I am a student. My budget for these supplies is $50. I looked up some of the supplies, but it's very confusing. The list is as follows:
primer (to prime the board, the site says) but do I get it in a spray?
a canvas but what is a canvas pad? should I buy the already stretched out canvas instead?
medium and thinner but I don't understand the difference between the two...are there safer brands of these things...I know turpentine can cause damage to your body if your room isn't well ventilated...
paint but what is a good price and what are good brands
brushes ... I have some watercolor brushes that look like they would work
Is there anything else I need? What kind of brands should I buy for each of the things that I need?
Full Version: What kind of supplies do I need for oil painting?
You can buy canvas pads. These are just plain pages in a pad form but they are designed for oil or acrylic paints. This will be your cheapest option.
Thinners and medium.
Thinners can be turps or white spirit, either way, get plenty of ventilation. You would use these to 'thin out' your paint.
Medium. There are lots of different mediums. From linsead oil to painting butter. Frankly, if you are on a budget. Forget the mediums!
Brushes. Any brush will be ok depending on the thickness of the paint you use! But watercolour brushes are quite delicate and will soon be worn out if used for oil painting. Get some hogs hair brushes.
Brands.
Again, as you are on a severe budget, I would opt for student quality paints. When you get more proficient and can afford it. Buy the artist quality paints.
Good luck!
Thinners and medium.
Thinners can be turps or white spirit, either way, get plenty of ventilation. You would use these to 'thin out' your paint.
Medium. There are lots of different mediums. From linsead oil to painting butter. Frankly, if you are on a budget. Forget the mediums!
Brushes. Any brush will be ok depending on the thickness of the paint you use! But watercolour brushes are quite delicate and will soon be worn out if used for oil painting. Get some hogs hair brushes.
Brands.
Again, as you are on a severe budget, I would opt for student quality paints. When you get more proficient and can afford it. Buy the artist quality paints.
Good luck!
There are lots of potential answers to these questions - there is not "one true way".
However, here's a "bible"
on oil-painting 101
That might be a bit challenging, let's see what we can do (its all too easy to spend a fortune on oil-painting supplies, but its possible to make do with much less)
If you are using ready-primed support you will not need this.
The most usual primer used is "acrylic gesso primer" - it comes in tubs. It contains marble dust (or similar) and gives the surface "tooth" - it is abrasive, and very rough on brushes, so is best applied with a cheapo household painting brush - 1/2inch-2inch depending on the scale you are working on. A tip - wet the brush with water first, shake it out, and when you are finished, wash the brush in water immediately. If you're applying acrylic gesso primer, do 2 or 3 coats at right angles to each other, give it 30 mins or so to dry between coats. After the final coat, very lightly sand it with a medium-fine wet-and-dry paper 220 grit or so - just a light, quick wipe-over, to take off the worst of the abrasiveness.
The first surfaces used for oilpainting were wooden panels, as these were what were used earlier for tempera, but they were difficult to make in larger sizes, were expensive, and were heavy. Artists looked for other supports and chose linen or hemp canvas as this was readily available as sailcloth, and could be stretched over wooden frames to provide large, comparatively inexpensive lightweight supports.
The major requirements for a support surface for oilpainting are that it should be stable, oil paint should readily adhere to it, and it should not react adversely to fatty acids released from the oil. This last factor is why most of the surfaces used require sealing/sizing and priming. Oil reacts with cellulose in paper, wood, and textiles such as linen or cotton, and causes them to oxidise over time, weakening them and causing yellowing/browning (the same sort of thing you see with old newspapers). So they need sizing/sealing/priming to prevent this.
Canvas pads are canvas in the form of a pad, or paper textured to resemble it. These are already treated and are ready to paint on. Cheap stretched canvases are generally cotton (linen is more expensive, hemp's rarely seen now) and again, these are already primed.
Personally, I've never quite understood the attraction of the texture of canvas - I think people have some sort of romantic notion attached to it - when in fact its adoption was something of a historical accident. If you are starting painting, and working fairly small format, say 16 x 12 inches, you'll generally be fighting the texture of the canvas all the way. If you look at small-format oil-paintings prior to about 1850, you'll most generally find that they did everything they could to fill up the weave of the canvas with primer (they used to use lead white and chalk in hide-glue/oil emulsions, then).
