Cat. No. 1126 Snow Falls in Pianello – 23cm x 30.5cm – Oil on Board
When using oils, paint your darks using thin oil paint and your lights using thick oil paint (referred to as “impasto”). This enhances the quality of light in your paintings.
In general you will put the darker background using thin oil paint layers down first, and then in later stages of painting add the lighter foreground areas with thick oil paint.
By painting the darks with thin oil paint you get three benefits:
- You prevent light bouncing off ridges of paint and destroying the dark effect when the painting is viewed.
- It prevents the viewer’s attention getting attracted to passages of the painting that you may want to keep in the background.
- You can layer transparent strokes of different hues on top of each other and achieve a natural looking warm cool contrast. The transparency effect gives the impression of a luminous, transparent shadow.
By painting the lights with thick oil paint you:
- enhance the light effect by letting light bounce off the ridges of the thick oil paint brushstrokes when the painting is viewed.
- may attract the viewer to more interesting light sections of your painting.
To learn more about using thick oil paint and other brushwork techniques
To learn more about how you can use thick oil paint and brushwork to enhance the quality of your painting, see the Brushwork lessons in our year-two online painting class. Workshop F of the Virtual Art Academy Apprentice Program.
Note: You can also use acrylic paints for this technique if you add a gel medium to thicken the paint, so that it retains your brushstrokes.
Thank You
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. I hope you find it useful. If you would like to get free painting tips by email, please sign up for my free tips newsletter.
If you are interested in a structured approach for learning how to paint, take a look at my online painting classes.
Happy painting!
Barry John Raybould
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I never had formal training in painting and my style has always been very realistic, slow and not at all artistic, just a copy of a photograph. When I got word of the course available through Virtual Art Academy, I was very excited for the opportunity to learn what I never knew about painting. VAA… Read more “An excellent foundation on so many aspects of painting”
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After weeks and even months of searching YouTube, “googling” and spending a fortune on art instructional books I finally came across the Virtual Art Academy®. When it comes to purchasing online I am always very careful how I spend my money. Especially when I already spent a small fortune on art books. They always seemed… Read more “Barry gave me a fishing rod so I can catch my own fish”
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I finished the VAA course a few years ago, but always refer to the notes, rereading the course many times. This is not a course the day you are finished, you are done. No, you keep practising the assignments getting better and better over time. When I look back at my work when I had just… Read more “No need to buy expensive art books…. Just do the VAA 4 year course. I still refer to it”
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