How To Master Professional Oil Painting

If you’ve decided to start your journey as a professional oil painter, Loxley Arts has you covered! In this blog, we’ll discuss oil painting and what makes it so appealing to professionals, how to choose the right supplies, and how to get started with confidence.

What is Oil Paint?

Traditional oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint, made from pigment particles suspended in a drying oil (e.g. linseed, safflower, or poppy oil). Oil paints are naturally viscous, but you can easily change the consistency using oil painting mediums such as turpentine or white spirit.

Oil paints dry at different rates depending on their thickness, the type of oil & pigments used, as well as the absorbency of the surface you’re using.

Our Artist Oil Paint is made from the finest binders and pigments, to give you a paint with great handling properties and covering power.

Why Do Professional Artists Prefer Oil Paint

Oil paint has lots of advantages, making it the go-to choice for many professional artists:

• Your oil colours will stay true to form - when the oil colours dry, you will find there is no colour shift, unlike watercolours or acrylics.
• Due to the longer drying time, you have more time to work with your art. You can wait for days and still come back to continue your masterpiece.
• Oil paints are highly versatile - from layering techniques to meticulous impasto, you can take oil paints and turn them into anything you envision.

What Are Some Challenges When Using Oil Paints?

Most professional oil painters agree that oil painting is by no means an easy medium to master. You have to keep in mind that:

• Oil paints tend to yellow as they age, but you can slow the process down by using good-quality binders.
• Oil painting is a huge time commitment - sometimes, a single crisp brush stroke can take a couple of days to achieve. You will also need to prime your canvas before you start painting, and then you will need to wait for your oil paints to dry whenever you want to add an extra layer.
• You need to understand the materials you’re using - if you’re using solvents for cleaning and thinning oil paints, you’ll need proper ventilation and safety measures in place in your art studio.

Oil Painting Supplies - What Do You Need To Start Oil Painting?

The accessories you'll require when oil painting will vary depending on your chosen technique - however, we believe every professional art studio should have:

Quality Oil Paint

The very first step towards any artwork is a set of good-quality oil paints. You'll have a choice between two options:

Artists’ Quality Oil Paints

The much higher level of pigment means your colours will look infinitely more vibrant and will cover a larger surface area when painting. Though the initial cost is higher, you will be using less paint to achieve similar effects with a much higher quality. You’ll usually find a larger variety of colours as well.

Student Quality Oil Paints

The more affordable choice for beginner painters. The colours are less intense, making them better suited for experimentation or underpainting, especially when covering large backgrounds.

Brushes

The brush is one of the most important tools in an artist's kit. When choosing a new artist brush, you should be looking for two things: the spring and the shape.

The spring of a brush is essentially how well your brush responds to a stroke on the canvas. You want a brush that holds its shape, without being overly stiff. The best brushes for oil paint are made using stiffer hairs like hog hair or synthetic bristles.

When it comes to brush shape, the choice purely depends on your technique and the effects you wish to create. The most common shapes are:

• Round brushes - thinner at the tip, perfect for both soft and bold strokes and ideal for fine details
• Flat brushes - rectangular in shape, versatile, perfect for large areas like backgrounds
• Bright brushes - shorter and stiffer than flats, with a slightly rounded tip, ideal for textured strokes
• Filbert brushes - a much more rounded tip which helps create softer strokes, ideal for blending

When you’re just starting out, we recommend a brush kit with a variety of shapes so you can have free rein on experimentation. If you’re painting using multiple mediums, it’s best to have separate brushes for each to avoid mixing materials.

Oil brushes will also usually have longer handles, so you can stand back while working on your masterpiece. Also, always, always clean your brushes thoroughly after each painting session.

Canvas

Your surface of choice purely depends on your preferences. You can choose something more rigid or lightweight, go for a smooth surface or a textured canvas. Here are a few options:

Stretched Canvas

Stretched canvases are made by fixing linen or cotton over a wooden frame. You can choose a standard stretched canvas or a deep-edge canvas for extra dimensionality. With a stretched canvas, you also don’t have to worry about framing your artwork at the end, as you can easily hang it up as is.

You should always choose a reputable canvas manufacturer to ensure your canvas is properly fixed and will not sink under the weight of your paint.

Boards & Panels

These smooth painting surfaces usually come pre-primed, and can sometimes feature a light texture. Painting boards and panels are thin and portable, perfect for an outdoor painting session.

Canvas Rolls

If you want to mount your own canvas, then buying a pre-primed canvas roll should be your go-to choice. As artists ourselves, we recommend testing out various surfaces to find which one feels best to you.

Palette

Traditionally, oil painters will use some type of palette to lay paint and mix colours together. You can choose a:

Wooden Palette

A stable, 5mm plywood palette that is treated and ready to use with oil paints. The palette has a cut thumb hole for easy holding, comfort and balance while painting.

Oil paints take a while to dry, which means you can always leave your colour mixes on the palette for the next day. Be careful, as after 2-3 days your paint will start to dry, making it harder to use and clean.

White Plastic Palette

Plastic palettes provide a large, uninterrupted area for mixing paints such as acrylics and oils. It is more lightweight than the traditional wooden versions, though be careful as not all plastics work well with oils.