If I can offer a suggestion - the cheapest good surface for painting on is the smooth side of hardboard/masonite, primed with a couple of coats of acrylic gesso primer, as I described above. Alternatively, use ready-primed canvas pads or stretched cotton canvas.
Thinners are diluents, used to thin the paint. Oil-painting mediums are additions to the oilpaint used to change the way the paint handles.
Thinners - two major types - real turpentine (from pine trees) and turps-substitute/mineral-spirits/white-spirit (petroleum derived). Unless you are using painting mediums which include resins (which as a beginner, I'd advise against - but I mean things like damar, mastic, copal, or canada balsam), you do not need real turpentine. I'd advise using cheap turps-substitute/mineral-spirits/white-spirit to clean brushes, and add in small quantities to your paint (read on...)
You can use "odourless mineral spirits" (OMS) such as Gamblin Gamsol, or Winsor&Newton Sansodor. These are less volatile and evaporate more slowly, as well as being less smelly, but are quite expensive. Personally, I don't recommend the citrus-terpene based solvents such as "turpenoid natural" or "zest-it" - claims that these are safer are marketing hype, and they are less well-suited as a diluent than the others. ALL of these solvents need to be used in a well-ventilated environment, and they ALL will defat skin and have potential for causing contact dermatitis. You want to minimise/avoid skin-contact with them.
It is possible to paint, and to clean brushes without using solvents at all, just using vegetable oils. Walnut oil would be your best choice for this, from a health-food shop or grocery store. Not olive oil! You're looking for oils that are "high in polyunsaturates", NOT "high in monounsaturates". And no added Vit E.
Whether you use solvents or oil to rinse brushes, you can let the paint pigment sediment out, by letting the jar stand for a few days, and repeatedly re-use the liquid.
Mediums - as a beginner, the only mediums you need to know about at first are mixes of refined linseed oil and solvent (I'd say mineral spirit). Add small amounts of this to slacken your paint off a little. Start off using a 70/30 solvent/oil mix, then 50/50, and then 30/70, if you paint in layers, so that earlier layers are leaner, and later layers are fatter. However, you don't need to add lots of medium to your paint - add the minimum amount to slacken it off a little - I'd suggest no more than 20% by volume, generally less than that. Oil paint should be used at consistencies from "single cream" up to "buttery"/from the tube. Not diluted to sloshy washes.
There are lots of good brands. Oil-paints might be divided up into three grades - student (most of the brands make these), medium-price artists, high-price artists.
Personally I'd suggest skipping the "student grade" ones. They are inexpensive, but they are often waxy and toothpasty to handle. Typically, they cost the same, whatever colour they are, as they are manufactured down to a price - they often replace more expensive pigments by "hues". They are good if you want to paint big, or thickly.
Basic palette
If you are painting smaller format (less than say 30x40 inches), and painting representationally/realism, I'd encourage you to go with mid-range artist-grade paint (if you possibly can, depending on what your local prices are like - buying online can be a lot cheaper than local art shops, by the way). Artists paints are usually priced in series. It is perfectly possible to put together a palette of paints for realist painting out of cheaper-series colours:
titanium white (you'll want a couple of 40ml tubes of this, or a bigger tube)
yellow ochre pale/light
burnt sienna
raw umber
venetian red/indian red
french ultramarine blue.
would work as a good "earth colours" palette for portraits and figures or still lifes. It is certainly possible to make do with these. Better to start with a few good paints, rather than lots of bad ones.
burnt sienna and ultramarine will mix a good "black" (in fact, its possible to do an amazingly "colourful-looking" painting just with white, burnt sienna, and ultramarine!).
You can mix good foliage "greens" with yellow ochre and blue, or yellow ochre and black.
Extending the palette choices
For more vibrant greens add in viridian or chromium oxide.
I am not averse to blacks, and if you want to add one, ivory black should be your first choice, I think (though lamp black and mars black also have their uses).
If you want to paint florals or other higher-key works you do need a bright red and a bright yellow, such as cadmium red medium and cadmium yellow light - unfortunately cadmiums are more expensive, but a tube is likely to last you a long time. There are other alternative bright reds and yellows you could choose, which are cheaper, such as pyrrole reds and hansa yellows.
