The Beginning

A Step by Step Oil Painting Demonstration

The Beginning - Fig. 1

A good beginning generally leads to a good finish is a basic rule-of-thumb in painting. So what makes a good beginning? That varies from picture to picture, but always requires one thing—a plan. A very good place to start is with thumbnail compositional sketches followed by a tonal sketch of the winning design. That important tonal sketch can be accomplished either in a drawing medium, or as a thin oil lay-in on our canvas. We prefer the oil lay-in since it can be built upon and incorporated into the final as an imprimatura layer. In painting, imprimatura is an initial stain of color painted on a ground. It provides a painter with a transparent, toned ground, which will allow light falling onto the painting to reflect through the paint layers. The term itself stems from the Italian and literally means “first paint layer”. Fig. 1 is a thin color wash of transparent oxide red on a 12 x 12” oil primed linen panel. We li…