Hi @lenetg137, thanks so much for posting the progression of your oil portrait, I’m very impressed. I’m also trying my hand at oil painting but finding it quite daunting. May I ask how you are mixing your colours? Are you pre-mixing them and are you using your brush or a palette knife to mix them? When I mix paints with my brush, it very quickly gets overloaded and I’m having to wipe a lot off onto my paper towel. Like you, I only have a limited palette.
Cheers Cathy
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Good question Cathy
Terri Robichon
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Hello Cathy @cmhales7. Thanks for the comment.
I am mixing the colors with my brush. The trick is using very small daps at a time. I mix as I go. Each time I adjust a color, I take a little of the last mix, pull it out slightlybefore adding another color leaving some of the previous color visible to use as reference. I try to use the nearest complimentary color to nuetralize if I go to far when adding.
For example, you mix blue and red, but purple is too bright, add a bit of orange to mute, but it ends up too red, then add a small bit of green, etc. until you get the shade you want. Then either add white or black to tint or shade, but not both, or things just turn to mud. I find it better to adjust with complimentary colors until getting to the correct hue.
Another tip is to use cool colors with other cool colors, warms with warms. Mixing the two, creates a neutral. I am not referring to warm as yellow to red and cool green to blue-violet. Each hue has warm and cool verions. For example Cadmium Red Medium would be warm and Alizarin Crimson would be cool. Both are reds. But if you compare them you could see the difference. Warms come foward, cools recede.
There are also transparent and opaque colors. You can make transparents opaque by adding white or another opaque color to it. You can’t make an opaque transparent. Keep this in mind if you plan to glaze. Use transparents as a glaze.
It helps if you are changing colors, to thoroughly clean your brush and wipe it with a cotton rag not paper to get all the paint out so you don’t contaminate the next color.
I hope this helps.
Lenet
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WOW. That’s a lot of useful information. Thanks.
Terri Robichon
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Thanks so much Lenet for your prompt reply and detailed explanation, it’s very helpful and I will attempt to put it into practice.
Kind regards
Cathy
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