How to Oil Paint: A Journey Through the Ancient Art of Working with Pigment and Oil

The first time I squeezed cadmium yellow onto my palette, I understood why artists have been obsessed with oil paint for over 600 years. There's something almost alchemical about mixing powdered earth and minerals with linseed oil—you're literally painting with liquefied stones and metals. That yellow wasn't just a color; it was pure light captured in a tube.

Oil painting isn't just another artistic medium. It's a conversation between you and centuries of masters who discovered that when you suspend pigment in drying oil, magic happens. The paint stays workable for days, sometimes weeks. Colors blend into each other like liquid silk. You can build transparent veils of color or pile it on thick enough to cast shadows. No wonder the Renaissance masters abandoned their egg tempera the moment they discovered what oils could do.

The Sacred Materials (And Why They Matter More Than You Think)

Let me save you years of frustration: your materials will make or break your painting experience. I learned this the hard way, starting with those terrible sets from craft stores—you know the ones, with the tiny tubes and brushes that shed like nervous cats.

Professional-grade oil paints contain more pigment and less filler. When you paint with genuine cadmium red versus "cadmium red hue," you're working with an entirely different beast. The real stuff has weight, opacity, and a richness that cheap paint can't touch. Yes, a single tube might cost $40, but here's the thing—you need surprisingly little. A blob the size of a pea can cover more canvas than you'd expect.

Start with a limited palette. The old masters conquered the world with lead white (now titanium or zinc white), yellow ochre, burnt umber, and a red. Add ultramarine blue and you've got enough to paint anything under the sun. I painted for three years with just five colors before expanding my palette, and those limitations taught me more about color mixing than any book ever could.

Your brushes are extensions of your hand. Hog bristle brushes—stiff, springy, and durable—are the workhorses of oil painting. They push paint around with authority. For detail work, synthetic brushes have come a long way. I'm partial to Princeton's synthetic mongoose brushes; they hold their shape through aggressive painting sessions and clean up beautifully.

Canvas needs tooth to grab the paint. Pre-stretched canvases work, but once you stretch your own, you'll never go back. There's something deeply satisfying about pulling canvas drum-tight over stretcher bars. The bounce under your brush feels alive. For practice, canvas boards are fine, but they lack that responsive spring that makes painting feel like a dance.

Setting Up Your Painting Space (Without Poisoning Yourself)

Here's what nobody tells you about oil painting: ventilation isn't optional. Traditional solvents like turpentine aren't just smelly—they're neurotoxic. I spent my first year painting with windows closed, wondering why I felt dizzy after long sessions. Don't be me.

These days, I use walnut oil for cleaning brushes and thinning paint. It works slower than turpentine but won't give you headaches. Some painters swear by spike lavender oil, though at $50 a bottle, it's more precious than some pigments. For the truly solvent-averse, water-mixable oils exist, though purists will tell you they handle differently. They're not wrong, but they're also not getting chronic headaches.

Your palette matters more than you'd think. Glass palettes clean up beautifully—just scrape with a razor blade when the paint dries. I use a piece of tempered glass over gray paper, which gives me a neutral background for judging colors. Wood palettes develop a beautiful patina over time but require more maintenance. Paper palettes feel wasteful but save cleanup time. Pick your battles.

The Dance of Fat Over Lean (And Other Rules You Can't Break)

Oil painting has rules rooted in chemistry, not tradition. The big one: fat over lean. Each layer needs more oil than the one beneath it. Ignore this, and your painting will crack like dried mud. I've seen paintings less than five years old with surfaces resembling alligator skin because someone got impatient.

Think of it like building a house. Your foundation (lean layers) needs to dry hard and stable. The walls (middle layers) add structure. The roof (fat layers) protects everything underneath. If you put the roof on first, the whole thing collapses.

Start with paint thinned with a touch of solvent or walnut oil. As you build layers, add more medium. By the final layers, you might be painting with pure paint or even paint mixed with additional oil. This isn't just tradition—it's physics.

The Actual Painting Part (Where Theory Meets Canvas)

Everyone wants to jump straight to painting roses or portraits. Start with simple forms. Paint an apple until you dream about it. Sounds boring? That apple will teach you everything: how light wraps around form, how reflected light bounces into shadows, how color temperature shifts across a surface.

