Impasto is an Italian word for dough or mixture

Impasto technique can be easily achieved with oil painting because the colors are thick and slow drying. It can also be achieved with acrylic. It is difficult to do so with water colors with out the use of any thickening agent.

The technique is usually used for three purposes.

• Since it forms a bulged layer, the artist can make use of the shadow and highlight casted on the paint itself.
• Impasto can be used in modern art to convey mood and expression.
• The Impasto technique can make the painting step into the realm of three dimensional sculpting.

Impasto is simulated in some advanced raster graphic editors making them one of the choices for digital painting.

As soon as the second layer dried off, I started working on the third layer, for the “Unicorn” piece.

In this layer, I took the small brush, and applied paint almost directly out of the tubes.

For adding the moon though, I used the large brush again over the soft glow that I had added in the previous layer. The key to making a good looking moon is to draw its flaws - moon is not a perfect sphere. Draw those craters on it and it will look beautiful.

For the rest of the painting, I use the small brush, as I need to apply the subtle variation in value of each color.  Value of a color basically means, how bright it is when compared to other applied color around it.  I notice that I have not been able to achive a good variation in value overall in this piece of work.  I hope to correct it in the next subject/painting - there are too many changes in this painting to correct it.

I took a smaller brush and started to define the shapes of the Unicorn. I took a thicker medium - the linseed oil was more than the turpentine this time. It gave me a lot of time to work on the canvas, and did not dry up faster as the earlier layer.

As you can see, the top left, I have created a glow where I will be placing a moon. I will be doing that in the third layer after this one dries up.

There seems to be many ways to quicken the drying process of the oil painting layer.  One is, the obvious use of solvents like turpentine to thin the oil paint.  The drying of oil paint on the canvas is actually a process where the chemicals get oxidized.  The turpentine creates a chemical reaction that quickens the process.

And searching over the net, I found the blog post by David Rourke: How to get oil paint to dry quickly

He lists several methods that can help us achieve it.

One of the tip that he gives, that I will try out soon, will be working on multiple oil paintings at the same time.  That way, even when you are letting a layer to dry up on one painting, you can paint other works.

You will have to excuse me, I forgot to take the snap of the canvas when I drew a rough outline of what I had sketched earlier. It is pretty much the same thing, but you do not put in any details as you are anyway going to cover it up with the paint. The more you practice by sketching, the more easier it will be for you to reproduce the same on the canvas with a graphite stick or a charcoal stick.

I am not sure if charcoal would do the same effect, but because I used graphite, when I paint over it, I get these dark patches.

Do not worry much about getting the right shape. Just put the basic dark tone mixture of the color. Use about one third part of the medium, linseed oil in my case, and two parts of turpentine, to mix with the pigment on the palette. Pick it up with the largest brush in your set and paint on the canvas, using the drawing you had made as a guide - filling up the spaces.

Since the turpentine is more and oil is less, the paint is said to be thin. This should allow the paint to dry up very fast - within a day or two - after which you can paint the next layer.

As far as possible, try to avoid leaving any of the canvas unpainted.  Even if the color of the subject is white, paint it with white.  The first layer will be a foundation for the next set of layers that you will paint over.

At this point, once I have completed the first layer, I sit back and let it dry for a day or two.

I notice that the hind of the unicorn does not seem to have a good shape as I wanted.  This mistake might not have happened if I had studied a bit more by sketching it out, again and again, until I was more confident.  Seems like I have been a bit impatient.

In any case, we are amateurs here, and we have, license to make mistakes.  We can learn from them.

• Canvas
• Paints - oil paints
• Medium - oil and thinner
• Tools - brushes, palette, cups

We will go through each of them one by one quickly.

Canvas

They come in different sizes and qualities. You can buy canvas yourselves and stretch it over a frame. Or you can even buy pre-stretched canvas from the art supply shops. I am not very sure, but if you want to get raw canvas and stretch it yourself, it needs to be treated to get some foundation before you can paint on it. I am not yet sure how one can do that. If you are an amateur like me, then I suggest you buy a pre-stretched canvas. They come in variou sizes - choose the one appropriate for the subject.

Paints

Oils paints come in various packaging and colors. There are oil soluble and water soluble oil-paints. I am not very sure about the water soluble ones, and hence I stick with oil soluble. The choice of colors must definitely include the basic set of colors: Titanium White, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow and French Ultramarine(Blue). You may also take a set that has these colors as well as Viridian (Green), and Burnt Umber (Brown). You can buy other colors - that would depend on your budget as well as choice of color palette for your style of painting. It is much easier when you can take paint right out of the tube, mix it with the medium and paint. It also saves you the time you spend on getting the right hue by mixing different colors. But a set of basic colors should be sufficient - and as a beginner, it will help you learn practical aspects of color theory.

Medium

There are many choices for choosing oil and thinner. For oils, the choice ranges from linseed oil, cold pressed linseed oil, steam pressed linseed oil, stand oil, poppy oil, and many more. Do not worry much about it. Take a standard linseed oil and work on one or two paintings and then you will know if you need to move to a different one. (May be, I will talk a bit more about it in another post). Next comes the thinner. The thinner, dilutes the paint and oil mixture, and it can help in drying the layer fast. But the more thinner you add, the more transperent it becomes. You have different choices - like Turpentine and other things. I choose one with less odour as I would be working in a closed rooms. This is a thing to consider - if the weather is such that you can open windows or the room is big enough, then a normal Turpentine fumes would not be that bothering. Else, it would be a good choice to go for the one with lesser odour.