If you want to paint purples and magentas, then the two colours I'd recommend are quinacridone magenta and dioxazine purple. (You can mix dull pastelly magentas and purples from reds and blues, but if you want intense ones, for example for flowers, you need these)
You don't need a palette of about 25 different colours!
Brands
Brand availability and prices may vary depending on where you are.
are all good mid-price brands.
Premium brands include:
All really excellent paints, but can be pricey - if you spot any of these cheaply, they are well worth getting. There are lots of other brands - ask, if I haven't mentioned what's available to you locally.
A few bristle brushes would be a good idea, or synthetic ones designed for "oil/acrylic". Watercolour brushes will generally be trashed by oilpainting very quickly, so if you have good watercolour brushes, don't use them for oils. I'd encourage you to get "long flats" or "filberts" rather than "rounds" or "brights". (With use, long flats will turn into filberts, and then into brights!).
Additional prep of canvases
Because acrylic gesso primer is abrasive and absorbant, I'd suggest you further prep your canvases or boards by putting down a lean coat of oilpaint. I'd recommend titanium white, plus a little raw umber, and a little thinners, sufficient to slacken the paint off to a creamy consistency. (The umber serves to tone the canvas, and also makes it dry faster. Titanium white is slow drying, by itself) Apply it with a cheap household-type brush. Give it a few days to dry before using to paint on, its a much more sympathetic surface.
Brush care
Rinse new brushes in water before first use, and allow them to dry thoroughly. (Many manufacturers dip them in gum arabic solution or similar to keep the the bristles together, for display)
Don't paint directly onto acrylic gesso primer with your artists brushes. It will eat them for breakfast.
Don't scrub with your brush - stroke. Use a light touch. Well-treated brushes should last for years.
Rinse brushes in solvent, but don't leave them standing in it.
At the end of each painting session, rinse your brushes well in solvent (or oil), and then wash them with soap and lukewarm water. Take a bar of soap, wet it, stroke the brush back and forth on it a few times. Stroke the brush back and forth in the palm of your hand for a minute or two, you will see paint colour come out of the brush. Rinse and repeat until the soap is clean. The bristles of brushes may remain stained, that's OK. Rinse well, squeeze the brush gently between your fingers to get excess water out, and leave to dry thoroughly (like overnight) at room temperature before re-use. Don't soak brushes in sinks of water, or wooden handles will swell and crack.
Other supplies
You will need some sort of palette to mix your paint on. A sheet of glass, taped or polished around the edges (preferably toughened glass) will serve as a good tabletop palette. You can put a sheet of grey paper under that.
wooden palettes can be bought, or you can cut one yourself from a thin sheet of plywood. Palettes should be varnished with either polyurethane or shellac; or polished by repeated treatment with linseed oil (this approach takes a few days before the palette is ready to use). These stop oil from the paint from soaking into the palette.
A small flat palette knife (or even two) are useful for mixing paint and keeping the palette organised.
I think that ought to be enough info for a start 
Happy to try to answer questions.
Dave
However, here's a "bible"
on oil-painting 101QUOTE (autumnfrost @ Apr 18 2009, 01:26 AM) 
I am a student. My budget for these supplies is $50.
That might be a bit challenging, let's see what we can do (its all too easy to spend a fortune on oil-painting supplies, but its possible to make do with much less)
QUOTE
I looked up some of the supplies, but it's very confusing. The list is as follows: primer (to prime the board, the site says) but do I get it in a spray?
If you are using ready-primed support you will not need this.
The most usual primer used is "acrylic gesso primer" - it comes in tubs. It contains marble dust (or similar) and gives the surface "tooth" - it is abrasive, and very rough on brushes, so is best applied with a cheapo household painting brush - 1/2inch-2inch depending on the scale you are working on. A tip - wet the brush with water first, shake it out, and when you are finished, wash the brush in water immediately. If you're applying acrylic gesso primer, do 2 or 3 coats at right angles to each other, give it 30 mins or so to dry between coats. After the final coat, very lightly sand it with a medium-fine wet-and-dry paper 220 grit or so - just a light, quick wipe-over, to take off the worst of the abrasiveness.
