THE MOBILE ART STUDIO

Glazing oil paints is one of the chief techniques in oil painting. The aspiring artist might be lead to believe that glazing can only be done like the old masters, requiring many paint layers, linseed oil and hours of work. But anyone can learn about this great oil painting technique with just basic art materials and a couple of hours. Art Tutorial with Oils How to Glaze with Oil Colors Oil Painting Lesson Some oil colors are more translucent than others by their nature. However, pigments with high opacity can be made translucent by the addition of a little linseed oil.  I have therefore chosen oil colors of varying translucency for this art demonstration, which can be found on my art instruction video clip. Art Materials Needed for Oil Glazing Technique All that is needed are: a primed piece of card, measuring approx 10x8in or so. Notice on the left side of the image, I have placed oil colors which are relatively opaque. These are (from the top): cerul...

Learning how to paint dappled sunlight offers challenges in color mixing as some colour contamination is inevitable. But look at any Impressionist painting and dirty colours will be evident. It is the solemn colours that make the pure colour appear bright, as in the case of a sunlit scene. Art Materials for Painting Dappled Light and Shadow How to paint dappled light Rachel Shirley Pure colours are essential if bright and solemn colour mixes can be achieved. Recommended pigments (in oils, acrylics or oils) are: white, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow (pale), pthalo blue (or Winsor blue), ultramarine, permanent rose (or carmine red), viridian, burnt sienna and burnt umber. Other colours can be added. Several art brushes of various sizes are needed to dispense with the need to repeated washing between colour mixing. Soft brushes, such as sable sizes 3, 6 and 12 may come in useful. Larger fan brushes or (in the case of opaque paints) bristle brushes sizes, 6 and 12. Prefer the fi...

An ideal painting exercise for beginners, recording how a single-coloured object appears to vary under different lighting conditions will help develop visual perception and banish the notion that a red object is simply one red. How to Paint Red This lesson explores the colour red. For ease and the purpose of this exercise, a tomato is the chosen subject matter, (although a pepper can be used.) Tomatoes possess smooth undulating contours enabling the artist to explore how its local colour shifts from one area to the other. To begin with, look for as many variations to red as possible within the tomato(s), such as Violet-red, russet- red, orange-red, golden- red, blood-red, oxide- red, pink-red and brown-red Parts of the tomato may possess no red whatsoever. In such cases, watch out for the automatic inclusion of red within the colour mix due to the nagging insistence that tomatoes are red all over. Often this is not the case. In fact, when painting a bright-coloured object, subt...

This art lesson explores tonal values in monochrome, in this case by the use of variants of blue. Painting in monochrome is a great way of exercising artistic resourcefulness when presented with a limited palette. How does the artist represent the other colours with only blue as the chief pigment when painting an object? How to Paint in Monochrome Many artists like to work with a limited palette; some of Monet’s sketches explored but three oil colours. With just one chief colour at the artist’s disposal, rendering the subject matter in front presents fresh challenges. This exercise involves using blue as the chief pigment. Students may use a dark earth colour to darken blue, white to lighten it, and also to use a pigment that adjoins blue on the colour wheel, which can be either green-blue or violet. Variations in Blue Paint There is a multitude of different blues in oil pigments to choose from: ultramarine, cobalt, Prussian, pthalo, cerulean or Winsor. Learners have a...