on🐰 . . . #mandiekeayart #hkartist #aussieartist #sydneyartist #yyzartist #yyzartist #nycartists #artistica #artistic_nation #artcurators #artistic_unity_ #artistic_feature #artcollectorworld #artistic_dome #oilpainter #bunny #whitelace #surrealismart #portraitpainter #oilonwood #beautifulportraits #artistic_discover #artistic_share https://www.instagram.com/p/BzL9NplBuww/?igshid=12j6jyvnygjqe

[amanda-keay]

Hope everyone had a good weekend! I’m starting to think of new ideas for a new series, so I’m looking back at the early phases of my past paintings and trying to remember the different evolving stages that got me to the finale. Excited to be back in my studio again! 🤓 🔎 . . . . #mandiekeayart #oilpainter #portraitpainter #artcurators #oilpaint #beautifulportraits #yyzartist #yycartist #nycartist #tattooinspo #hkartist #aussieartist #artistica #oilonwood #surrealism #surrealismart #bullskull #roses🌹 #rustica #artistico #artistic_dome #artistic_unity_ #artistic_nation #artistic_share #artistic_discover #artistic_support #artistic_unity https://www.instagram.com/p/BzGTub-hW3J/?igshid=1ub42biiiozpa

[amanda-keay]

I love mandala design tattoos, that’s what inspires me when I freehand my wood canvases, just like this mandala lotus painting. (I added a lotus behind the Buddha palm afterwards because it looked too plain on its own) ✍🏽 . . . #mandalalotus #mandakeayart #oilpainter #oilpainting #oilonwood #woodart #buddhapalm #mandaladesign #tattooideas #yyzartist #yyzartist #nycartist #laartist #artistic_nation #artistic_dome #artistic_unity #artistic_share #artistic_support #artisticdirector #artcurators #hkartist #artistic_discover #aussieartist #sfbayareaartist #rusticdesigns #rusticdecor #rusticwallart #zenart #zenartist https://www.instagram.com/p/By8YsgMhShF/?igshid=100jke5yj1wgn

[amanda-keay]

Back home in 🇨🇦 In time for the best season in the year, hope everyone in Toronto is enjoying the sunshine and all the beautifully grown florals! 🌻 . . . #sunflowers #mandiekeayart #artistic_support #artistic_discover #yyzartist #yycartist #hkartist #floralpainter #goleaf #beautifulportraits #oilpainter #oilpaint #oilonwood #figurepainter #surrealism #artistica #artistic_unity #artistic_nation #yyz #artcollectors #artcurators #artbasel #yycartist #sfbayareaartist #paintwithlove (at Thornhill, Ontario) https://www.instagram.com/p/By3s6qOBzk3/?igshid=18v4qbhqbkjag

[amanda-keay]

Getting over the weird/ugly phase, something that’s still a struggle for me sometimes. I find stepping back and forgetting it for a few days helps my vision come back and also see exactly what is missing in the painting 🌻 . . #mandiekeayart #hkartist #yycartist #yyzartist #artistic_discover #artistic_support #artistica #artistico #timelapse #artistic_nation #artcollectors #artbasel #artcurators #beautifulbizzare #oilpainter #beautifulportraits #portraitpainter #figurepainter #paintwothlove #artistic_dome #artistic_share #oilpaint #oilonwood #sunflowerpainting #floralpainting https://www.instagram.com/p/By0xEqxnbBB/?igshid=55bdhextv1ci

[amanda-keay]

This sunset at #piazzalemichelangelo never gets old. What I also found very captivating is the beam of warm sunlight reflecting on all the people watching it 😍 absolutely stunning . . . #mandiekeayart #artistic_support #hkartist #artistic_discover #artcollector #artcurators #artcollectors #beautifulsunset #florentine #florenceitaly #travel #michaelangelo #italy #beautifulskies #artistic_nation #artistic_share #artistic_unity #artinspo #renaissanceart #yyzartist #yycartist #sydneyartist #romantics (at Piazzale Michelangelo) https://www.instagram.com/p/BytB8Vihh4x/?igshid=1ru98nqn1t4dq