Archive for August, 2007
Oil painting can be a very enriching hobby to get into. But there are some techniques that you should learn in order to get your own oil painting masterpiece in the right gear. Here are some tips that might be able to help you out.
Selecting the Proper Brush Set
It is important even for a beginner oil painter to invest some good money in brushes. If you are into oil painting for the long term, then cheap brushes are not for you because they can easily shed their bristles while you paint. Beginners can make do with hog brushes although natural and synthetic sable brushes are recommended by the experts. You can choose a selection of flat brushes with size numbers 3, 6, 8 and 12. Also get a number 4 fan brush along with a few small round brushes to complete your beginner set. Brush selection may vary from artist to artist but this will give you a set that you can begin oil painting with. You can later on choose other brush sizes that you think would work best for you. It is also important that you take good care of your brushes. Take extra time and care in cleaning them after using. If not done in a proper way, it could ruin them just as easily and may cost you another set of brushes.
Painting Your Masterpiece
Every oil painting begins with a plan. Know what you wish to paint and how your composition would look like. You can be creative about it and think up something unique or eye catching. If you ever feel uninspired, don’t worry. Take some time to go out and marvel at your environment. Take time to look at the trees or the wonderful landscape before you. Try checking out other oil paintings to get some ideas. This would surely help you strike up an ideal subject for your oil painting in no time.
Before you start off painting, make sure that you work in a well-ventilated area. Oil painting materials such as thinners and cleaners may contain some chemicals that can be very toxic. It is important that you find a place that is properly ventilated so that you can avoid the fumes from disturbing you and your work.
Try also to make sure that you have the proper lighting. Lighting would not be a problem if you plan to work outdoors to take advantage of natural lighting. But it would be a different matter if you do your painting indoors. Good lighting would help bring out the color in your paintings and help minimize the strain in your eyes. You can do your work in a room with plenty of natural sunlight or you can install an excellent indoor lighting I your studio to provide some much needed light when required.
When painting, make sure that you have all your materials ready and well organized. Make it a habit of organizing your things in a way that will help you locate them when needed. Make sure that you also keep your working area clean all the time before and after painting. Have plenty of rags and paper towels on hand since painting can be a “filthy” at times. Also have spare containers on hand for storing used oil painting mediums and solvents.
August 29th, 2007
Composition has always been an important aspect of oil painting. It is defined as the selective arrangement of the different elements that make up an oil painting. The aim of good composition is to help guide the eyes of an onlooker in a certain oil painting and keep up his or her interest in the subject matter. The main aim is to create a certain arrangement through preparatory planning and sketching in order to create a balance between the different oil painting elements and come out pleasing and interesting to the eye.
Composition is more than just a simple arrangement of a bowl of fruit or adjusting to a certain position to see a subject at a better light. There are other elements to consider when it comes to achieving ideal composition for an oil painting. Here are some of them:
Space
This is an important element in formulating an ideal composition for an oil painting. It can be done in several ways. A painter can make use of different perspectives that can better show a subject in an interesting light. A painter may plan on using space in a two dimensional where the subject of the painting can be seen as if being deformed to blend with the flat surface of the canvas. Space can also be used in a primitive form where objects are randomly distributed and seemingly without any controlling feature. Space can also be utilized in an illusionist aspect which can be created with linear perspective or in a way where distant objects appear to be smaller, lose contrast and detail or even obscured by nearer objects.
Line
Lines can be used in a number of ways to help come up with an ideal composition for a certain painting. They can enclose forms or mark the bounding contours of an object. Lines can help create movement, define a painting’s texture or integrate the other elements an oil painting.
Tone
Employing a good composition for an oil painting also requires the creative use of tone. Tone can help create the mood, drama or emphasis on oils paintings.
Hue
The specific wavelength for a certain color, a hue can be used as a primary means of creating certain psychological effects and provide emotional impact to an oil painting.
Texture
Objects can be visually patterned in order to create a pleasing diversity to an oil painting composition. It is an element that may be of help, especially in trying to instill some focus or even arrange some sort of unity on the painting. It is texture that may help (for example) make smooth silk appear different from satin on an oil painting.
Color Purity
In composition, this element refers to the intensity or brightness of a hue. Pure colors are those that come from a single wavelength and have more dazzling clarity. Pure colors can be quite unreal and should be used with the greatest caution. For a better effect on composition, pure colors are usually used together with the other elements such as hue and tone in order to make an oil painting come out.
August 22nd, 2007
Pablo Picasso is a world renowned Spanish painter and sculptor. He is one of the most recognizable figures of 20th century art and is best known as the co-founder of the cubism movement along with Georges Braque. Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 in Malaga Spain. He was the son of an artist father named Jose Ruiz y Blasco and Maria Picasso y Lopez. His full name is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Clito Ruiz y Picasso.
When Picasso came out from his mother’s womb, he was believed to stillborn. Thanks to a brilliant doctor uncle, Salvador Quiz Blasco, revived him by blowing cigar smoke into the young Picasso’s lungs. The young Picasso was able to take his talent for art through his father who was working as an art and drawing teacher as well as a curator for a local art museum. Picasso showed his passion for art at quite an early age where he already had quite a skill in drawing that his father further honed and sharpened by giving formal instructions as well as letting the young Picasso go through an art based schooling.
