Experimenting With Oil Painting On Craft Paper

You know what the cool thing about oil paint on paper is? You can paint on almost any paper surface you can find. Unlike water based mediums, oil paint wont crinkle it up. So you can experiment with different papers and see if the different surface textures effect how you paint.

Maybe it changes how you apply color or if the paper is dark, how it effects what you use to draw in your outline. For me, I realized I really liked starting a painting on this dark ground (this paper had a dark color to it). So I'm going to start my full paintings with a much darker ground then I have in the past.

This Christmas I was at the end of a wrapping paper roll and the core was a length of rolled up craft paper. It struck me that I could probably paint on this stuff! So I rolled it out and laid something heavy and flat on it for a few days so I can get the paper somewhat flattened.

The biggest reason I like oil painting on paper is it's incredibly cheap and thin you can literally do hundred's of sketch paintings on paper and it doesn't take up much room. I use these little painting experiments as loose sketch's and don't take them to seriously. It's good practice though.

So I set up a quick still life of a glass jar and a mushroom. Something this simple is perfect for me, since as a hobbyist I don't have time to do a lot of large finished paintings. I would rather do small quick paintings for fun. Working in this way if I hit on a subject that I like, it might spark an idea for a larger finished painting.

I'll post the process photos below. I started with rubbing a little linseed oil of the surface to let the paint flow better and then using a brush with Burnt Umber I painted in the outlined shapes. Once the proportions are correct it's just a matter of values and colors. Take a look.

I'm blocking in the outline and the shadow areas here. Then it's time for background and foreground. These colors wont all make it to the final but its a good start. It's basically just the local color.

A little further now, Cad-Red for the lid and tweaking the shadow.

Mushroom is added and foreground colors are modified slightly. That about does it for a sketch painting. This took about an hour and half to do and I generally try to keep them to about that long. Let me know if you have any other "found" painting surfaces that you like.

Painting Shapes and Creating Form with Casein Paint

I want to experiment with the idea of painting shapes to create form rather than blending. I am attracted to painters who don't over blend and tend to leave a lot of there brushwork as singular marks all over the canvas. To me, it's more of a painterly way of going about things and in the end I think it's more interesting to look at.

Lately I've been watching the work of Jess Watts, you can see his YouTube channel here. He has this way of starting a portrait by outlining all the value shifts across the form. When it's in pencil yet it looks quite odd but as you study the shapes that are created you'll see he's breaking down the figure by value. Jeff usually uses Gauche for his sketch painting but here I'll be using Casein paint.

So I'm going to give the method a shot. My reference for this sketch is a slice of a Ben Lustenhouwer painting. I'll try to match his value shifts by tiling or shaping the figure with blocks of value. You can see the full painting at his website here.

Close up of Ben Lustenhouwer painting that I'll be using for reference.

As you see after I initially sketched in the form with charcoal. Then I went back in and started to outline the value shifts that I see in Ben's Painting with pencil.

Here I start laying the darkest values first with Ivory Black Casein paint. The areas with Ivory Black straight out of the tube are mostly the eye brows and directly around the eyes. All other value shifts are with a slight mixture of white. Casein can be painting very opaque and I think it's very similar to Gauche as it can be re wetted and worked back into after it dries to the touch.

Here most of the values have been laid down in there biggest shapes. It's still looking pretty rough at this point due to the fact that the more slight value shifts have not been painted yet. It's worth pointing out that most painting go through this "ugly" phase. That stage where beginners tend to give up because it's not going the way they want. One thing I've learned is you just need to stick with it and keep fixing the problem areas. The ugly stage will always be there, you just have to push through it.

Here is the finished shape sketch and in the end I probably blended the shapes a little more than I wanted to. There are a few problem areas but nothing that couldn't be fixed in the final rendering. Since I used Casein paint I could very easily use this as an under painting and finish it will oils. I like this way of starting out because you can game plan your values in a stage where it's easily fixed.

Casein paint is a great sketchbook and illustration medium for oil painters

John Berkey (1932-2008) illustration in Casein.

Over the last year I've tried a lot of different painting mediums. For years I had always gravitated to watercolors. Probably because in art school I did a lot of watercolor inks for my illustrations, it was just my default medium. I had tried using watercolor for landscape and still life painting with mediocre results. That's probably the reason why I never really dove into painting to much in the past because I didn't want to give other mediums a try.

About a year ago I decided I was going to change that and give it a try again. This time I was going to be open to any painting medium like acrylic, oil or pastels.

First (as usual) I tried to give watercolor a go again. I did learn a lot while doing a bunch of sketch paints but after a few months I realized that watercolor just wasn't the painting medium for me. The transparent nature of the medium just befuddled me. I tend to never get it right with the first stroke and that's really the key with so many watercolor techniques. I had to find something more opaque to work with so I could layer, cover up and fix mistakes.

The next logical step was acrylics and I do like them, to a certain point. They do offer a nice opaque quality but I think I was using a student grade acrylic and I just didn't like the look of the finish that well. It was really dull and I'm not a fan of that "look".
Oil pastel was another medium that I did like a lot but it's hard to layer to much with it and I tend want to have 5 or 6 layers even in my sketches so I kept looking.

I've been following the work of James Gurney through his YouTube channel and his blog. He does a lot of sketching, and it makes sense. The more you sketch everyday items in your life the more prepared you'll be to paint those things in a finished painting. He uses a small Moleskine watercolor paper sketchbook. He paints in Casein and watercolor but mostly in Casein paint in the sketchbook. Casein is a water mixable paint that dries quickly to a velvety dull finish. I find it great for the sketchbook. It's made by only one manufacture (that I know of) Jack Richeson Co. You can buy it at Dick Blick or Jerry's.

I've just started sketching with Casein so there will  be more to come on how it works for me but I'll share a couple sketchbook paints below. So far I love the workability. You can layer and pick up the colors on the bottom so they slightly mix with each other. Great for subtle color effects.

Casein Painting banana on red towel.

Casein Painting of Bruce's Yams

If your interested in how Casein was used as an illustration medium in the past have a look at masters of the medium John Berkey and Harry Anderson.