Painting Light and Colour in Oils

CHAPTER 1

IN THE STUDIO: MATERIALS, EQUIPMENT, PREPARATION AND DEVELOPING IDEAS

Being an artist does require a certain amount of organisation and planning. I may not be the tidiest of painters, but I do have to make sure I have certain items in stock, ready to go.

Be consistent with how you lay out your paints on your palette. This will help you learn to mix intuitively, and you won't waste valuable time searching for a colour. (Image © Heather Chuter)

When I paint with other artists, it's fascinating to see the range of equipment we all use. I often do pick up new ideas, and it's helpful to try new things to work out what suits you best. Much like painting, we all have our own way of doing things and I'm tweaking my set-up all the time to make life as easy as possible.

A great deal of preparation for painting will happen in your studio, regardless of whether you are painting plein air or not. And what you buy and how much you do yourself will vary depending on budget and preference, and also the space you have to do it in.

In this chapter I will talk you through palette, medium, supports, easels, brushes and the practicalities, in particular for plein air painting. I will also talk about returning to your studio with studies and developing your ideas into something larger.

What Paint?

There is an abundance of choice when it comes to buying oil paint, so much so it can be overwhelming. If you are playing with the medium for the first time and are yet to decide if it's the one for you, I would suggest buying a starter set and probably student grade. If you enjoy using it and want to develop your handling, it really is worth investing in professional oil colour. Don't feel like you must pick one brand over another and use it exclusively - texture and pigment will vary, and you must select the colours that work for you. Buy small tubes (40ml) to try out at first, and once you have found the brand and colour you like, it makes financial sense to buy bigger tubes. I have tried lots of different brands over the years, and while not all my colours are Michael Harding, it is the brand I buy most frequently. I also use Jackson's own brand and Daler Rowney Artists oil.

My Palette

So now let's talk about the colours on my palette - this is probably the most common question I get asked. I used to have a terrible habit of buying lots of different colours, and when I first began painting plein air, I would lug them all around with me in a big, cumbersome box. I didn't lay out a set palette of colours before each painting session and as a result I was successful in making life a lot harder for myself. I spent more time hunting through the box than I did painting. I was convinced a new colour would have a magical effect on the outcome, but I just needed to spend time getting to know the colours I already had and what they could do.

Life became more straightforward when I pared back my palette to basics and arranged those colours in the same order every time. I also got to know the palette rather well, and through trial and error I learnt how it could perform for me and what were the limitations. My palette does change occasionally; I might swap out one colour to try another, or add in an earth tone, but essentially my palette will always have a warm and a cool version of every primary, plus some earth tones, two types of green and at least one white. I do not have black on my palette - I prefer to mix my darks with ultramarine, burnt sienna and either a touch of cadmium yellow lemon or alizarin crimson. Having said that, very occasionally I may use blue black or Michael Harding's indigo in a painting, but this tends to be for interior paintings rather than plein air, and in mixes rather than neat.

Occasionally I will have burnt or raw umber on my palette, as well as different ochres (I like Italian brown ochre too), and for certain skies and sea colours cobalt teal is worth the hefty price. You can see from the state of the tube in the photograph how old it is (and that it's still going) - a little of this paint goes a long way. I lay the colours out from dark to light (left to right on my palette) although funnily enough I have noticed that right-handed artists tend to go from light to dark (I am a lefty). There is no right way to do it (you don't even have to do it in this order - you might want to group your earth colours together, for example), but the crucial thing is to be consistent because when time is of the essence, you don't want to be searching for the colour you want because you put it in a different place every time. You want your colour mixing to become an intuitive exercise and this habit will certainly help.

Lay out your colours in small blobs before every painting session, but always give yourself extra white because it's the colour you will use the most. I also have warm white and zinc white on my palette sometimes. Warm white is (as the name suggests) warmer than titanium white and less powerful in mixes, and zinc white is softer still. I find zinc white particularly useful in dark mixes because it lightens while retaining the colour.

MY GO-TO PALETTE

My go-to palette for every painting is listed below (all are Michael Harding unless otherwise stated). I tend to buy the much larger tubes (225ml) for the colours I use the most (ultramarine blue, burnt sienna and titanium white), then 60ml or 40ml tubes for the other colours on my palette:

Burnt sienna

Ultramarine blue (Jackson's)

Cerulean blue

Cobalt blue and king's blue deep began as optional extras but I invariably add them too

Viridian

Oxide of chromium

Alizarin crimson

Yellow ochre deep

Naples yellow

Cadmium yellow (Daler Rowney)

Cadmium yellow lemon

Warm white

Titanium white (Jackson's)

It's a good idea to buy larger tubes of the paint you use the most. For me, that's ultramarine blue, burnt sienna and titanium white.

My go-to palette of colours. I buy smaller tubes for all but three (the colours I use the most) so if I do need to carry spare paint with me, they will fit in a small bag that I can carry.

My occasional colours: transparent oxide red (a punchier relative of burnt sienna), green gold, pthalo blue and zinc white (fantastic for blue skies), cobalt teal (expensive but invaluable for turquoise waters), Rowney rose (interchangeable with alizarin crimson).

Mediums

Just a quick note on mediums - there are so many available and it's down to personal preference. But it's important to consider toxicity. For example, turps is useful for thinning paint and cleaning brushes, but it's not suitable for using indoors with poor ventilation (with regular exposure you can become allergic). It's not something you can jump on a plane with either. There are some brilliant non-toxic alternatives on the market that work just as well, so do your research before you buy. I have tried and tested the Sennelier 'Green for oil' range - it's great and suitable for flying with. The bottles even have a little plane symbol on the side, which will prove handy should customs decide to ransack your suitcase.

Supports

There is a huge variety of supports on the market - wood, canvas, linen, aluminium . basically any surface can be painted on so long as it is suitably prepared for oil paint. Ready-made, your options to buy are vast, and if you are prepared to pay the larger price tags, I suggest experimenting with whatever appeals to find what you like best.

The other option is to do a lot of the prep work yourself, which not only brings down the cost considerably, but it also means you end up with exactly what you want in terms of surface and size. The ready-made boards, for example, tend to come in set sizes and in my experience the popular ones go out of stock regularly, which can be frustrating. I also find that if I have sourced the raw materials needed relatively cheaply, I am less precious over the finished product and a failed painting won't feel like a waste. In fact, there needn't be any waste, but more on recycling in a few paragraphs.

If you like to paint on MDF panels, this is something you can produce very cheaply and, depending on how you choose to prepare them for painting on, quickly too. Any good wood merchant can cut you boards to a specified size. I would recommend a board at least 3mm thick - anything thinner than that may well warp once primed. If you can bear to carry the weight, a 5mm board is the best option.

There are numerous ways to prepare a board. As you would expect, the quicker methods don't always produce the best results, but all methods work to make a sound support for your painting.

Prepping panels yourself is far cheaper than buying them ready made. Have MDF boards cut to size by your local joiners' yard. There are a few ways to prepare a board but all of my methods begin with a few coats of acrylic gesso primer.

If I am in a hurry and need to prepare panels for the next day, I will put two coats of an acrylic gesso primer on the panels, following this with a gentle sanding and then adding a final third coat of either a coloured acrylic (my go-to is pale umber) or a tinted primer (Michael...