Block in your major shapes first. Forget details—you're establishing the architecture of your painting. I use large brushes for this stage, sometimes even palette knives. You want to cover canvas quickly, establishing your darkest darks and lightest lights. This is your roadmap.

Here's where oil paint shines: it stays wet. You can blend edges, adjust colors, scrape off mistakes. Unlike acrylics that dry while you're mixing the next color, oils give you time to think. This blessing becomes a curse if you overwork areas. Know when to walk away. Some of my best paintings happened because I ran out of time and had to stop.

Temperature matters as much as color. A yellow in sunlight reads warm. The same yellow in shadow might need a touch of violet to cool it down. This isn't theory—go outside and really look. Shadows aren't just darker versions of light colors. They have their own color logic.

The Waiting Game (And What to Do Meanwhile)

Oil paint dries through oxidation, not evaporation. This takes time—days for thin layers, weeks or months for thick impasto. This isn't a bug; it's a feature. You can return to a painting days later and still blend edges, adjust colors, add details.

But waiting drives some people crazy. Here's my solution: work on multiple paintings. While one dries, start another. I usually have three or four paintings in various stages. This also prevents you from overworking—hard to fuss with a painting when three others demand attention.

Some pigments dry faster than others. Umbers and siennas contain iron, which catalyzes drying. Lead white (if you can get it) dries quickly and helps other colors dry. Titanium white, the modern standard, dries slowly. Cadmiums take forever. Ivory black? Geological time. Plan accordingly.

Advanced Techniques That Aren't Really Advanced

Glazing—applying transparent layers over dried paint—transforms good paintings into luminous ones. Mix a tiny amount of pigment with lots of medium. The result should be like stained glass. Each glaze modifies the layers beneath without obscuring them. The Flemish masters built entire paintings this way, layer by translucent layer.

Scumbling—dragging opaque paint over dried layers—creates atmospheric effects. Load a dry brush with paint and lightly drag it across the canvas. The paint catches on the texture, creating a broken color effect. Skies love this technique.

Impasto—thick paint that stands off the canvas—adds sculptural dimension. Van Gogh didn't invent it, but he showed us its emotional power. Thick paint catches light differently, creating actual shadows on your painting. Use a palette knife for maximum texture, or simply load your brush and let the paint speak.

When Things Go Wrong (And They Will)

Mud happens when you mix too many colors or overwork wet paint. The solution? Scrape it off and start fresh. Oil paint forgives mistakes if you catch them early. A palette knife becomes your eraser.

Colors sinking—going dull and matte—usually means an overly absorbent ground or too much solvent in your paint. A light coat of painting medium or retouch varnish brings the color back. This is temporary; proper varnishing comes after the painting fully dries.

Sometimes paintings just die. You'll know when it happens—no amount of fussing resurrects them. Here's the beautiful thing: you can paint over them. Some of my best work sits on top of failures. Those ghost paintings add depth and history to the new work.

The Long Game

Oil painting isn't instant gratification. In a world of digital everything, it's almost rebelliously slow. A painting might take weeks to complete, months to fully dry, years to reveal whether your technique was sound. This slowness is a gift.

Each painting teaches you something. That failed portrait? It taught you facial proportions. The muddy landscape? A lesson in color temperature. The still life that sings? Proof that sometimes everything clicks. Keep painting. Your hands learn what your brain can't quite grasp.

After twenty years of painting, I still feel like a beginner some days. That's not discouraging—it's exciting. There's always another color relationship to discover, another way to apply paint, another effect to chase. The masters spent lifetimes exploring this medium and barely scratched the surface.

Oil painting connects you to a lineage stretching back to Van Eyck, running through Rembrandt, Velázquez, Turner, Sargent, and countless others who found in oil paint a material that could capture light, emotion, and the very essence of seeing. When you pick up a brush loaded with oil paint, you join that conversation.

Start simple. Paint what you see. Let the paint teach you. Everything else follows.

Authoritative Sources:

Mayer, Ralph. The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques. 5th ed., Viking, 1991.

Gottsegen, Mark David. The Painter's Handbook: A Complete Reference. Watson-Guptill Publications, 2006.

Laurie, A.P. The Painter's Methods and Materials. Dover Publications, 1967.

Speed, Harold. Oil Painting Techniques and Materials. Dover Publications, 1987.

Doerner, Max. The Materials of the Artist and Their Use in Painting. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.