Oil Painting Tutorial For Beginners – Paint What You See!
Here is a wonderful 5 part oil painting video tutorial by Artist William Gelvin that teaches how to paint what you see. This is a long video series, but well worth it. You will need about an hour of free time to watch this series.
There are times when a beginner will paint what he thinks he knows about a particular subject and not what is right before his eyes.
Now, this is not to say that you should always paint what you see exactly. Sometimes it is more important to paint what you know, especially if your eyes are not trained to see color and value correctly, as in a portrait for instance.
In this oil painting lesson for beginners, William uses a subject that he has never painted before: a shiny gold watch.
Shiny metal objects are probably one of the most difficult things for beginners to paint. That is because a beginner is not observing the watch correctly. William teaches you how to observe the watch differently, to break it down into a bunch of small shapes, which makes painting it much easier. Learn more by watching the videos below. Enjoy!
Oil Painting Demonstration – Peacock Feathers
About Barbara
Barbara A. King is a self-taught artist. Born in Irvington, New Jersey. Barbara took to art as soon as she was able to hold a crayon. Throughout her childhood, Barbara developed an appreciation for her majestic surroundings. She would often sit in tress for hours with pencil and pad, or sit in a meadow with a canvas. Years of artistic expression made it clear that Barbara’s life would be centered upon her passion for art.
To learn more about Barbara and to view her work, please visit her website by clicking here.
Oil Painting Demonstration – Peacock Feathers
Figurative Oil Painting Demonstration By Lacey Lewis
About Lacey
Working mainly in oil, Lacey Lewis is an award winning contemporary realist figurative artist who paints in a classical style. Whether or not one is versed in the elusive language of visual design, Lacey’s paintings communicate to the viewer as she purposefully chooses recognizable aspects of reality to recreate on the canvas. It is vital to Lacey that her art at a minimum expresses the beauty that she observes in her subject. Often that expression of beauty is an end in and of itself. Other times, it is used as a lure to entice the viewer to look a little longer so that a deeper meaning or narrative may be revealed to them.
“I take it as an opportunity to learn about a person; their essence, where they’ve been, the image they project. I want to create a record of someone’s whole being, not just their physical likeness, through a beautiful and well composed work of art.”
Lacey offers Classes, Workshops & Private Lessons. Please click here to visit the instruction section of her website for more information.
Oil Painting Technique – How To Paint a Leaf Tree With Wilson Bickford
In this oil painting video lesson for beginners, artist Wilson Bickford demonstrates how to paint leaf trees using a 1 inch foliage brush. Starting with a canvas that has been pre-painted with a blue sky, Wilson applies a dark green foliage made up of Sap Green, Ultramarine Blue and just a bit of Burnt Sienna to dull and darken the mixture.
Wilson states that the Burnt Sienna takes some of the “Greeniness” out of the green, which can make the tree look unnatural. After the first application of dark green paint, Wilson then demonstrates how to apply highlights to the tree. For the highlights he uses a mixture of Titanium White, Cadmium Yellow and a touch of Sap Green to create a light and bright mixture that he dabs over the darker color. These oil painting techniques that Wilson Demonstrates in this video are very reminiscent of Bob Ross Painting Techniques, of which I am a big fan. Enjoy the video!
Oil Painting Technique – How To Paint a Leaf Tree With Wilson Bickford
Oil Painting For Beginners – Painting Drips and Drops By Karin Wells
I have a wonderful oil painting tutorial to share with you today by artist Karin Wells. Hopefully you remember Karin. I conducted an interview with her not long ago. If you did not have a chance to read that interview, I recommend you take some time to read it by clicking here and become better acquainted with Karin. She is a very talented artist and I am delighted to be featuring her work here again.
The following oil painting lesson will demonstrate Karin’s 
oil painting technique for creating water drips on a vertical surface. This is part 1 of a 2 part series. The second part, “How to paint water drops on a horizontal surface in four easy steps”, will be published next week.
