Category: Tutorials

paintings · Tutorials

“Sunlit Kitten” and a quick and cheap intro to oil painting materials.

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“Sunlit Kitten” 5×7″ oil on canvas board

This is my latest painting, probably not my finest piece, but I had fun! Tons of fun! I used more deliberately loose impressionistic brushwork in this one and enjoyed the process immensely. I post it here because I just finished it last night. However, I have another thing I want to talk about…

QUICK AND CHEAP INTRO TO OIL PAINTING

In my last post, I touched upon AI, and also the scandal surrounding a person entering the Art Renewal Center’s contest and winning a purchase award. Problems emerged when it was discovered the artist didn’t paint the image at all, but used AI. The award was rescinded, it was very embarrassing for Art Renewal Center, but in the end, it turned out okay. Welcome to the New Normal. Every artist now has to work extra hard to prove that they did their own work!

Watching all of this drama unfold reminded me that artists who paint with physical paints (in oils, watercolors, acrylics) have an advantage, because AI is a digital-only platform. AI doesn’t encroach into our realm, unless someone is trying to pull a fast one (the way the person in the Art Renewal Center scandal did).

My blog reaches artists who already work in traditional media, but if you happen to be a digital artist who is interested in doing more oil (or acrylic) painting, I’ve got you. It’s not that hard, not that expensive, and you can get started right away.

Choose Limited Palettes to Start (No Need to Buy Lots of Paint Colors Right Away!)

“Minus” 6×6″ oil on canvas board. Limited palette of White, Burnt Umber, Ultramarine Blue, and a little bit of Yellow Ochre.
“Mercy,” 4×4″ oil on Gessobord. A limited palette of White, Alizarin Crimson Permanent, and Sap Green.

These are two examples of limited palettes, using white and maybe two or three other tubes of color. Pigments like Ivory black and iron-based colors (Burnt Sienna, Terra Rosa) are particularly affordable and are quite flexible and work well in limited palettes.

The classic starter palette (and very popular!) is the Zorn Palette. I love this palette and use it all the time.

For a digital-only artist who is not used to color mixing, a limited palette is ideal. You learn to adapt to your palette limitations because you don’t have every tube of pre-mixed color available to you. Often you aren’t going to get an exact match of the color you want with a limited palette, and there’s nothing wrong with that! It’s about color harmony, temperature, and values. If you get those right with a limited palette, you’re well on your way. Many ateliers and painting classes start their students out with a limited palette, and for good reason.

Don’t go too cheap, but don’t go too fancy when buying materials.

I have some long posts about paint brands (which I intend to update, since it’s been ten years since I wrote them), but here’s the gist of it. PLEASE don’t get super cheap colors from Amazon, Hobby Lobby, Walmart, etc., in the form of a set or a kit. These colors often fade too quickly, have the lowest-quality materials, and are hard to work with.

For “cheap” (but respectable) student oil paints, I recommend Gamblin 1980 and Maimeri Classico brand paints. (House brands like Utrecht Studio and Blick Studio are fine, as well as Lukas.) Also, Plaza Art has a house brand that is quite nice. Please get a higher-end white. I like Maimeri Classico’s Titanium White, but also Winsor & Newton Artists Titanium White (NOT Winton) will do well.

If you’re painting in acrylics, Liquitex Basics is good, but please get a better quality white, either Liquitex Artist Titanium White, Golden Titanium White, Utrecht Artist or Winsor & Newton Artist Titanium White. Student grade whites for acrylics are misery. Misery. I have tried and tried and I just cannot. (I intend to write at length about acrylics some day!)

For painting surfaces, you can buy watercolor paper, coat it with a layer or two of Golden GAC 100 Acrylic Medium, then a coat or two of acrylic Gesso, wait a day or two for everything to dry, and you’re good to go. This will work for both oils and acrylics.

There’s a lot more I’d like to say about getting into traditional painting! But this is enough for now. Happy painting!

Animals · Misc. Stuff · Tutorials

Behold a Pale Orange Cat & super-mini studio setup

J R Dunster4 Comments

I’ve got a few new cat head paintings to post, but first, the latest news:

“Pale Orange Cat,” 5″ x 7″ oil on Pintura Painting Panel

Another painting completed tonight! This time, I finished this little painting at a most unusual working space: my computer desk!

As I mentioned in a previous post, these are desperate times for me (studio-wise) because now I am fulfilling my duties as a part-time caregiver for a family member. Gone are the days when I can gallivant away to my lovely studio and paint until the wee hours. I must stay homebound and be a caregiver. (And that’s okay. It’s family, after all!) I finally developed a workaround (a small studio area) to allow me to work in a very cramped space, but tonight, I decided to go even smaller.

I hope that my situation (and my solution for it) might be useful for other artists out there. Surely I’m not the only one who is dealing with a desperate need to paint, but only with cramped spaces available to work!

