Oil Painting

Once you have got the sketch ready, and the tools you need to paint, then comes the point when you cannot wait any longer.

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.
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Once we choose a subject for the oil painting the next step is sketching. Not on the canvas, but on paper.

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.
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