Oil painting RAGE - PLEASE HELP ME!

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Yeah, I don't think I can afford to buy such expensive brushes right now. Unfortunately the ones I have really aren't working - or maybe it's the paint, I don't know. Maybe both.

Oil painting is rage. I just tried it for the first time yesterday. I managed to blend the colors pretty well, but I also accidentally messes my work space when my paper smacked my palette and smeared paint everywhere. It's very different than working with acrylics.

I would love to see some pics.
The reason I took up photography and digital re-touching is that I don't have the patience for actual painting.

Okay, I just had a meltdown as a result of trying to paint again. I think I might just throw them away (or give them away to someone who doesn't want to slam their head against the wall every time they try to paint with oils). I thought maybe if I took a break for a while then started fresh without any expectations I might at least be able to discover something interesting and create something surprising. NOPE. It's like trying to fingerpaint with my f*****g toes. I can't even create a simple shape because every single brush stroke shows.

This is in no way "finished" but I'm walking away again for a bit. Maybe if I take something against anxiety I might have the patience to see it through, but the knowledge - absolute knowledge - that nothing I try to do with these is going to look the way I want is really making me feel like I'm wasting my time and getting frustrated for no reason at all.

Here's everything I'm working with, by the way. I'm quite sure that more expensive brushes would not fix this. It's possible that better paints might help - I'm noticing that each color has a different consistency by the way, which makes it even more difficult and unpredictable. Is that normal or just sh***y paints?



I absolutely despise when my brush strokes (or pencil or crayon or whatever) are visible in the finished product. If I wanted to show reality, I'd be a photographer. I want to show what's in my head, and it looks NOTHING like this. It has shape and form and texture, but the texture is not the texture of a paintbrush. Sadly, I don't think I can show anything else with these piece of s**t paints. Why does anyone prefer this medium when there is so little control?

I think I see what part of your problem is. Most of my colleagues who prefer oil paints use them precisely because they want a painterly aesthetic that shows brush strokes. You may not be one of them, but there are many artists who really crave that texture. I've heard many times from oil painters who see my acrylic works and levy the criticism that they're too "flat"-- they aren't textured enough. This is ones of the reasons I've taken to using gel matte medium and molding paste a little more frequently. But of course, textural preferences are highly subjective-- my tastes in what I want to accomplish (and what it seems you want to accomplish) seem to be very removed from that crowd of oil painters.

If you're trying to create what's inside your head without leaving artifacts of the production process that detract from the illusion of reality, oil paint is a really difficult medium to be using. This is not to say it can't be done, of course-- but it takes a lot of practice and patience to pull it off.

That's perfectly normal. You'll get that too with top quality or handmade oilpaints. Pigments vary in the amount of oil that is needed to bind the powder into a paint.

There are more peculiarities with oil paints. Some colours are more opaque than others. If you wonder why you have two whites in your box, it is because one is transparent (zinc) and the other is opaque (titanium). In general (but there are exceptions), the warm colours are opaque, and the cool colours are (semi) transparent. It is this property of oilpaints that make layered painting with a great deal of depth and brilliance possible. If you paint a transparent yellow over a (dried) red, you'll get a stunningly radiant orange.

Some colours dry fast (cobalt, raw umber), and others take forever to dry (most earth pigments).



To get rid of the brushstrokes, you could try the dry brushing technique. Taking the square shapes in your painting as an example, you first have to apply a little bit more paint without thinner, or just a tiny drop if the paint is too thick. Better still: use a little bit of refined linseed oil instead. Linseed oil makes the paint flow better. Then take a dry brush without paint and gently brush perpendicular to the brushstrokes. This is a video of how to use this technique to blend colours, but you can also use it to remove the brushstrokes in a single colour.

http://youtu.be/O7RdLo0cZKY



Speaking for myself, and every other artist that works in oil that I have talked to, it's a fascination with the properties of oilpaints and oilpainting techniques (that with a lot of pratice allow more control than any other medium) that makes it so enjoyable. While it is certainly possible to make a painting in a few hours, oilpainting requires a great deal of patience, practice and knowledge to do it well.

The paint is quite thick. So thick that I can't get it to move on the canvas. I tried coating it with some thinned-out white first, but then the blue became seriously runny. Maybe I should find some linseed oil. That should be possible.

Again, it comes down to whether I'm willing to invest more money in this. I've got a good-sized lump on my head now from slamming it against the (concrete) wall during a very serious and uncontrollable meltdown triggered by the combination of trying to paint (and getting different results than I anticipated) and unexpectedly hearing music that was too stimulating. I'm okay now but this really put into perspective how quickly my moods change and how careful I really need to be. I wish I were "stronger" - but I am what I am. I've never had something like this happen from any type of art before. Why on earth is it affecting me so deeply? I've had almost no meltdowns for years! And I've had my share of frustrations, but not like this...