QUOTE
a canvas but what is a canvas pad? should I buy the already stretched out canvas instead?
The first surfaces used for oilpainting were wooden panels, as these were what were used earlier for tempera, but they were difficult to make in larger sizes, were expensive, and were heavy. Artists looked for other supports and chose linen or hemp canvas as this was readily available as sailcloth, and could be stretched over wooden frames to provide large, comparatively inexpensive lightweight supports.
The major requirements for a support surface for oilpainting are that it should be stable, oil paint should readily adhere to it, and it should not react adversely to fatty acids released from the oil. This last factor is why most of the surfaces used require sealing/sizing and priming. Oil reacts with cellulose in paper, wood, and textiles such as linen or cotton, and causes them to oxidise over time, weakening them and causing yellowing/browning (the same sort of thing you see with old newspapers). So they need sizing/sealing/priming to prevent this.
Canvas pads are canvas in the form of a pad, or paper textured to resemble it. These are already treated and are ready to paint on. Cheap stretched canvases are generally cotton (linen is more expensive, hemp's rarely seen now) and again, these are already primed.
Personally, I've never quite understood the attraction of the texture of canvas - I think people have some sort of romantic notion attached to it - when in fact its adoption was something of a historical accident. If you are starting painting, and working fairly small format, say 16 x 12 inches, you'll generally be fighting the texture of the canvas all the way. If you look at small-format oil-paintings prior to about 1850, you'll most generally find that they did everything they could to fill up the weave of the canvas with primer (they used to use lead white and chalk in hide-glue/oil emulsions, then).
If I can offer a suggestion - the cheapest good surface for painting on is the smooth side of hardboard/masonite, primed with a couple of coats of acrylic gesso primer, as I described above. Alternatively, use ready-primed canvas pads or stretched cotton canvas.
QUOTE
medium and thinner but I don't understand the difference between the two..
Thinners are diluents, used to thin the paint. Oil-painting mediums are additions to the oilpaint used to change the way the paint handles.
Thinners - two major types - real turpentine (from pine trees) and turps-substitute/mineral-spirits/white-spirit (petroleum derived). Unless you are using painting mediums which include resins (which as a beginner, I'd advise against - but I mean things like damar, mastic, copal, or canada balsam), you do not need real turpentine. I'd advise using cheap turps-substitute/mineral-spirits/white-spirit to clean brushes, and add in small quantities to your paint (read on...)
QUOTE
.are there safer brands of these things.. .I know turpentine can cause damage to your body if your room isn't well ventilated...
You can use "odourless mineral spirits" (OMS) such as Gamblin Gamsol, or Winsor&Newton Sansodor. These are less volatile and evaporate more slowly, as well as being less smelly, but are quite expensive. Personally, I don't recommend the citrus-terpene based solvents such as "turpenoid natural" or "zest-it" - claims that these are safer are marketing hype, and they are less well-suited as a diluent than the others. ALL of these solvents need to be used in a well-ventilated environment, and they ALL will defat skin and have potential for causing contact dermatitis. You want to minimise/avoid skin-contact with them.
It is possible to paint, and to clean brushes without using solvents at all, just using vegetable oils. Walnut oil would be your best choice for this, from a health-food shop or grocery store. Not olive oil! You're looking for oils that are "high in polyunsaturates", NOT "high in monounsaturates". And no added Vit E.
Whether you use solvents or oil to rinse brushes, you can let the paint pigment sediment out, by letting the jar stand for a few days, and repeatedly re-use the liquid.
Mediums - as a beginner, the only mediums you need to know about at first are mixes of refined linseed oil and solvent (I'd say mineral spirit). Add small amounts of this to slacken your paint off a little. Start off using a 70/30 solvent/oil mix, then 50/50, and then 30/70, if you paint in layers, so that earlier layers are leaner, and later layers are fatter. However, you don't need to add lots of medium to your paint - add the minimum amount to slacken it off a little - I'd suggest no more than 20% by volume, generally less than that. Oil paint should be used at consistencies from "single cream" up to "buttery"/from the tube. Not diluted to sloshy washes.
QUOTE
paint but what is a good price and what are good brands
There are lots of good brands. Oil-paints might be divided up into three grades - student (most of the brands make these), medium-price artists, high-price artists.
