Toning Your Canvas For Oil Painting

Learn the proper way to tone your canvas in preparation for oil paints with this free video demonstration.  Toning your canvas before beginning a painting is a very popular oil painting technique, but there is definitely a right and a wrong way to do it.  In the following video, artist Don Stewart demonstrates his method for toning his canvas before he completes a painting.  Don combines a mixture of medium and solvent to his oil paint to get it nice and thin before applying it to his canvas.  After allowing that to dry for several minutes, he then wipes away the excess with a clean rag.  The result is a nicely toned canvas with a luminous quality to it. Enjoy this oil painting demonstration!

One of the biggest challenges for artists just starting out with oil painting is mixing colors. Color is a powerful tool. If handled improperly, things can become quite messy. Improperly mixed colors lead to muddy or unbalanced paintings. The good news is, with practice, you will become more skilled at mastering color in your oil paintings. I have collected a number of color mixing tutorials below including links to articles, videos and books. I hope you find these oil painting color mixing resources helpful.

VIDEOS:

How to Mix Colors for Oil Paints

All About Color

How to Mix Oil Paint -- Video Lessons with Hall Groat II

ARTICLES:

How to Make Better Oil Paintings: Tips & Techniques for Correctly Mixing Color

This is a great post from EmptyEasel.com that talks about correctly mixing colors from a limited palette of only 8 colors. Read the rest of this color mixing tutorial here.

Oil Painting Tips Part 2: Mixing Colors to get Brown and Black

Here is another great post from EmptyEasel.com and is a continuation of the post above that demonstrates mixing oil colors to get browns and blacks. Read this lesson here.

Bill Martins’ Guide to Oil Painting -- Mixing Colors

In this post, Bill Martin talks about his full spectrum of oil colors and how he mixes tints of these colors using titanium white. Read this tutorial here.

Color Theory & Mixing -- 16 Lessons in Colour Theory

This is a very thorough 16 part lesson from Wet Canvas covering color theory and color mixing. It covers everything from the history of color to the Psychology of Color. View these lessons here.

Notes on Colour Mixing by Andrew Newland

On the following page, artist Andrew Newland has provided an introduction to the theory of colour mixing.
He has intended this tutorial as a practical guide to the art of mixing oil paints. Also included is a related color mixing excercise to give yousome It is intended as a practical guide to the mixing of paints and has a related Colour mixing exercise. View this lesson and excercise here.

BOOKS:

Enjoy this three part oil painting lesson:

Part 1

Beginning a new oil painting of a Spring House in rural Pa. Here i am blocking in the sky and foreground underpainting:

Part 2

Underpainting the backround elements of “The Springhouse” oil painting.

Part 3

Unfortunately i had to skip videoing several sessions as i was in between cameras at thte time. So we’re here at the final session ;detailing in the foreground. Thanks for watching!!

Oil paint is an exciting medium to work with. One will never become bored while painting with oil paints. There are a variety of materials and other mediums at your fingertips and when you combine these materials and mediums with the versatility of oil paints, you have a variety of interesting ways to begin an oil painting. There are certain drawing and painting mediums that are compatible with oil paints and when utilized, will make your painting experience more interesting and enjoyable.

CHARCOAL

Charcoal works beautifully as a preliminary step to oil painting. There are three main forms of charcoal used most often by artist’s and they are compressed, willow and vine charcoal. Willow and Vine charcoal tend to be more highly favored for preliminary drawings as they leave a lighter mark and are easier to erase. Compressed charcoal, because it leaves a much darker line, is more difficult to remove and not as widely used to start an oil painting. Some helpful tools to use for working with charcoal are kneaded erasers, stiff bristle brushes, blenders and tortillions. Whatever type of charcoal drawing you create, make certain not to go overboard with your application. Charcoal is very forgiving with oil paints, but too much, and it can effect the paint in adverse ways.

PAINTING ON A TONED GROUND

Depending on the type of final picture you are working towards, sometimes the white of the canvas can be too bright or have too much contrast which makes starting a painting rather difficult. Using a uniform toned ground on your support, will make it much easier to judge the values in your painting. You are welcome to use any color you like to tone your canvas. Some of the more popular tones are warm reds, yellow and browns.

Toning your canvas is pretty straight forward and will not require that much time. Here is an example using one of my favorite tones. First create a thin wash using Yellow Ochre and Burn Umber. Apply the wash to your support generously. Use a large bristle brush to spread and cover the support entirely. Allow the wash to dry for a couple of minutes and then wipe off the excess with a cloth. You don’t have to use oils to tone your canvas. You can tone your canvas with any of the water mediums described below.

