Oil Painting demonstration of persimmons on a dish.

In this oil painting demonstration, I will show how, in six days, to complete a flemish oil painting technique painting. The main medium used to speed up the oil painting process was a dryer called Liquin. More info on that at the bottom of the page. Because I'm using a different support than usual, I'm going to add the process of how I prepared the masonite board for this oil painting demonstration. The support is cradled in wood strips and makes for a nice presentation ready display without a frame. Cradled means the board is attached to supports that keep it from warping. Here's how we started:

These first photo's are of the masonite board and two ways of applying the gesso. Using the knife (lower half) you can see many lines of built up gesso that would have to be sanded to remove. This was caused by the board not being flexible like the canvas, thus another application method must be found.

Using the roller and applying the gesso made for a better result.

Here you see the results before sanding.

Results after sanding. 1st coat shown. a 2nd coat helped in eliminating 90% of the small indentations that you see in this photo. A nice smooth finish was achieved.

Now we can begin our painting. Here is the reference photograph I will be using. As the reference is a landscape format, I've had to do a bit of cropping to fit this to the square board I'll be using. I first needed to select a strong focal point, seeing the top most fruit, I made my decision and got started!

Here, I've gotten through the preliminary stages fairly far with the drawing, ink drawing, imprimatura and umber underlayer painting layed in. I've also introduced white to help bump up these highlights quickly.

The top half of the view has been final blended where as the bottom half, the color are just layed in over the drawing with no blending yet.

oil painting demonstration of persimmons

In the photo below, the final blending has been completed. You can still see most of my drawing lines. They remain visible to continue to give me a guide while painting the next layers.

We now start the dead layer with our mixture of gray paints. The colors are layed in fairly loosely.

On this photo, you can see some blending being done. It is with a small brush that blends the paint on the canvas. Usually in the direction on the contour, and attempting to keep all hard edges crisp, while at the same time, blending areas and need to have a smooth transition. It's difficult to show this in a photographic oil painting demonstration. Video's really do describe the process so much better. Hopefully, I've captured enough data here for you to understand.

Below, the large and medium sized dry mop blending brush is used to smooth out any visible brush strokes. This is also said to "hypnotize" or "set" the paint. A close up view of one of the fruit.

As you can see, I am not trying to describe or depict any fine details or texture at this time. I'm capturing the main tones, half tones, of shadows, etc. This is primarily a modeling exercise in which you are describing to your viewers the shape of things you are painting.

A close up of the brushes used in this oil painting demonstration, with some of the paint that gets on each one. This is wiped off using TP or lint free rags. I usually don't put them into thinner as the thinner, when the brush is re-applied to the canvas, will lift too much paint and actually wipe off what you are only trying to blend.