A white surface can also help you better see the colour underneath.

Loxley Expendable Palette

You can also use a disposable palette, which is a pad of non-absorbent paper sheets called a tear-off palette. The palette provides a smooth, non-absorbent surface for mixing colours.

The Loxley Expendable Tear-Off Paper Palette has 36 Sheets of disposable parchment palette, which are impervious to oil and acrylic paint. They provide a great mixing surface that can be torn out of the pad and disposed of after use, saving valuable time when cleaning up. The pad has a card base that gives rigidity and a thumb hole for holding when painting.

Palette & Painting Knives

Palette knives & painting knives are useful tools when working with oil paint, as you can use them to mix your paint or to apply thick layers directly onto the canvas. You can either buy rust-resistant, stainless steel palette knives or plastic palette knives made specifically for oils.

Palette knives have three different areas:

• The tip - used for detailed work
• The flat surface - for broad, wide strokes
• The edge - for lines

Mediums

Oil painting mediums are used to alter the transparency, consistency, or drying time of oil paint. It is important to know when and how to use mediums, as they can help to control your paint and develop your painting techniques.

Depending on which mediums you use, you can achieve a variety of different sheens, and either shorten or extend the drying time of the paint. Most mediums are a mix of solvent and oil or alkyd resin, with other ingredients like beeswax. For example, glaze mediums help you create thin, glossy, transparent layers, while beeswax mediums thicken the paint for impasto techniques.

Solvents

Solvents are used to thin the paint on your brush, as they help remove any excess. However, be careful not to use too much solvent as it can weaken the paint’s binding. You can use:

• Turpentine - the traditional artists' solvent made from pine resin. Use pure, high-grade turpentine, but make sure to air out your working space properly to avoid the strong smells.
• White Spirit - a petroleum-based solvent that thins oil paint.

Drying Oils

Drying oils are natural oils made from seeds or nuts. They don’t dry by evaporation, instead they harden by absorbing oxygen from the air.

• Refined Linseed Oil - a pale yellow oil that increases gloss and transparency. It is stable, dries evenly in 3-5 days, and is great for underpainting.
• Walnut Oil - a pale yellow oil that resists yellowing and cracking. It dries faster than safflower and poppy oils and is good for whites and blues.

You can mix these oils with pigments to make oil paint, or add them to your mediums for improved flow and more transparency. Always remember the ‘fat-over-lean’ rule: apply layers of paint with increasing amounts of oil each time, and make sure each layer is dry before adding the next (otherwise you risk cracking).

Easel

While an easel is not essential for oil painting, it can be helpful for providing a stable surface for your canvas while you paint. Choose a table easel if you're planning to sit at a table and paint, or a portable, sketching easel to take on walks, holidays, or wherever sparks creativity.

Differences between Acrylics and Oils

There are many differences between acrylic paints and oil paints, which means a lot of artists will have their preferred medium.

Drying Time

One of the main differences between acrylic and oil paints is the drying time. Acrylics tend to dry very quickly, making them suitable for artists who work fast, or those who want to work on a wide variety of surfaces such as canvas, board, card, and even paper.

Oil paints stay wet for a lot longer, meaning that each painting is a long-term endeavour. Once you start painting, it can take days, even weeks to finish a piece, and you can come back to your painting any time.

Layering

Acrylic paints are the best medium for thick layering. You can use a palette knife and experiment with various techniques like impasto, but you can also just as easily use acrylics for thinner coats of paint.

Oil paints are best for thinner layers - you can create thick layers of paint as well, but you would have to wait a couple of days for the paint to dry.

Blending

Acrylic paints are known for creating crisp edges while painting, and can be hard to blend due to the quick drying time. With oil painting, you can take your time and create lots of subtle gradient effects and blends, as the paint dries more slowly and gives you plenty of time to experiment.

How Long Does It Take To Learn Oil Painting?

It can take 6-12 months to learn the basics of oil painting. Becoming proficient in oil painting and satisfied with your work can take years.

Oil Painting Tips For Beginners

As artists ourselves, we understand the many challenges that come with choosing this tricky but rewarding medium. If you’re just getting started, here are our top oil painting tips for beginners to make your life as easy as possible:

1. Start off with small paintings. This will allow you to freely experiment with new techniques and colours, helping you get used to the medium.
2. Invest in quality brushes. Hog or synthetic brushes are the best for oil paints - make sure to clean them thoroughly after painting to keep them in top shape.
3. Use Artists’ Quality paint from the start. This will help you gain a better understanding of how oil paint behaves on canvas, and will definitely make your painting experience more enjoyable.
4. Make sure your painting surface, whether that’s a canvas, a board, or a panel, is primed. A layer of primer (called gesso) prevents the oil from seeping into the painting surface. If you don’t know how to prime your canvas, buy a pre-primed painting surface.
5. Learning the basics takes time. Learn to enjoy the process rather than the result.

Master Professional Oil Painting With Loxley Arts

Ready to explore the timeless medium of oil painting? Discover your next masterpiece with our premium selection of professional-grade oil paints, brushes, and canvases. Shop our full collection today and bring your vision to life.