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8/6/2019 Art Instruction For Beginners Art Instruction Blog Step By Step Oil Painting Tutorial By Dan Schultz Print

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Step 1:

When doing a painting of this size (or larger), I am most comfortable starting w ith a fairlydeta iled drawing of my composition. In this case, I use vine charcoal directly on the canvas. Imake sure to take as much time as necessary on this step since it will provide me with thedirection I w ill follow for the rest of the painting. As I draw, I take careful measurementsusing my reference photo to make sure everything ends up the right size and in the rightplace. (On a side note, I carefully measure when painting smaller sizes too. I just dontnecessarily do a charcoal drawing first.) I always double-check my drawing by looking at it ina mirror. Somehow seeing the image in reverse makes it easier to see my mistakes.

Step 2:

Now that I am ready to paint, I take a few moments to think about how I will proceed. Whendoing smaller paintings, I will often work on the whole pa inting at once. But, because thispainting is a little larger, I decide to start in one area and work outwards. This way I havethe freedom to stop if I need to, and when I return it wont matter if the pa int has started todry because I (hopefully) wont have to work on areas that Ive a lready painted. (I alwaysprefer to work wet-into-wet so I can easily handle my edges without having to repaint over

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dry paint.) Of course, this requires some planning as I begin, but its also a fun way to workbecause I can see the painting begin to take shape fairly quickly. So now a ll I have to do isdecide where to start! Ive found that the easiest way for me to establish my value range fora painting is to start in an area w ith strong, dark values and some good contrast. For thispainting, some o f my darkest values are in the focal point (Sarah), so it makes sense for meto start there.

Step 3:

I do a lot of squinting at my photo and at my painting to compare the value relationshipsbetween shapes. If I get the relationships right, I will be able to continue through thepainting without having to go back to change any of the values.

Step 4:

As I continue, I also pay attention the edges between shapes so that they wont all end uplooking the same. In order to lead the viewers eye to the focal point, I make sure to keepmy sharpest edges there, while softening other surrounding edges in comparison. One ofthe keys to good edges is variety.




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Step 5:

As I work on Sarahs white coat in the picture, I keep in mind that photographs have atendency to incorrectly portray color information, especially in extremely light and dark areas.As a result, I must think about the sunlight from the day I took the photo and remember theeffect its color temperature had on the entire scene. (This is where a ll of that continuedpractice painting from life pays off too, because I have information in my mind fromexperiences painting in these very conditions.) Since I remember that the color temperatureof direct sunlight is warm, I make sure to add warm colors to all the areas of the coat thatare in the direct light. As a result, the shadows are relatively cooler when compared to thelight areas.

Step 6:

Sarah is now mostly finished (along with the most critical part of the painting.) The fartheralong I get in the painting, the more comparisons are taking place. Every shape I pa int hasto be correct in drawing accuracy, value, color, and edges when compared to what I havealready painted. This is why it is so important for me to be accurate as I begin. If I get to thispoint and notice that one of those main components is incorrect, I will either have a lot of




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repainting to do, or it will be time to decide to just start over. (And yes, unfortunately thishas happened.)

Step 7:

Fortunately, I dont see any glaring errors at this point, so I am free to start working on thebackground. The challenge of a background filled w ith trees is to keep from adding too muchdeta il and d istracting from the focal point. Yet another benefit of starting with the focal pointis that now I can compare the res t of my painting with it and make sure that it stillpredominates. So I try to discern the major shapes in the trees and only put in what isnecessary to give the impression of many trees and branches.

Step 8:

As I block in more of the background trees and foreground grasses, I keep the pa int fairlythin. This a llows me to apply thicker paint on top when I get into more detail, and I can alsolet some o f this initial wash show through in the finished painting. Again, this gives me somevariety of texture which is pleas ing in the same way as variety in my edgework (which Imentioned in Step 4).




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Step 9:

Now that I have the background all blocked in, the time has come to start working on theforeground trees . As I mentioned when I was ready to begin painting back in Step 2, I took afew moments to think about how to proceed. One of the things I took note of was that mydarkest values in the scene were actually in these foreground trees. Therefore, I had to holdback a bit on how dark I made the shadows in Sarahs skirt so that when the time came topaint the foreground trees, they would be the darkest elements. This helps increase theillusion of depth in the painting since it pushes Sarah farther into the background becausethe darkest values on her arent quite as dark as the foreground trees which should appearclosest to the viewer. I also had to remember that my camera saw the shadows on Sarahsskirt and the value of the foreground trees to be about the same, which gave me anotherreason to be careful about how dark I made the shadows on Sarahs skirt.

Step 10:

I start adding details to the trees and grasses, taking care that they dont become toointeresting in comparison with Sarah. After all, shes most important!




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Step 11:

It looks like the whole right side of the painting is pretty much finished now. Painting thevalues correctly in the grasses at the bottom is somewhat tricky. I have to squint and makemore comparisons between the grasses and other values in the pa inting so that theshadows and lights on the grasses w ill be correct. Just like painting the trees and branches,I try to look at the big shapes in the grasses so I dont get them too detailed.

Step 12:

Almost finished now ! All thats left is to finish the trees on the left in both the foreground andbackground. So all I have to do is treat them the same way Ive treated the other trees inthe painting.




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West Wind Oil on Linen 16 x 28

Step 13:

I always look at the painting in the mirror one last time to make sure nothing is incorrect ordistracting from my focal point. Often an edge that is too sharp or a distracting brush s trokeneeds to be softened. Once those are corrected to my satisfaction, the painting is finished!

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