Personally I'd suggest skipping the "student grade" ones. They are inexpensive, but they are often waxy and toothpasty to handle. Typically, they cost the same, whatever colour they are, as they are manufactured down to a price - they often replace more expensive pigments by "hues". They are good if you want to paint big, or thickly.
Basic palette
If you are painting smaller format (less than say 30x40 inches), and painting representationally/realism, I'd encourage you to go with mid-range artist-grade paint (if you possibly can, depending on what your local prices are like - buying online can be a lot cheaper than local art shops, by the way). Artists paints are usually priced in series. It is perfectly possible to put together a palette of paints for realist painting out of cheaper-series colours:
titanium white (you'll want a couple of 40ml tubes of this, or a bigger tube)
yellow ochre pale/light
burnt sienna
raw umber
venetian red/indian red
french ultramarine blue.
would work as a good "earth colours" palette for portraits and figures or still lifes. It is certainly possible to make do with these. Better to start with a few good paints, rather than lots of bad ones.
burnt sienna and ultramarine will mix a good "black" (in fact, its possible to do an amazingly "colourful-looking" painting just with white, burnt sienna, and ultramarine!).
You can mix good foliage "greens" with yellow ochre and blue, or yellow ochre and black.
Extending the palette choices
For more vibrant greens add in viridian or chromium oxide.
I am not averse to blacks, and if you want to add one, ivory black should be your first choice, I think (though lamp black and mars black also have their uses).
If you want to paint florals or other higher-key works you do need a bright red and a bright yellow, such as cadmium red medium and cadmium yellow light - unfortunately cadmiums are more expensive, but a tube is likely to last you a long time. There are other alternative bright reds and yellows you could choose, which are cheaper, such as pyrrole reds and hansa yellows.
If you want to paint purples and magentas, then the two colours I'd recommend are quinacridone magenta and dioxazine purple. (You can mix dull pastelly magentas and purples from reds and blues, but if you want intense ones, for example for flowers, you need these)
You don't need a palette of about 25 different colours!
Brands
Brand availability and prices may vary depending on where you are.
Winsor & Newton (artists, not the student "winton")
Gamblin
Daler-rowney (artists, not the student "georgian")
Talens Rembrandt
Holbein
Art Spectrum
MGraham
are all good mid-price brands.
Premium brands include:
Old Holland
Blockx
Vasari
Michael Harding
All really excellent paints, but can be pricey - if you spot any of these cheaply, they are well worth getting. There are lots of other brands - ask, if I haven't mentioned what's available to you locally.
QUOTE
brushes ... I have some watercolor brushes that look like they would work Is there anything else I need? What kind of brands should I buy for each of the things that I need?
A few bristle brushes would be a good idea, or synthetic ones designed for "oil/acrylic". Watercolour brushes will generally be trashed by oilpainting very quickly, so if you have good watercolour brushes, don't use them for oils. I'd encourage you to get "long flats" or "filberts" rather than "rounds" or "brights". (With use, long flats will turn into filberts, and then into brights!).
Additional prep of canvases
Because acrylic gesso primer is abrasive and absorbant, I'd suggest you further prep your canvases or boards by putting down a lean coat of oilpaint. I'd recommend titanium white, plus a little raw umber, and a little thinners, sufficient to slacken the paint off to a creamy consistency. (The umber serves to tone the canvas, and also makes it dry faster. Titanium white is slow drying, by itself) Apply it with a cheap household-type brush. Give it a few days to dry before using to paint on, its a much more sympathetic surface.
Brush care
Rinse new brushes in water before first use, and allow them to dry thoroughly. (Many manufacturers dip them in gum arabic solution or similar to keep the the bristles together, for display)
Don't paint directly onto acrylic gesso primer with your artists brushes. It will eat them for breakfast.
Don't scrub with your brush - stroke. Use a light touch. Well-treated brushes should last for years.
Rinse brushes in solvent, but don't leave them standing in it.
At the end of each painting session, rinse your brushes well in solvent (or oil), and then wash them with soap and lukewarm water. Take a bar of soap, wet it, stroke the brush back and forth on it a few times. Stroke the brush back and forth in the palm of your hand for a minute or two, you will see paint colour come out of the brush. Rinse and repeat until the soap is clean. The bristles of brushes may remain stained, that's OK. Rinse well, squeeze the brush gently between your fingers to get excess water out, and leave to dry thoroughly (like overnight) at room temperature before re-use. Don't soak brushes in sinks of water, or wooden handles will swell and crack.
