Step 6

Added a little thin wash of sap green.

Oil painting step 5

Added a touch of aliz crimson, and my 3 blues, not neatly, just random and thinned with Turpin/linseed oil mix.

Oil painting step 4

Since this will be a sunset, I put a thinned wash of cadmium yellow in the background, with reflection in the water.

Oil painting 3rd step

Set up your palet of paints. I used burnt umber, ultra marine blue, cerulean blue, cobalt blue and phthalocyanine blue, cadmium yellow light, lemon yellow, sap green, aliz crimson, and white.

I had a one part linseed oil and one part turpenoid on hand. Take a very thinned out wash of burnt umber and draw the boat.

Oil painting 2nd step

Transfer drawing with charcoal. If you have hairspray, it will set the drawing on the canvas. Take a tissue and wipe the smudges away before the hairspray.

How to do an oil painting

I thought it might be interesting to show how I do an oil painting. Since it is summer and I have a lot of reference photos of sailboats, do not own a boat:( , but we have Lake Erie. This is my basic drawing of the painting. If you can not draw, take a digital photo of a boat, print out the size you want, grab some graphite/carbon paper and trace the image. Note your value plan, dark areas, light and medium areas.

Geraniums Digital Painting

Have I mentioned how attached I've become to my iPad? I didn't think so. It is beginning to dawn on me what a useful tool this is for planning a painting. You can instantly crop a photo to see the best composition for a thumbnail sketch. Flip it to back and white to see the values. The best maybe trying out the color palet, if the colors don't work easy to undo. No waste of printer ink, canvas, paints. Hey, I can take this anywhere, painting in a waiting room... So much fun! Digital art a valuable tool.