I would like to learn how to control these paints. I keep hearing that you can do so much more with oils than with other paints, but no one seems to be able to give me specifics aside from "it takes practice." I learned what I know about watercolors and acrylics by playing with them and delighting in what resulted. I've tried to take art classes and read books, but they only frustrate and even anger me. My way is always different from the "normal" way, it seems. But with oils, I feel like I'm constantly being tricked. Like the universe is laughing at me, playing a bait-and-switch joke that it never tires of. I keep hearing that it gets easier with "practice" -- but what kind of practice? Can you give me something concrete and specific? These generalizations are not helping. In fact, they're contributing to an overall paranoid feeling of conspiracy - that this is just a trick to make me frustrated somehow. Logically I know that's nonsense, but I just keep getting so overwhelmed, so frustrated.

But if it's as you (and others) say, then I want to keep trying until I master it. I just don't know how to go about it.

As always, I genuinely appreciate your feedback. I hope I don't come off as hostile. I'm just so frustrated from trying so hard and failing. And the meltdown today was completely unexpected and far worse than any I've experienced in a long time. If I don't find a way to feel I'm in control of this, it might beat me, and I don't know if I'd ever forgive myself for being beaten by a set of paints!

EDIT: By the way, the squares in my painting do not have any thinner. That's Cerulean Blue and it came out of the tube that thin.

Nobody can give you something concrete and specific if they don't know what you hope to achieve. The phrase "there are as many ways of oilpainting as there are oilpainters" is a bit exaggerated, but not much. So what I need to know to help you is what style you would like to master. You began with Bob Ross. He uses a technique known as wet-in-wet. His technique isn't the only way of doing wet-in-wet. The question is whether you want to learn to paint like that, and if you can afford the materials needed for this technique. Have a look around on YouTube to see if there is anything you like better.



Then it's not cerulean. Cerulean is one of the few blues that is opaque. What you've got, as far as I can judge from the photo, is cerulean hue, a transparent pigment with the same colour, but a totally different chemical. I'm afraid that student quality paints frequently have incomplete information about what's in the tube.

Fair point. I never intended to paint like Bob Ross - only tried to use his methods to learn how oil paints work (and failed miserably). My style varies fairly widely depending on which medium I'm working with, because I tend to just go with however it feels. I don't plan things in advance almost ever. This has always worked for me. But with oils, I feel like it's impossible to just "go with it" because "it" is completely unpredictable and always changing when I least expect it.

Maybe something more concrete would help. I can't say what my goal is for this type of paint because I don't understand how it works, but at the very least I can show you some things I like and maybe that will give me a starting point. As for my own work, here's a few of my favorites. I'll just provide links for now, since the images would be resized by the forums anyway.

Acrylic:
http://airavj.tumblr.com/post/320762234 ... th-acrylic

Watercolor:
http://airavj.tumblr.com/post/320766358 ... watercolor

Marker:
http://airavj.tumblr.com/post/320761000 ... and-marker

Colored Pencil:
http://airavj.tumblr.com/post/320759045 ... red-pencil

When I create most of my art, I usually don't start with any plan at all. Just grab a color or a piece of blank paper and make a squiggly line or something and thing "ah, this looks like it wants to be a (tree)" and let it grow from there.

Here's a couple oil paintings from other artists that I like, though I don't know if I would ever seek to actually duplicate their styles:
http://aoxomoxoa9.deviantart.com/art/ga ... -334877539
http://rainbow-color.deviantart.com/art ... -330973530

OK, I'm not giving up. I've wrangled myself into a new mindset of experimenting instead of trying to create something. I've tried to research the paints I have online to see which are opaque and transparent and what other information I can find. It turns out that many of the colors I have aren't even standard oil colors, and some which are listed as transparent are turning out to be opaque, etc. I'd get super frustrated over these cheap paints, except I'm using them up so quickly that I'll need new ones soon anyway. Does painting with oils usually take so much paint? I can make a little tube of watercolor or acrylic last for a long time, but after only two small painting attempts, I'm almost out of several colors, especially white.

Here's how that last painting looks now. I'm noticing that the more I paint, the dingier and grayer the painting looks. Even if I try to use only bright colors, ones that I imagine will blend into more bright colors (like green and yellow becoming a brighter green), they get kind of faded looking each time I add a new color. Again, I don't know if that's the particular paints I'm using, the quality of the paints, the colors I'm choosing, or just an overall quality of oil paints.



I'm also noticing the brushes wearing out pretty quickly. Even the ones I bought specifically for oils (which, though not high-end, were definitely not the cheap ones) are starting to fray and lose a lot of bristles. I'm not exactly gentle with the brushes, but that was never a problem with other types of paint. I'm torn over whether I should be just buying cheap brushes if they'll wear out anyway, or try to invest in more expensive ones - but I don't know for sure if even expensive ones would last, and it'd be awful to invest all that money and have something ruined anyway.