Pablo Picasso’s rise to the top was not that easy, after he studied art in Madrid, he went to Paris sometime in the 1900’s, supposedly to try out his luck in the art capital of Europe. Picasso began to work at night to make ends meet as well as to continue on his craft. But there were times when severe poverty and desperation begin to catch up on the young Picasso that may have truly tested this brilliant artist to the extreme. The young Picasso even reached a point where he had to burn his other works just to keep warm during the winter.
Picasso began to get fortunate when he started a magazine together with a friend that he illustrated himself. It was during this time that he was beginning to be recognized and where his works began to be noticed. Picasso’s works are recognized today through different periods where Picasso was able to acquire different influences for his works. There was the Blue Period where his works were characterized by the use of different shades of blue. It eventually progressed to the Rose Period where the dominant colors on his artworks took the friendly pink tone.
The next period of work that Picasso made concerned his development of the Cubism art style where the subjects of his paintings were reduced to their basic geometrical shapes instead of taking a more natural form. This led to other versions of cubism which made Picasso become a more recognized personality in the art world for his unique creations on canvas. One of his most famous paintings is Guernica which Picasso did sometime in 1937. It was a painting that was done as a protest of an air raid on a Basque village during the Spanish civil war. It is a huge mural in black white and grey that features a dying horse and a weeping woman, symbolic forms that are repeatedly seen in his other succeeding works.
August 15th, 2007
Many artists have become famous for painting oil portraits. The most renowned painters in the past were made famous by their wonderful portraits that aimed to capture the exact likeness of its subject. At a time when photography was not yet invented, it became a more popular way of getting one’s likeness preserved and shown for future generations. This might have made them quite popular then.
But up until now, portrait painting in oil still comes as quite a challenging task to master and to become an expert at. For one, painting a portrait in oil may be quite more complex than what others may have expected since using oils usually require patience. Not only that, it also takes the artist’s expertise with visualizing a subject in order to transfer its likeness into the canvas. Each artist may do it in a number of ways, each depending on how well they serve to achieve the artist’s own standards.
Even though there is not one correct approach to the perfect portrait painting in oil, there are some ways that artists should be able to follow in order to make their work look spectacular. Here are some simple and general hints that may be of help to artists doing portraits in oil:
1.The first step is always to make an accurate sketch in charcoal and make sure that the features of the subject in question are correct and accurate. This sketch would become the guide that would be followed as the artist try to build up a mixture of colors and paints to come up with a masterpiece.
2.During the actual painting, artists should remember to paint shadows in order to define a broad structure. This can usually be achieved by starting with the nose which is often at the central portion of the painting.
3.Artists should also try to add some color in areas where the shadows meet with the light.
4.It is also important for artist to make the shadows similar to the background colors of the painting.
5.In painting the face, artists should try to break them into planes. One hue tones should also be assigned to these planes and should be painted in the simplest manner possible.
6.One may be able to create warm backgrounds for the portrait by taking the shadow color lighten its value a bit as well as weaken its intensity.
7.Remember not to let the background overpower the central subject which is the face. Use neutral colors for the backgrounds in order to make the subject come forward.
There are other oil portrait painting hints that may be able to help every artist come out with better artworks. Getting better at oil painting, just like any other hobby or skill, takes a lot of practice. So do not worry if you do not get it the first time. Practice after practice would allow you to master the different methods used in painting portraits in oil.
August 8th, 2007
When applied to the art of painting, the color theory is the field of practical guidance to aid in color mixing and determining the visual impact of different color combinations. The principles used in color theory were first recognized and probably established sometime in the 1400’s and became more developed sometime during the 18th century. The color theory aims to help people understand why some colors work well together while some do not. Color theory also helps on how painters are able to come up with designs for their paintings as color is an important element of composition. And most of all, the use of color theory will greatly help painters on how to properly mix colors to come up with the type of color desired.
In painting, the color theory is usually used for its principles on color harmony. Artists try to follow a certain method to create a certain type of realistic picture in their paintings. Different painters from history try to experiment and come up with different color harmony approaches in order to create the type of painting that they have in mind. This usually involved color schemes that today have largely been classified in order to help guide the modern artist.
Approaches to color harmony may vary depending on what the artist aim to achieve. There are quite a number that artists can make use for their compositions. The most basic approach would be the monochrome where the whole painting composition is based on a single hue. The subtle differences in the composition can be achieved by adjusting the purity and the tones of that certain hue.
Another way would be through the complementary approach where the painting composition makes use of one hue and its complementary- blue and orange for example. The hues created using them can be mixed in various ways and can also be used with black or white. A composition that makes use of just three hues follows the analogous approach. The 12-color wheel is usually used to determine the three hues. This color harmony scheme can either make use of one pure hue and two other semi-neutral hues. Another would be using three high key pure hues or they can also be of one dominant, one subordinate, and one minor hue. The hues being used can be adjusted for tone.
Another color harmony approach would be the split complementary where three hues are used in addition to a complementary hue of the mid-hue being chosen. With this approach, paintings may be able to achieve a warm or cool balance more easily. The triadic approach on the other hand makes use of three hues that are equidistant on the color wheel. They can either be composed of the primary colors only or they can also be made up of secondary colors. The hues may vary by adjusting the purity and the tone. Achieving color harmony in paintings is important for creating remarkable artistic masterpieces and might not be that easy to master in such a short time. Getting better comes with experience and a lot of painting practice.
August 1st, 2007