"The thought process behind most of my art work follows one of two forks in the road: Reality or Fantasy. This piece forgot to choose."
How to paint with Oil Sticks on Canvas:
by Alma Lee
I recently discovered oil paint sticks, it was love at first sight. Not only does it allow you to paint large blocks of colors quickly, it also allows a painter the some power of detailing that a drawer experiences. But most important for me personally it allows me to be a painter period. I have struggled with painting all of my artistic life. As I am more of a drawing kind of person. That said I am going to take you through my process of painting a cubist/surreal painting with oil sticks, Inktense, and color pencil. Here is the finished piece.
Materials List:
Shiva Oil Sticks
Inktense Derwent pencil:
Stand oil:
Prismacolor Pencils:
Palette Knife for Blending
Old cotton jersey rag
Variety of Bristle Brushes in varying widths
Fine liner Sable Brush
Primed Canvas White Gesso
Graphite pencil
Step 2: Scan line drawing into the computer and make any changes you deem necessary and either print out final line drawing on desired canvas or transfer with graphite paper.
Step 3: Using Derwent Inktense pencils I color in the major blocks of colors.
Step 4: Using fresh clean water I wet brush over entire image to create a semi blended underpainting.
Step 5: I leave the painting dry over night and then add another layer of color where a greater saturation is needed.
Step 6: Make your final touch ups and color changes with Golache or Acrylic and leave it dry over night. Note I scanned mine into the computer in Photoshop™ at this point and decided what design/and or color changes to make here.
Step 7: I decided to make a few subtle changes here, I liked the black’s added contrast and helped to lead the eye through the piece, so I decided to use a little more of it. Both the dog and cat seems to get lost in the over all picture so I added some spots and intensified the color in both of them. I add stripes to the aprons to give a little added interest as well.
Step 8: Now I proceeded to clean up and detail the painting. Note: cleaning up white specs of the canvas showing through is really much easier when you blend a few drops of stand oil into a cut off chunk of oil stick, and blend on palette paper with a palette knife. This not only thins the paint increasing the flow but leaves a nice shine over all the painting. I also pulled out the color pencils and added sharper edges and details such as wood grain on the cabinets and floor. As a final twist I added an actual metal button back to one of the breasts to add a artificial robotic look to the model.
After all me cleaning is the biggest fantasy of all!
ROBO Duster