Tools

• Brushes: There are basically two kinds of brushes. One, that is made of natural hair of horse. Two, brushes with bristles made of synthetic material. As an amatuer, you can go for synthetic. But do remember to take brushes of varied sizes - a very fine one, a medium sized brush, and one flat, large brush to give those intial broad strokes.
• Palette: Choose a palette that is large enough for you and is comfortable to hold in hand. They come in different colors and they may affect the hue of the final painting depending on the choices you make while mixing different color on the palette. I prefer a palette that is white in color.
• Cups: You will need a couple of these for mixing the oil and the thinner, and to have turpentine in another one to clean your brushes.
• Cloth/Rags: You will need these to clean your brushes before you clean them in turpentine, when you shift from one color to another. This will save you a lot of turpentine.

There are other things that will assist you in oil painting. But I believe the above is quite enough to get you starting.

For this particular project, I choose a unicorn. This will be a good cross of a animal portrait having a fantasy theme. The base form is a fairly complex - not too much. A unicorn, a fantasy creature, is a horse like animal with a single horn. The word ‘unicorn’ is a derivative of the latin words unus (meaning one) and cornu (meaning horn). The original or the traditional horse had a horse body, a goat like beard and a lions tail. But I choose to go with the popular visualization of a unicorn - a horse with a single horn.

Before I shoot into any more tangents, let us try to know why we need to sketch the subject before we put it down on canvas.

As beginners in this field, we would not be having the skills to get it right the first time we draw it on the canvas using charcoal. It takes years of practice and study of anatomy (in case of human and animal subjects) among many other things to draw it right the first time. Hence, it would be good to plan and visualize the subject before hand.

To start sketching the subject, we need two things. Some thing to write with and some thing to write on.

Choose any paper - it does not matter if it is plain sheet or ruled. It can even be the brown grocery paper bag. The purpose of sketching is to layout and form the subject - not to give a finished artwork. You may use pencils or pens. Erasers are not needed.

Now would be a good time to collect as many reference images on the subject. Internet is a good source for images. Photographs taken on a vacation trip will also come handy if there is the subject in any of them.

I just searched for the terms “horse” and “leaping horse” in Google Image Search and found enough images I wanted for my study.

Just keep drawing basic shapes and forms. Do not be worried if the strokes are not the way you want, and you do not need to erase them. Just draw over the ones you have already drawn using the previous lines as guides until you get the right shape. Once you get a basic form that you think is right, start to draw it all over again on a fresh space.

Patience is the key here. The more number of times you draw the same shapes (like I have drawn for the unicorn), the better. As we draw more number of times, we get confident every time. We can even add few minor details roughly and try to visualize how the painting would be.

Once you are sure and confident of what you are going to draw and paint, draw it one more time on a fresh paper.  Draw few guide lines so that you get the proportions and orientation properly.

The subject heavily depends on the style in which we wish to draw and also the medium we choose.

Oil medium allows us several different themes with in which we can choose a subject to paint.

• Still life
• Abstract
• Landscape/Seascape
• Portraits
• Settings/Scenes - Historical/Modern/Biblical/Mythological/Fantasy

Still Life

Still life theme is a very common subject chosen by artists. It is chosen by not just the amateurs but also professionals. It allows one to work on their skills with the tools, experiment with the colors, study composition and the play of light and shadows. Common subjects include fruits, flowers, fruit baskets, and other common house-hold objects.

Abstract

This is with in the scope of the ‘Modern Art‘. Intangible ideas and concepts like ’sadness’, ‘happiness’, ‘anger’, ‘repulsion’, ‘passion’, and/or the combination of these or many such ideas form the subject of the painting. Choice of colors and the presentation of different textures can be put on display in such paintings other than the subjects themselves.

Landscape/Seascape

These are the choices that are usually used to display the beauty of nature. Mountains, jungle, desert, rivers, waterfalls, sea, and similar phenomena of nature are chosen as subjects. Sometimes, the subject is show in different light or perspective by choice of colors - it all depends on what the artist wants to express. Sometimes, even imaginary landscapes or seascapes may be chosen as subjects.

Portraits

Portraits can be of anyone - humans or animals. As much as effort is made towards getting a realastic imagery of the actual subject, effort is also made by the artist to get the feel and personality of the subject caputred in the canvas. In some cases, realism is thrown out the window, like in the cases of caricatures. But it is rare to have caricatures drawn in oil medium.

Settings/Scenes

Settings or scenes of a particular even is taken as a subject. Even if there are any central subject or protagonist in the finalized painting, the other subjects and the backgroundd is fleshed out. The scenes chosen may be a historical event, a modern day event, a biblical or mythological scene, or even fantasy oriented scene.

The above choices are just loose categories, and as they say, the painting is only limited by the artists imagination, and skill. And more over, these categories do not have sharp boundaries; they are not set in stone. And an artist may choose to have a cross of the different themes to choose a subject.

Have I missed any other major theme?

I will begin my journey in the oil medium, and we can learn together. I am not even sure at this point, if it is possible to learn oil painint with out any training or having guidance of a mentor. But I do believe, that everyone is capable of creating art. Oil medium is just that - in the end it is about expressing what one has to say or show.

In true sense, this will not be my first attempt at oil medium. About a year back, I did try two works.

The first one, was Thor:

As you can see, it was messy. The first coat took more than two weeks to dry. And nothing was coherent. I just left it at that.

I got a bit lucky with the second one.

This, Wolf And Rabbit, was better than the last one. But I think it was a ‘fluke’ or my luck that it came out decent. It ended up as a gift for a friend. The other one (Thor), I just packed it and sent it home before I came from India to US last month.

Well, past is past. This time around, I am planning to document each of my step and start out simple - nothing spectacular. And with that, we can learn the process for getting a good oil painting.

So, keep watching this space. Also, do use the comment form if you would like to drop in some suggestions or questions.