Other supplies
You will need some sort of palette to mix your paint on. A sheet of glass, taped or polished around the edges (preferably toughened glass) will serve as a good tabletop palette. You can put a sheet of grey paper under that.
wooden palettes can be bought, or you can cut one yourself from a thin sheet of plywood. Palettes should be varnished with either polyurethane or shellac; or polished by repeated treatment with linseed oil (this approach takes a few days before the palette is ready to use). These stop oil from the paint from soaking into the palette.
A small flat palette knife (or even two) are useful for mixing paint and keeping the palette organised.
I think that ought to be enough info for a start Happy to try to answer questions.
Dave
Dave, I read this comprehensive introduction into this medium basics and want to thank you very much for the quality of information you provided. I know you paint in oil on canvas and just wandered if you can put in this thread or a new one some WIP of one of your paintings.
My interest is in the underpainting actually as I am trying to see a possibility to approach my interpretation of the Girl with Pearl earring in oil.
I have a cheap set of oils for students I believe and here is how far i went last year in oil painting. The reason for not having finished it is the fumes from the turpentine, were too toxic and my husband opposed my painting in oil. But this time I will use a turpenoid for cleaning my brushes. I have a canvas panel acrylic double primed.
My question will be related to the underpainting. How you do it and in what medium. I know it can be charcoal too but i am just too shy for that.Thank you again for the work put into this thread.
My interest is in the underpainting actually as I am trying to see a possibility to approach my interpretation of the Girl with Pearl earring in oil.
I have a cheap set of oils for students I believe and here is how far i went last year in oil painting. The reason for not having finished it is the fumes from the turpentine, were too toxic and my husband opposed my painting in oil. But this time I will use a turpenoid for cleaning my brushes. I have a canvas panel acrylic double primed.
My question will be related to the underpainting. How you do it and in what medium. I know it can be charcoal too but i am just too shy for that.Thank you again for the work put into this thread.
Hi Elena - thanks.
As you say, use turpenoid (NOT "turpenoid natural" - its OK for cleaning brushes, but not a good choice for painting with, in my opinion).
There's no need to use real turpentine.
You only need a small jar to rinse brushes in, and keep a lid on it when not in use.
As an underpainting approach for you, I'd suggest the following:
1. Canvas Prep - mix up some titanium white and a touch of burnt umber, and just enough turpenoid to slacken the paint off and make it creamy - apply this to your acrylic-primed canvas (use a cheap brush), spread it out well, give it a few days to dry (it should really be dry in about 48 hours - give it an extra day or two after that.
The idea of this canvas prep is threefold 1. It tones the canvas to a light beige, rather than white. 2. it is a far nicer surface to paint on - and it allows paint to be wiped back off. 3. Unlike the acrylic primer, it is not abrasive, so it doesn't eat your brushes.
2. Underpainting - first stage - instead of doing a drawing in charcoal, just go straight in with burnt umber paint - add sufficient turps to make it fluid, draw lines with it, use it to indicate the darks/shadow areas. It is possible to spread it with a brush, to wipe it out with a rag, with a dry brush, or with a brush just barely dampened with solvent.
Its possible to push the paint around on the surface, reinforce areas you want darker, lift out areas you want lighter. If you're doing anything using solvent, give the solvent a few mins to evaporate off the surface, then push the paint around.
Think of it as roughing-out, establishing your basic forms - it doesn't have to be very detailed - in fact, best to keep it all a bit soft-focus. Work as areas of light and dark, rather than as lines (you should be familiar with this from your charcoal work recently).
Give it a couple of days to dry (umber's a very fast dryer).
3. Underpainting - second stage Do another pass - reinforce darks (add a bit of ultramarine to the umber for your darkest darks)
If you need to state lights, you can go in with a paler mix of white and umber, or pure white - you can do this as part of the same painting session, or after giving it another couple of days drying time.
........
The idea of this is that after two or three sessions, you end up with an underpainting in shades of brown and beige, which has worked out your drawing and values.
