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 Video Tutorial on Color Mixing & Theory
Here is a wonderful oil painting lesson by artist William Gelvin on color mixing, matching and theory. In this lesson, William teaches how to mix and match a variety of different colors from only 4 colors: three primaries and white.
The three primary colors he is using are Rembrandt Permanent Red, Rembrandt Permanent Yellow and Winsor & Newton Cobalt Blue. You don’t need these exact colors to do this exercise. Just pick three colors that you feel are as close to the true primaries as possible.
Tim uses a printout in this video lesson that contains 25 different color swatches that he created from the above mentioned colors. The purpose of this oil painting tutorial is to teach you how to match the colors on the printout from the three primaries. This really forces you to think and learn more about the properties of oil paints.
This is a long video with over 40 minutes of wonderful instruction, so grab yourself a cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy this oil painting lesson for beginners. Read more
Oil Painting Video Lesson – Alla Prima Oil Painting Technique
Alla Prima Oil Painting Technique – A Video Tutorial by Larry Seiler
Here is a wonderful oil painting video lesson for beginners by artist Larry Seiler that demonstrates the All Prima Oil Painting Technique.
Alla Prima is an Italian word that literally means “At Once”. Its a painting that is completed in one session. This is a direct painting method that produces a fresh and spontaneous look to your work. I love this style of painting because it allows me to get loose and just let go and have fun, which is exactly what Larry does in the following video tutorial.
He begins his Alla Prima painting session by mixing his colors ahead of time on his palette. He says this eliminates a lot of his decisions in advance and allows him to establish a color harmony that will work for his painting. Another advantage of pre-mixing his colors is that his focus is on the subject that he is painting and not on color mixing.
After his colors are prepared, he then creates a basic sketch using some vine charcoal.
Wet on Wet Oil Painting Technique – Bill Alexander Paints Fall River
The wet on wet oil painting technique is a direct painting technique where you complete a painting usually in one sitting. Wet oil paint is applied on top of another layer of wet paint.
In the following video demonstration, artist Bill Alexander paints a beautiful autumn scene using the wet on wet technique. Bill is a modern pioneer being one of the first artists to popularize the wet on wet oil painting technique through his Emmy award winning Magic of Oil painting television show.
Watch the master at work below. If you would like to learn more about Bill Alexander, be sure to visit his Website here or you can check out his YouTube Page here for more of his videos.
Bill Alexander paints Fall River Part 1
Portrait Painting Demonstration in Oils – Brittany
Biography
Scott Burdick was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1967 where his mother and father early on encouraged his interest in Art. “I spent a lot of time in hospitals as a child and remember my mother showing me how to transform simple shapes like circles, triangles, and squares into objects like planes, helicopters, and fish. It seemed such a magical thing and made spending so much time in casts and on crutches much more bearable.”
In high school, Scott began taking life-drawing classes at the American Academy of Art under the legendary Bill Parks. “Though I’d always loved drawing, it was Mr. Parks who filled me with the enthusiasm and discipline necessary to improve my skills. His love of painting and creative expression infected us all.” After finishing the Academy, Scott continued his study at the Palette and Chisel Art club, where he met his wife, painter Susan Lyon. “It’s a wonderful thing being able to paint together all the time and grow as artists together,” Scott says.
His ideas for paintings come from everywhere. “What makes a subject attractive to me are the same things that attract us all. The beauty of a young girl, the character of a weathered face, the solitude of a farm at sunset, or even the story itself behind someone or something that makes it interesting.” Scott believes it is the job of the artist to recognize this when it happens, analyze why, and use his technical skills to convey the feeling to someone else. He notes that some paintings are as simple as stopping at the sight of something interesting, while others may take more time to research than to actually paint.
Oil Painting Demonstration – Florida Landscape
Below is an excellent step by step oil painting video lesson by the very talented Debra Bryant. I found the following oil painting demonstration on the video sharing site Ustream.tv. This is a very long demo with over 3 hours of footage. So grab your favorite beverage or snack, sit back relax and be prepared to learn something new.
In this oil painting lesson, Debra shares her oil painting techniques for creating a beautiful landscape painting from a photo. She begins her painting by first toning her canvas with purple so that this color will show through the final painting in spots.
She demonstrates her techniques for creating a convincing sky and clouds. One key technique that she points out in the video for doing this is to make the sky more green near the horizon. To make realistic looking clouds, she mixes reds and yellows into white. Also, when clouds near the horizon, they become narrower and more gray. These are just some of the awesome techniques you will learn in this video. Enjoy!
Follow this link to visit Debra’s Ustream Profile for more awesome Painting Demonstrations.
Portrait Painting Demonstration in Oils
In this step by step portrait painting demonstration, David R. Darrow, aka “Dave The Painting Guy” talks about how he paints a portrait with oil paint. He talks about how he sets up his canvas, the paints on his palette, special medium that he uses, how he sketches out the portrait and more. I learned a great deal about portrait painting by watching this video. One of the key points that I learned from this video is to keep the cheek and nose area redder than the rest of the face, while keeping the forehead and chin a bit more yellow. Check out the video below to learn more…
David is a really talented artist. I visited his website to check out some of his painting and was quite impressed with his work and I know you will be too. You can visit his site by following this link.
David also hosts live painting session on a site called Ustream. If you have time, you should definitely set aside some time to attend one of his live workshops. Don’t worry if you miss one though. You can watch some of the recorded workshops there as well. Follow this link to visit David’s Ustream Page.
Sierra Splendor – Landscape Oil Painting Demonstration Part 2
This is Part 2 of Sierra Splendor, a Landscape Painting Demonstration by Mike Callahan.
Please click here to view Part 1 of this Demonstration.
Sierra Splendor Landscape Painting Demonstration Continued
31.) With my thin underpainting in place, I can now begin to paint the trees that cover it
Sierra Splendor – Landscape Oil Painting Demonstration
About Mike
Nationally recognized, award winning artist Mike Callahan is a fourth generation Nevada native who counts himself privileged to grow up in what he believes to be one of the most beautiful places on earth, the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains near Reno, Nevada where he still lives today. While he has been painting since childhood, he has only been painting in earnest for about the last 5 or 6 years.
Says Mike, “The topography of this area is simply phenomenal; one can go from the high desert to mountainous alpine settings in less than an hour. It is this beautiful and varied landscape that ends up being the subject for a vast majority of my paintings.”
However, if you look through the paintings on Mike’s website, you will quickly see that the Sierra landscape isn’t the only subject Mike typically paints. He also enjoys painting Western themes as well as figurative and portraits.
Oil Painting Tutorial – Learn to Paint Like Monet
About Connie Nelson
I have always liked to draw and paint. In elementary school I was known as the “school artist”. Drawing and painting was a blissful and ‘easy’ activity for me.
I was also inspired by my father, who was a sumi painter. Still, I did not see myself an artist until after taking a job as a registered nurse. The toll exacted by the job on my body and soul made me question my purpose in life.
One fateful day, while I was still working as a nurse, I stepped into an art teacher’s studio and took my very first formal art lesson, and I have never looked back. I soon quit my nursing job and began seriously pursuing painting through continuing art lessons, supplemented by various workshops.
I live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest of the United States, surrounded by water and mountains. It’s an enchanting place to live out an artistic life.
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