Color-Layer for Oil Painting Techniques

In this lesson I'll show you the color-layer of my oil painting techniques. I say "my" when actually it's just the one I've found to be the very best method for me. The method was introduced and perfected in the renaissance era.

You'll be amazed at how little color paint in this color-layer lesson you have to apply to achieve a magnificent painting. Why?, if you lived when this method was developed, you would be finding bugs, rocks, plants, and drying them. Then you would be crushing them and adding linseed oil until you made what you can get in a tube today!

Well, not exactly. Their pigments were sometimes very dangerous but they were brilliant! Modern manufacturing comes close, but I can only imagine that their paints simply performed better than todays modern equivelants.

Let's get to painting! I won't get into great detail about the mixing of your colors here. Here we will concentrate on strictly the color-layer. Mixing is another subject that will be handled on the web site. But a few tips will help get the ball rolling.

Get a color wheel. Use as few paints as possible to achieve the color you need. Mix small amounts at first, (you'll have to scrap some, but don't throw it out.) (You can add it to your gray mixtures in small amounts). Once mixed, pull a little on knife and squint your eyes while viewing the knife just in front of your subject.

If the knife disappears, you've matched your color. Don't be overly concerned here. If your red or green is not perfectly matched to the subject, who's gonna know! The human brain only has about a 6 minute recall when it comes to exact color!

Now, that doesn't mean paint a alizara crimson apple! Keep your colors true to nature as close as you can, but don't spend 20 minutes trying to find an exact match.

Below, you'll see I've mixed a light green with my cadmium yellow light and ultramarine blue. A little yellow ocher has also been added to brown the color down. Three colors MAX!

Here you see I've added a light and a dark color to the end of my background pear.

After the application of paint, I use my correction brush to spread it out abit.

Then a view further back after soft dry brush blending. Notice too that there is alot of teh umber under layer still showing through. On some subjects, if the color works, use it!

In the next example, I've applied my colors to the pair of pears. Now say that fast!

Here I've done the correcting of the color-layer.

And here after final blending with the soft dry mop brush.

Here are the beginnings of my red grapes, paint applied.

Some correcting and minor blending with the small blending brush.

And final blending with the larger dry mop brush.

Here I start on another set of grapes in another painting.

After some correcting.

And final blending with dry brush blending mop brush.

Below is a finished color layer with a few details added. You usually save small details and texture for the final layers, but I couldn't resist adding a few dew drops at this point. To get more details about water drops or dew drops Click here!

Speaking of dew drops! I'm going to add a full page to these beauties as they are one of the best ways to seperate your work from most others.

If you're happy with your results, sit back relax, and allow your painting to dry a few days. You can start on another while you wait thereby having several in the "pipeline".

Click here when your ready to go on to the next step with the Finishing Layer lesson

Click here if you'ld like to head back to the Main Lessons Page

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