My personal tips for oil painters:
--It is not necessary to second-prime with underpainting. Remember that the pre-Raphaelites painted directly on white canvases and allowed the white to shine through.
--To aid you in composition, carefully measure and divide the canvas in halves, horizontally and vertically, with pencil lines BEFORE drawing your construction lines.
--Construction lines are then to be drawn NOT WITH A PENCIL but with a fine brush, burnt sienna, and turpentine. They are easier to erase or wipe off should you have to revise your construction lines.
--Always work from DARK to LIGHT. Go back and do your work over if you need to. Do not work from dark to light and then from light to dark and then from dark to light, and so on. Your painting will never get done to your satisfaction and your tone will suffer.
--Paint what you see, not what other people should see. If an eye does not look like a conventional eye, so be it.
--Always paint from top to bottom or from near to far. Do not begin with the principal figure and then do everything else around it as an afterthought.
--It is all right to have more than one source of light, because even bounced light comes from sources other than the main source.
--To create dynamic shadows, do not use gray mixed from black and white. Mix, instead, complementaries. Yellow and violet make gray. Blue and orange make gray. Red and green make gray.
--Always mix your colors, no matter how subtly. Do not use pure colors directly squeezed from the tube.
--Do not strive to make your painting "colorful".
--Do not overmix. It results in mud.
--Never give up on a painting project. If it doesn't look right, it simply needs more time and more work.
--There is no such thing as an overworked painting, but there is such a thing as an overworked painter. Know when to rest, and then resume painting. Your painting will always look vibrant as long as you did not create mud.
--Do NOT show others stages of your work in progress. It diminishes your psychic energy for painting. Show others your work only when it nears completion or, better still, after it is finished.
These are things I learned the hard way, over the years.
--It is not necessary to second-prime with underpainting. Remember that the pre-Raphaelites painted directly on white canvases and allowed the white to shine through.
--To aid you in composition, carefully measure and divide the canvas in halves, horizontally and vertically, with pencil lines BEFORE drawing your construction lines.
--Construction lines are then to be drawn NOT WITH A PENCIL but with a fine brush, burnt sienna, and turpentine. They are easier to erase or wipe off should you have to revise your construction lines.
--Always work from DARK to LIGHT. Go back and do your work over if you need to. Do not work from dark to light and then from light to dark and then from dark to light, and so on. Your painting will never get done to your satisfaction and your tone will suffer.
--Paint what you see, not what other people should see. If an eye does not look like a conventional eye, so be it.
--Always paint from top to bottom or from near to far. Do not begin with the principal figure and then do everything else around it as an afterthought.
--It is all right to have more than one source of light, because even bounced light comes from sources other than the main source.
--To create dynamic shadows, do not use gray mixed from black and white. Mix, instead, complementaries. Yellow and violet make gray. Blue and orange make gray. Red and green make gray.
--Always mix your colors, no matter how subtly. Do not use pure colors directly squeezed from the tube.
--Do not strive to make your painting "colorful".
--Do not overmix. It results in mud.
--Never give up on a painting project. If it doesn't look right, it simply needs more time and more work.
--There is no such thing as an overworked painting, but there is such a thing as an overworked painter. Know when to rest, and then resume painting. Your painting will always look vibrant as long as you did not create mud.
--Do NOT show others stages of your work in progress. It diminishes your psychic energy for painting. Show others your work only when it nears completion or, better still, after it is finished.
These are things I learned the hard way, over the years.
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