I'm starting a new project today. One that is purely experimental because I really don't know what I'm doing. But, the only way I can learn is to try so here goes.
I'm beginning an oil painting. A portrait of my grandfather. Yes, I know I was about to draw it, but I changed my mind. If this painting ends up sucking, I'll just draw it like I originally planned. Judging by the status of his hair, I'd say this faded masterpiece must be from the late 70's or early 80's. This photo is regrettable because it's so damn faded. But, since I need the picture to reference color, I'm going to paint it as close to the original as possible. Maybe I'll choose to liven up the color scheme later. But some mono-chromatic thing might be good for the seriousness of the portrait.
Anywho. I assembled my brushes, paints, new palette and paint thinner. The paint thinner scares me. Anything I can't dilute in water makes me nervous.
You can see in the picture just how loose the canvas is stretched. A potential problem. I don't know if this is because I've had the canvas for a while, or because it's been exposed to the ridiculous heat in my car. I'm going to try and work with it anyway.
Not knowing how to begin, I tried what I knew. I tried diluting the paint with thinner and spreading it on in a wash. Meh. The paint didn't stick. It kept running. I thickened it up, but still used some paint thinner and that seemed to work. When doing portraits, I like my backgrounds to be darker on the edges and lighter in the center. I believe this creates an atmosphere. Plus, the background color in the photo is just horrid. The only colors I used for the background were black, white and yellow. In oil paints black+yellow= green somehow.
Blending with oils is fascinating. I found the most effective way is to make short, blotchy strokes and then blend them first horizontally with canvas-wide strokes. Then the same way vertically. I did this over and over and over until I got the color gradient that I wanted. I left the painting for now because I feel it needs more layers and I'm just not in the mood for more layers tonight.
I hope you can tell from this picture that over-blending with the dry brush technique will stretch the paint too thin. When this happens, you can see canvas through the paint. That sucks. Therefore, layers. Many more layers to go.