ACRYLIC PAINT

Acrylic paint is an excellent choice for starting an oil painting and one of my favorites. One of the most attractive features of acrylic paint is its fast drying time. This property of acrylic paint makes blocking in your underpainting very easy. Ideas can be worked out quickly on your canvas and instead of waiting days for your underpainting to dry, you are ready to paint in mere minutes. This really does depend on the type of acrylic paint you are using and how thickly you apply it. Not only is the fast drying time attractive, but as in other water based mediums, there is no need to thin the paint with dangerous substances like turpentine.

WATER SOLUBLE PENCILS

Water soluble pencils provide an excellent way to begin an oil painting mainly because of their versatility. The beauty of this medium is that when dry, it acts like a normal colored pencil, but when water is added, it magically mimics the properties of water color. This enables the artist to both draw detailed lines as well as create colorful washes.

WATER SOLUBLE OIL PAINT

Many artists are not that familiar with this last medium as its a relative newcomer to the world of painting. Enter, water soluble oil paint. With normal oil paints, a traditional method for starting a painting is by diluting the oil paint with turpentine to apply washes. The problem with turpentine is its a very dangerous substance. Many artists develop allergic reactions to this substance and are unable to use it. The beauty of water soluble oil paints is that no turpentine or other harmful substances are needed. They can be thinned with plain old water. Water soluble oil paints behave just like normal oil paints and your brushes can be cleaned with soap and water, again, avoiding the need to use harsh chemicals.

oil painting tips

BE CLEAN AND ORGANIZED

I know for some of us, it can be very difficult to maintain a clean and organized painting environment. Sometimes we can get very caught up in our work and things can get sloppy. The last thing you want is to become a sloppy painter as your work will suffer. Break the habit early and try your hardest to develop clean and organized painting habits.

Your Palette

First, you should get into the habit of laying out your colors the same way every time you paint. This is just good practice and keeps the painting process flowing nicely. Arrange your colors along the edges of your palette leaving a lot of room in the center for mixing.

Don’t be afraid to squeeze out a good amount of paint, especially your whites. You will be more productive if you aren’t continuously stopping to squeeze out more paint.

Make certain to include all of the colors you think you will need to complete that session of painting. Again, this will make you more productive.

When adding paint to the palette, I have found that squeezing the paint out in long lines, as opposed to puddles, keeps my colors cleaner. When you have puddles of paint, they tend to get soiled by other colors when mixing. With a long line of paint, you can just take paint from the end as needed and not dirty the rest. Keep some rags or paper towels handy for wiping your palette knife clean.

It’s a good idea to continuously wipe your palette clean during the painting process. There is nothing more frustrating then trying to remove dried up oil paint. Keep some alcohol handy so that you can keep the mixing area of your palette clean.

If you don’t want to fuss around with a regular palette, why not try a disposable one? They are basically paper with a plastic coating that prevents the paper from absorbing the oil. The beauty of the disposable palette, is that you can simply throw it in the trash when you are done. Using a disposable palette will definitely help keep your colors clean as you will be starting with a clean surface every time you start a new painting session.

When mixing your colors, use your palette knife and not your brush. A palette knife can be wiped completely clean so there is no chance of your colors becoming contaminated. Your brush is made for painting and not mixing and you can shorten the life span of your brush if you are continually mixing with it.

Brushes

I like to have a handful of clean brushes near by when I am painting. This way, I do not need to stop and clean my brushes when I am working with a different color and there is less risk of the wrong colors getting into the mix.

SATURATION OR BRILLIANCE OF COLOR

When a color is squeezed straight from the tube, it is said to be high in saturation or brilliance. This is because it hasn’t been mixed with any other colors. The more colors you mix together, the duller they will become. It has been said that one should not mix more than three colors together and this a very good rule to follow. If you mix more than three colors together you are kind of defeating the purpose.

Why is this so? Let’s say that you are going to mix a brown. You decide to use red, yellow and blue to create your brown. You then decide to mix in a bit of orange. As you know, red mixed with yellow will create orange. So there is no need to add the additional color.

No one ever said it is a sin to use color straight from the tube. If you are painting something that calls for brighter color, why not use paint straight from the tube without mixing. Sometimes we get so accustomed to mixing color, that we neglect the pure color that is right in front of us. When using pure color though, try not to over do it. Too many bright colors can create havoc in a painting. Try and add bright colors against a duller surrounding so that your bright colors really stand out.

LIGHTEN OR DARKEN WITH COLOR

What is it that most of us do when we want to change the value of a color? To lighten a color, we usually add white and to darken a color we use black. You should always look for the opportunity to use color to change the value instead of black and white. Adding white or black to color will diminish its brilliance, unless that is the effect you are shooting for. A great example of this is using Yellow Ochre. If you want to brighten and lighten this color, instead of adding white, try adding a little Cadmium Yellow Light.

I hope this article has given you a little more insight into keeping your colors pure. Remember to practice oil painting as often as possible and never give up, no matter how frustrated you get!