I'd recommend this approach as a learning exercise, as it gives you a solid underpainting, gets you used to handling oilpaint, and initially avoids the issues of colour. Please don't get the idea that this is "only a beginner" approach - its one which is fairly widely used by professional realist painters. (In fact, its not dissimilar to the likely approach by which the original Vermeer was painted.) There are lots of different ways of doing underpaintings, both in monochrome and in colour - have a go at this one first, and then I'll explain about how to go into colour, how to use other monochrome approaches, and also how to start in colour.
Happy to give further advice, or answer questions.
Dave
As you say, use turpenoid (NOT "turpenoid natural" - its OK for cleaning brushes, but not a good choice for painting with, in my opinion).
There's no need to use real turpentine.
You only need a small jar to rinse brushes in, and keep a lid on it when not in use.
As an underpainting approach for you, I'd suggest the following:
1. Canvas Prep - mix up some titanium white and a touch of burnt umber, and just enough turpenoid to slacken the paint off and make it creamy - apply this to your acrylic-primed canvas (use a cheap brush), spread it out well, give it a few days to dry (it should really be dry in about 48 hours - give it an extra day or two after that.
The idea of this canvas prep is threefold 1. It tones the canvas to a light beige, rather than white. 2. it is a far nicer surface to paint on - and it allows paint to be wiped back off. 3. Unlike the acrylic primer, it is not abrasive, so it doesn't eat your brushes.
2. Underpainting - first stage - instead of doing a drawing in charcoal, just go straight in with burnt umber paint - add sufficient turps to make it fluid, draw lines with it, use it to indicate the darks/shadow areas. It is possible to spread it with a brush, to wipe it out with a rag, with a dry brush, or with a brush just barely dampened with solvent.
Its possible to push the paint around on the surface, reinforce areas you want darker, lift out areas you want lighter. If you're doing anything using solvent, give the solvent a few mins to evaporate off the surface, then push the paint around.
Think of it as roughing-out, establishing your basic forms - it doesn't have to be very detailed - in fact, best to keep it all a bit soft-focus. Work as areas of light and dark, rather than as lines (you should be familiar with this from your charcoal work recently).
Give it a couple of days to dry (umber's a very fast dryer).
3. Underpainting - second stage Do another pass - reinforce darks (add a bit of ultramarine to the umber for your darkest darks)
If you need to state lights, you can go in with a paler mix of white and umber, or pure white - you can do this as part of the same painting session, or after giving it another couple of days drying time.
........
The idea of this is that after two or three sessions, you end up with an underpainting in shades of brown and beige, which has worked out your drawing and values.
I'd recommend this approach as a learning exercise, as it gives you a solid underpainting, gets you used to handling oilpaint, and initially avoids the issues of colour. Please don't get the idea that this is "only a beginner" approach - its one which is fairly widely used by professional realist painters. (In fact, its not dissimilar to the likely approach by which the original Vermeer was painted.) There are lots of different ways of doing underpaintings, both in monochrome and in colour - have a go at this one first, and then I'll explain about how to go into colour, how to use other monochrome approaches, and also how to start in colour.
Happy to give further advice, or answer questions.
Dave
I am excited and intimidated, Dave and I know I will learn a lot from you. Right now I am struggling with oil pastels portrait of Vermeer's girl(my version, of course).All these media blend in my head and bring so much information that I am amazed how much you can grow by working with them.
I also have a pad of canvaskin which I experimented with tempera and worked wonders. Do you think it is good practice surface for now?
Thanks so much for your assistence.
I also have a pad of canvaskin which I experimented with tempera and worked wonders. Do you think it is good practice surface for now?
Thanks so much for your assistence.
There's a lot to be gained by working in different media - they reinforce the learning of the core ideas about image-making (and sometimes the technical aspects of materials are applicable, too).
In many ways, oils are actually a very easy and forgiving medium - they just require a bit of patience.
Yes, that's fine.
In many ways, oils are actually a very easy and forgiving medium - they just require a bit of patience.
QUOTE
I also have a pad of canvaskin which I experimented with tempera and worked wonders. Do you think it is good practice surface for now?
Yes, that's fine.
OK. Then eternity is waiting for me 
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