My very small
My very small “studio area.”

I did my painting on a computer table. Not even a “real” computer table, just some table that I’ve been using for my 20″ iMac.  Continue reading “Behold a Pale Orange Cat & super-mini studio setup” →

Animals · paintings · Tutorials

My micro-mini studio space, with some cat heads.

J R Dunster4 Comments

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, I thought I’d add a little more information about my itty-bitty, microscopic studio “area.” Perhaps all the information I share here will help someone else set up a small studio too.

Cat Head work in progress, on its
Cat Head work in progress, on its “easel,” a Guerilla Painter Thumb Box (5×7″).

I only have a super-cramped area in which to work. I use overhead light as my light source. (So far, so good.) Right now all I’ve been  working on are smaller paintings that can fit in the “easel” part of my small Pocket Box (maximum size, 5×7″). Very soon I’ll be using another table easel type thing that should accommodate slightly larger panels (hopefully up to at least 12×12″).

A wider view of the whole
A wider view of the whole “studio” area, crammed onto a small foldable table.

Here’s a wider view of the studio layout:

I’m using an inexpensive 26″ x 18″ foldable table (bought from Amazon.com). On the left is the tablet (a 10-inch Android-based Lenovo) which displays my reference photo (a cat head picture from Flickr!). Continue reading “My micro-mini studio space, with some cat heads.” →

Animals · paintings · Tutorials · Tutorials

Working with a tablet; FABULOUSLY ORANGE cat head

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Using a Kindle Fire tablet for drawing reference (Work in Progress pencil sketch). Click on picture to see larger version. (Reference photo is from posespace.com.)

I thought I’d write a little bit about a common tool used by artists: A digital tablet.

Many artists report that tablets are superior for displaying reference photos. Tablets are not limited by the resolution of a print on paper. You can zoom in on an image to see far more detail. The colors are often more accurate and with a wider range. Continue reading “Working with a tablet; FABULOUSLY ORANGE cat head” →

paintings · Tutorials

About Student vs. Artist Grade Oil Paints—Products & Brands

J R Dunster19 Comments

My web stats tell me that my page “A word about student paint” gets plenty of visitors. I think there’s a lot of curiosity about which products to buy, which ones are “best,” and which are rip-offs.

Well, before I start giving my opinions, bear in mind that it is just, like, my opinion, man. But, I think most of what I say here will be not too far off the beaten path, or in other words, will not conflict too much with popular opinion.

A small portion of my paint collection.

SUMMARY OF STUDENT VS. ARTIST GRADE OIL PAINTS:

You’ll see “Student” paint sold alongside “Artist” grade paint, but at a lower price. For instance, Winsor & Newton’s Artist and Student line are as follows: Winsor & Newton Artist Oil Color and Winton.  Winton is the student grade. Maimeri Puro is (one of the) artist grade brands from Maimeri, while Classico is their student grade (though actually Classico isn’t that bad). Some brands (like Blockx or Old Holland) only sell artist grade. Other brands (like Soho, sold through Jerry’s Artarama) are only student grade. (And Soho is very low-end, by the way. Just saying.) Continue reading “About Student vs. Artist Grade Oil Paints—Products & Brands” →

paintings · portraits · Tutorials

An experiment in acrylics & limited palette

J R Dunster3 Comments

“Jason in Acrylics,” 4×5″ acrylic on canvas panel. Thanks to Jason Aaron Baca (model) and Portia Shao (photographer) for the stock photo used as reference!

Another experiment with student paint (sort of) as well as an attempt to get better at acrylics! I dabbled with some acrylics recently, and was so abysmal at it, that I have now decided to try to improve my skills. I don’t recall having such dire issues with acrylics when I was much younger, but I paint differently now, I guess. Continue reading “An experiment in acrylics & limited palette” →

paintings · Tutorials

A word about student paint

J R Dunster9 Comments

“Jorge – Zorn Palette” approx. 4×6″ oil on unstretched canvas. (From a canvas pad.) If loving Jorge Salinas is wrong, I don’t want to be right!

So… I got a bee in my bonnet and decided to do a review, or perhaps a treatise, on the subject of student-quality paints.

Lately I’ve had reason to shop at the North-American-based chain craft/art supply stores, Michael’s and Hobby Lobby. I realized that for many people, these types of stores are their only access to art materials, at least hands-on. So, I thought I’d explore what it would be like for a new artist to try to select paints (oils or acrylics) from one of these stores, while also being budget-minded.

So I purchased some oil and acrylic sets from both stores (haven’t finished collecting my samples yet) with the intent of trying them out and reporting back what I experienced.

An overview of chain craft store brand paints. Continue reading “A word about student paint” →

Tutorials

More with Water Mixable Oil Paints (mini tutorial II)

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WORK IN PROGRESS, 4x4" water mixable oil on stretched canvas.
WORK IN PROGRESS, 4×4″ water mixable oil on stretched canvas.

