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.