FOUR Things I Wish I'd Known When I Started Painting In Oils.
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- čas přidán 6. 08. 2024
- Painting is hard and in this video I share the 4 things that I wish someone had told me when I first started painting. This includes: there are many ways to start a painting, experimentation is really important, your painting supplies do matter, and understanding the principles of painting is the most important thing for getting better.
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Musee D'orsay - Jak na to + styl
Yes to Alla Prima AND I also fully recommend Alex Powers’ Painting People in Watercolour.
Super useful. I watched it twice. I have the Schmidt book, now I’m committed to read it cover to cover. And you’re right about experimenting. Thanks for the tips.
no problem. It's a brilliant book 👍
Great tips, thank you. The fox painting you showed while talking about brushes is beautiful!
thank you so much. The full painting of this is on this channel if you fancied watching it. 😀
Well said ❤❤❤
Very instructive. Thank you!
no problem
5:44 ❤ Thank you for the book recommendations, I have not come across the works of this artist, they are amazing
it is an amazing book. Best investment I ever made.
Excellent points!! Thank you!
😀👍
Thanks
awww! thank you so much!
Are the good brushes Rosemary Ebony short flats? I have just moved into animal painting in acrylics but will go to oils (was a seascape painter in oils) - your videos are amazing - so full of content - thank you
thank you so much. they are eclipse comber brushes in various sizes. Hope this helps.
Lol I don’t buy “a good craftsman never blames his/her/their tools.” Sure, you shouldn’t make excuses for your own mistakes by blaming tools- but, in my experience, having a good bit of experience in guitar & music production, acrylic painting/pouring, watercolor, a little bit of alcohol inks, & now dipping my toes into oil painting… In MOST of these mediums/art-forms, the quality of the tools/materials makes a huge difference, & in at least a few cases, even early on, as a beginner, having to work with substandard materials can be a significant disadvantage.
For example:
- It’s not uncommon to hear musicians say that, within reason, if a kid is serious about getting into an instrument & isn’t just going to cast it aside in a few weeks, it’s worth investing in a solid starter instrument rather than a really bottom-tier “student’s” instrument (which doesn’t mean you have to sink $10,000 into their first instrument, by any means- you can get a very good beginning guitar for $300-500 that will serve a student infinitely better than some injection-molded $50-120 piece of junk that doesn’t even hold a tune; & yeah, I 100% recognize that it’s not fair that poor people have to start out with garbage materials/equipment whereas the ruling class can use professional-grade stuff from day 1; I’m not saying it’s fair or should be this way- I’m just observing the reality that new student artists/musicians/etc. are faced with). Because, the reality is, depending on its quality, a tool/material can work with you, in your favor, or it can work against you. If you have a dirt cheap, low-quality guitar that you’re trying to learn on, it may have fundamental intonation or tuning stability problems. It may be extremely difficult, or even painful & unhealthy, to finger notes (which is all the worse for beginners, who haven’t built up any callouses yet). It may have any number of problems which can have a number of consequences for a new player… If it sounds & feels bad to play it, then they’re less likely to actually pick it up & practice. If it is poorly intimated or won’t hold tuning, then it could hinder a new musician developing their ear as a consequence. And on down the line.
- In watercolor, if you start out only ever using cheap, low-quality, light-weight, poorly-sized pulp papers that cannot really handle or evenly absorb water/paint, then no matter how graceful you get with your brushwork, no matter how well you learn color-mixing, no matter how well you sketch your composition, you’re going to have a frustrating, bad time. I’d argue that for a new watercolorist, decent cotton paper is a more important investment than any fancy pigment, expensive brushes (you want some decent brushes, but you can get those reasonably cheaply, & you can get by for a good part of the early stages of learning with just handful of those- you don’t need one of every kind, in every size, but you do need a surface that will allow you to practice wet into wet & other such techniques without becoming a mottled mess, or falling to pieces, warping to a point where the pigment flows into the valleys & completely ruins whatever you painstakingly painted…
- Even just starting our in acrylic painting, trying to save some money by mixing my own homemade gesso out of corn starch, titanium white paint, & glue- I dealt with it at the time, but in retrospect I can see that it was a VASTLY inferior product, & it genuinely ruined at least one canvas I can think of. It has no tooth, it dried super hard & created this kind of awkward, lumpy-edged surface… It was smooth, as a surface, sure. So for purposes where that’s what you want, it was tolerable. But as soon as I switched to a legitimate, toothy gesso made by my local art shop, it opened up a world of possibility. It made even just basic strokes much easier & more achievable, where just getting solid coverage was difficult early on (because of a number of factors, but the homemade gesso recipe was undoubtedly one).
I think one could make a similar case in pretty much every medium. Not every material is equally non-negotiable. There are areas where you can be thrifty & save some money, DIY things (I’ve made my own leveling table for pouring, changed out the hardware on an old damaged easel rather than buying a brand new one, put together a board for pinning down loose canvas…), skip out on extraneous gizmos or materials that you can work without, & I’m all for that. But there are also certain things where having quality materials is kind of make-or-break. Where the consequences of not investing in some minimal standard of quality will be that it makes it harder & more drawn out to learn (or can potentially deter a new student from pursuing it); it can degrade or even ruin the quality of the end product you create from those materials. It can render certain techniques or effects impossible to achieve… And in these kinds of cases, it’s not some kind of cop-out to acknowledge the role that substandard materials/tools played in holding you back. It’s just an honest, accurate assessment of reality.
Of course, it’s also true that there are some craftspeople so talented that they can take basically no materials, & they can make a masterful work of art out of that. And I respect the hell out of that- it’s amazing to witness. I think acknowledging how important quality materials are only elevates their achievements even higher! But for the average person, especially for students starting out who are getting their bearings & don’t yet know exactly what they can or can’t do without, those minimal quality materials are really important to have a pleasant & successful learning process.
thank you for sharing your opinion 😀
You don’t have to be rude at the beginning. The “lol” wasn’t necessary.