The information you guys have offered so far has been very valuable, so any further advice would be greatly appreciated. Also, can anyone estimate how much a standard set of decent-quality oil paints might cost? There's not many art supply stores around here and I want to keep an eye on prices to make sure I'm not getting ripped off. Some of them really seem to be more expensive than they ought to be.

EDIT: I just gave a closer look at the box of oils and I wish I had done so much sooner. I searched for the brand name ("Marie's Oil Colour") online and couldn't find any information. The front of the box says:

The inside of the cover has a lengthy badly-translated description of how safe the aluminum tubes are and how non-toxic the paint is. The address of the company is given as "Shanghai China."

I didn't look too closely when I bought them because I bought the same brand of watercolors and acrylics ages ago and they were always great paints. I guess oils will need a bit more scrutiny. Biggest lesson learned so far: NEVER buy a box of oil paints for $5.

Good! I'm glad you're not giving up. Oilpainting shouldn't be as frustrating as you have described and I'm afraid it's indeed the paints that make it so unpleasant. It's true that the colours you have aren't what you would find in a student paintset of a major brand like Winsor & Newton or Talens. That means it is impossible to tell what chemical it is and how it will behave. It's difficult to tell for sure from a computer monitor, but I do see some grey in your painting that shouldn't happen. That means that a serious colour exercise would be pretty pointless. All you can do is see what kind of strange things they'll do, and keep it for reference to compare with a good quality student oil paint.



No. You need very little of artist quality oil paints and a bit more of student quality, but even a student quality goes a long way. I bought a set of Artisan watersoluble oilpaints (Windsor & Newton) about 4 years ago, made 4 paintings (50 x 60) with them and I still have plenty left. (I use watersoluble oils because I hate solvents of any kind and get a splitting headache from them, even in ventilated rooms. It's also easier to clean the brushes!).



That's perfectly normal. Hoghair is naturally split (flagged) and this is the very reason why it is used for oilpainting brushes. You don't see it in a brand new brush (unles you look very closely), but they were already split. The oil and painting with them pulls the ends apart. This is a good thing. The brushes will hold more paint and with time have less 'scratchy' brushstrokes. The loss of hairs is one of the little annoyances of oilpainting, but also perfectly normal. I usually rub new brushes vigorously in my hand to get as many loose bristles out as I can. It's so annoying to have to pick bristles out of a painting, but I'm afraid highly experiences professionals have the same problem. Can't be helped, not even with very high quality hog bristle.




I have no idea what the prices are in Prague, but in the Netherlands a standard set of good student quality oilpaints (e.g. Talens Van Gogh) is around 20-25 euro. As an alternative, you could buy a limited palette of artist quality paints and experience the real power of oil paints. With pure primary colours, and Titanium white, you can make any colour with very little paint. Here's a video that is both illustrative of the high quality of these paints (Talens Rembrandt and Winsor & Newton), as well as what you can do with them. It also answers some questions why you can get muddy colours if you don't know exactly what pigment is in the paint.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad-Y8gszgnw

(Price in the Netherlands: Talens Rembrandt 40 ml: permanent yellow, red, cobalt blue: 9,85, titanium white 7.45. That's double the price of a student set, but it also lasts twice as long.)




That pretty much explains your problems. There is no telling what is in those paints and what they will do.

In my experience oils are better for thick layer work and also its better if you fill in the image with the oils, smooth it with a spatula of sorts then line the work for definition. its what I do. Atm im using oils in a computer program, but i used to do the same with physical oils. Here is an example of mine:



I sketched first, filled in with the thick colors, smoothed it out then lined the detail in.

So a student set of paints might cost me something like 500-600 kc. That's acceptable as long as they won't get used up too quickly. I'll have to see what's available.

Thanks again for all the answers. Really, it's a big relief to know that these cheap paints are the major problem. I also keep hearing that oil paints have fumes and a specific smell, but these ones have no odor at all. Guess that has to do with the chemistry and "non-toxic" nature of them. It's like I'm using the Crayola version of oil paints. : )

Anyway, I was playing around a bit on some paper (I don't have anymore canvas and I don't plan on keeping these experiments so I just grabbed some heavy paper to practice on) and I'm actually starting to enjoy this.