Enjoy! Read more
Cedar Crossing – A Step-by-step Oil Painting Demonstration By Aaron Holland
About Aaron
My formal training has been in the “Boston School” tradition, at the Studio of Peter Bougie and Brian Lewis (an Atelier), in the lineage of Richard Lack. While there, I was trained in portraiture, figurative, and still life painting methods, as well as a thorough study of academic drawing approaches. I studied with Mr Bougie and Mr. Lewis every day for five days a week, approximently 7-8 hours a day, for three and a half years. Ironically, it was while I was there that I came to love the landscape.
Both of my teachers are ardent “Plein Air” ( outside, on location) landscape painters, and would often bring in their paintings for our appreciation. After much time spent in the studio their paintings were like a breath of fresh air, and the saturated colors of outdoor light seemed beyond comprehension. I was further impressed by the notion that the paintings were done without the aid of photographic references! It was their belief that, although sometimes necessary, it can often be counter-productive to the aims of a true artist.
I have been painting “on my own” since 1998, and have tried to maintain the same integrity and faithfulness towards landscape painting that I saw demonstrated there. Although there are some differences in how I see and paint the landscape, I think that is an important aspect to growing and developing as an artist. I have made an effort to dedicate several days each week to paint direct from nature. During these painting sessions I have been seeking to capture both the essence of a scene, and how it speaks to me on a personal level. Currently I am concentrating on smaller en plein air compositional studies with a focus on light and color, painted “en premiere coup” (or, in one sitting).
Oil Painting Demonstration – Painting Horses in Landscape with Figures
“Painting Horses in Landscape with Figures”
By Elin Pendleton
This painting lesson will show you how I move from an original idea, through the entire process as I paint an equine subject in my studio.
The reference photographs:
I liked the sitting position of the groom, but the light and shadow pattern on the standing figure just made me ache to paint him!
First off, I get an idea. Sometimes that comes from a photograph as this piece did, sometimes it comes as an idea in my head. For this painting I took these photographs at a horse event near San Juan Capistrano in the summertime of 2002.
“Vineyard Patterns” – An Oil Painting Demonstration by Jennifer Young
Step One: Choose a Scene |
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| I often head out to the Virginia mountains to do some plein air painting, and on a morning last week I visited Veritas Vineyards in Afton Virginia. This is a beautiful winery and there are many possibilities for painting subject matter. However, my umbrella broke and I haven’t yet purchased a new one, which can make painting on location in an open field a bit difficult. If the sun is shining directly on your canvas, all you see is a bunch of glare and your paintings end up turning out way to dark and muddy as a result.Having said that, I can’t stress enough how important it is to take the time to choose a scene that excites and interests you. You have a better chance of producing a much better painting as a result. Luckily I came upon a nice shady spot in a private area off of the main road past the winery’s tasting room and became excited about this scene: | |
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| Okay, so it loses something in my photograph, perhaps! But what I liked about this scene was the abstract shapes and patterns formed by the sweeping lines of the vines and ground. The light was constantly going back and forth behind cloud masses, making painting with consistent lighting very difficult. But that is the fun challenge of painting on location! | |
Step 2 – Lay out the Design |
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Oil Painting Lessons – Tips on Color Mixing and Theory
When I first began painting some 10 years ago, I recall how intimidating it all seemed. With all of the various colors, mediums, brushes and other tools available, it was enough to make my head spin.
How do I make a color lighter or darker? What about making realistic shadows or highlights? This article will shed some colorful light on the situation, and with practice, working with color in your oil paintings will become easier and more enjoyable.
Thank God for the beautiful Sun, for without it, we would not see color. Everything would appear dark and colorless.
Launching Your Oil Painting Career
One color can be painted over another, drawing and proportions can be corrected, and all the nuances of light and shadow can be studied experimentally. The painting can be put aside at any time, to be picked up and continued at a later date.
Some beginners choose oil without considering other media because of a reverence for the “genuine oil painting.” When they take up painting as a hobby they want to produce “pictures that show the actual brush strokes.”
Many other amateurs, who would like to work in several media but feel that their time is too limited, select oil after checking with teachers or schools or experimenting on their own. Even a person who is more interested in another medium may find, as I have, that by using oils he can more easily study color subtleties and can acquire basic knowledge that will later be applied to the medium he prefers. The old adage, “One medium helps another,” is especially true if the first one is oil.
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