Some more experimenting with water mixable oils (WMOs).

My previous post showed a work in progress oil sketch where I used a combination of several brands of water mixables (mostly Weber wOil, with a touch or two from Talens Cobra, Lukas Berlin, and Holbein Duo Aqua). I used wOil’s Alkyd “Fast Dry” medium. Continue reading “More with Water Mixable Oil Paints (mini tutorial II)” →

Tutorials

Mini-Tutorial: Experiments in Water Mixable Oils

J R Dunster4 Comments

WORK IN PROGRESS, 6×6″ water-mixable oil on stretched canvas.

Oy. My current schedule has not been conducive to painting and it’s very frustrating. But hopefully it will be back to “normal” (what qualifies as that for me!) soon.

I haven’t been able to spend much time at my studio, so I set up a very humble corner at home where I could paint. But painting with solvents (like paint thinner) was a no-go, so I thought I’d break out some water mixable oils I had, and see what I could do. I’ve done two paintings so far, neither finished, and I post the more “finished” looking of the two. It’s just a simple oil sketch of one of my made-up people (no model or photo reference). It needs more tweaking, which I’ll do as soon as it dries.

MY IMPRESSION OF WATER MIXABLE OILS:

Right now the main advantage I see with water-mixables (also known as “WMOs”) Continue reading “Mini-Tutorial: Experiments in Water Mixable Oils” →

Tutorials

A bit about alkyds… (overview/tutorial)

J R Dunster5 Comments

I’m going to add a brief entry to my “tutorials” section. It’s not much, but I feel badly that I haven’t been updating the blog as frequently. (It’s summer, what can I say? I went on another road trip last week.)

I’ve dabbled in alkyds (fast-drying oils) for a long time now. I first tried it in art school, many moons ago. I think that at the time we only had Winsor & Newton brand. The first impression I had of alkyds (back then) was that they weren’t as opaque as regular oils, and they had a kind of “waxy” texture. But they were quite workable, and I loved the fast drying time!

"Jason in Shadow," 5x7" alkyd on Gessobord. Thanks to Jason Aaron Baca (model) and Portia Shao (photographer) for the use of the stock reference photo.
“Jason in Shadow,” 5×7″ alkyd on Gessobord. Thanks to Jason Aaron Baca (model) and Portia Shao (photographer) for the use of the stock reference photo.

Here’s an alkyd study I did recently. Now we have several brands of alkyds to choose from, and they don’t seem as “waxy” as they used to, way back. But they are still quick-drying!

I typically use Liquin (an alkyd medium) when I paint in alkyds. This should help speed drying time more. I find that usually in less than a day (depending on the paint thickness) the painting is dry enough, and ready to be worked on again.

Here’s another recent alkyd painting (WORK IN PROGRESS!).

“Blue Hair,” 12×12″ oil (alkyds) on canvas panel. WORK IN PROGRESS!!!! Thanks to Cathleen Tarawhiti on DeviantArt for the stock photo I used as reference.

With “Blue Hair,” the painting was dry to the touch later the same day, so I was able to do some work in the morning/noonish, and do a little more later on in the day. Amazing! I love my alkyds.

Even though we have several brands of alkyds to choose from (as opposed to just W&N’s alkyds, back in the day), I wish there were even more brands and colors available. Winsor & Newton’s “Griffin” brand has recently discontinued all cadmium colors. I understand that they have probably made this decision because cadmiums have some toxicity, but cadmium “hues” aren’t the same—cadmiums have an opacity and denseness that cannot be replicated in “hues.” Fortunately, the other alkyd brands (C.A.S., DaVinci, and Gamblin) do still carry cadmiums.

Each brand of alkyd has their own properties. I think DaVincis tend to be very thick and stiff. (Kind of like Old Holland in that respect.) I will still use them, am very grateful for DaVinci’s line of alkyds, but given a choice, I prefer something a little more buttery. Gamblin’s “FastMatte” alkyds are pretty good, soft and buttery, though I wish they carried more colors. CAS is a good quality brand, but sometimes their customer service sucks if you order from their site. (Long, long story there. For another time!) Griffins have a good consistency and I think a decent pigment load, but I miss the cadmium colors.

Alkyds have, in some form or another, been around for many decades. I’ve heard that studies indicate that they are “stable” and I am comfortable using them. My old paintings done in art school still seem rich and vibrant as ever. As long as we use pigments that are strong and light-fast, I think they’re an awesome alternative to regular oils. In fact, it’s perfectly acceptable to mix alkyds with regular oils. (Many artists use an alkyd white with their regular oils, which tends to speed up drying time on all the paints.) Some manufacturers of regular oils sell a “fast drying” white, which is often made with alkyds, for artists who enjoy the fast-drying properties of alkyds but don’t want to use a whole set of alkyd colors.

This page has a good overview of alkyds.