I'm starting to see how the blending and thickness of the paint can be an advantage for certain things. I did something similar to this in acrylic once and it was easier to do, but less subtle. The colors dried too fast for me to do any real blending with them. I think I'll finish this one up today and then tomorrow after work I'll hit the art supply shop and see what they have for a student set of paints. I'd go today but they won't be open on Sunday. I'll also buy a few more brushes - last time I only got bristle ones, so this time I'll get the "sable" type ones, although I won't be able to afford the really expensive ones. I also plan to buy a palette knife and some sort of acrylic paint retardant so I can make more use of it before it dries. So far for a palette I've just been taking scrap cardboard, painting it with a layer of off-white acrylic, and letting it dry. Been working just fine so far and saves me money. Any reason to invest in a real palette? I'm very used to improvising materials for all my art, so I can't think of any real reason to spend the money on that for now.

I also need some canvas, I guess. I'd prefer to save some money and use heavy paper instead (the canvases I've bought have been a bit on the pricey side and it adds up quick when I'm still just learning). I've heard that it's okay to use heavy paper if you prime it with acrylic first. Any other opinions on that? I can get heavy paper for free from work so that would really be ideal. I can start investing in canvas once I'm more confident and looking to sell things. Also, I'm finding that it feels easier to paint on paper than canvas, that the paint flows better. I've never used canvas before even with acrylic, so that might also be part of my initial problem.

I get paid sometime in the next week so if these things will keep me going for a while I think it's okay to spend 1000-1500 kc in one shot for these supplies. This is starting to feel worthwhile.

By the way, I wanted to go into the first post and change the title of this thread to something less rage-y, but it won't let me edit it because the post is "too old." Strange.

Oil Paint Color Wheel

I got a paint-by-numbers set in a charity shop. The paints were lumpy and the brush mashed. I used old wine to clean the brush! But I enjoyed it enough to go out and get better quality materials. Over the years I practiced and improved my technique. There's a lot I havn't worked out how to do, but I like the challenge of it. there is always more to learn.

I like to be able to work on wet paint to alter the colour, blur the colours, scrape stuff away and have another go if it's not quite right.

If I'm not getting anywhere I walk away and come back to it another time. I save time that way, coming back to it fresh. Sometimes when I'm "painting" I spend as much time looking and thinking about what I want to do, as I spend actually putting paint onto canvas.

Wheee, I went to the art shop today! Sadly I don't have the time to try out my new stuff before bed : ( but I'll get to it right after work tomorrow.

As I expected, things were more expensive than people describe them being elsewhere even in Europe. This is standard in the Czech Republic. The prices of clothing, electronics, and any kind of consumer goods aside from food and booze are often more expensive here than anywhere else in Europe. I know many people who take regular trips to Germany to buy clothes, because even factoring in the cost of a train ticket, they save a lot of money.

So here's what I got. I did some talking to the very helpful woman at the shop and she recommended some things differently than what was posted here.

I asked for a set of student-quality paints and she gave me a choice between a "big name" brand (I forget which one) and a locally-produced Czech brand. She assured me that the Czech ones were of equal quality, but were cheaper because they're not from a big international company, so I got the Czech ones (the brand is Umton by the way). The labels are in many languages so no trouble there. The colors included are:

Titanium White
Brilliant Yellow Light
Helio-Gen. Yellow Middle
Permanent Red Light
Madder Lake Deep
Yellow Ochre Light
Brown Ochre
Burnt Sienna
Burnt Umber
Ultramarine Red
Ultramarine Deep
Phtalo Blue
Green Lake Deep
Oxide of Chrome Opaque
Iron Oxide Black

I got a smallish palette knife (although when I got it home I realized it was still bigger than I need, it'll do), a bottle of acrylic paint retardant, and a bottle of turpentine. At first I asked for linseed oil, but the woman pointed out that things will dry much slower if I use that as medium and suggested that if I like to paint fast (and I do!), I should try this faster-drying but stinkier medium. It's by the same Czech company as the paints and the label reads "Medium II - Fast Drying Thinner." I'll give it a try and see how it goes.

Finally, brushes. While I originally wanted to invest in some decent ones, the woman at the shop pointed out that the synthetic detail ones they had are much lower priced (and I can get more brushes so I can have multiple colors going without having to wash) and she assured me that the quality is good enough for someone who is still learning. If and when I decide to invest more, I can go back for real hair ones which are far more expensive. (When was the last time you had a shop assistant encourage you to buy the *cheaper* product?) For the price of between two and three lower-quality squirrel-hair brushes, I was able to buy six synthetic ones (a 0 round, a 2 round, two 4 rounds, a 2 flat, and a 6 flat) that should serve most of my purposes for now. For bigger areas of color I already have larger bristle brushes (which were FAR more expensive than these synthetic ones). So I guess I'll get to see how big a difference it makes and make future decisions in a more informed way.



So what do you think, guys? I really want to try this stuff out today (especially the PAINTS, which have a very intriguing smell and oh my goodness I can't wait) but if I don't go to bed within the next 30 minutes I'll be completely screwed for tomorrow morning, and sadly oil painting is too involved to do anything in 30 minutes including cleanup.