Oil Painting for Beginners: A Step-by-Step Tutorial

Oil painting for beginners is easy!

Learn how to use oil paints while painting a brilliant Baltimore Oriole with Dogwood flowers.

Oil paintings have been a preferred painting medium for centuries. They last for years. Your grandchildren will enjoy your oil paintings years later.

Paint an Oriole 'n' Dogwood

Paint an Oriole 'n' Dogwood

Oils display an unsurpassed richness. They can be painted with a variety of techniques, from smooth portraits to highly textured landscapes.

What Oil Painting Supplies Do You Need?

This section includes; The recommended oil paint, what to paint on, what brushes we use for oil painting and the colors we need for a beginner's palette.

What Is the Best Oil Paint?

Professional, artist paints are recommended.

View the oil painting supplies.

Artist quality paints contain more color pigments. So, they take less paint per painting. That makes them a better buy after the initial investment. 

The paint is laid out on a palette before painting. A palette paper works well. In a pinch you can use a glass or Styrofoam plate.

How long does it take oil paintings to dry? Oil paintings may be handled in a few days, but they take months to dry thoroughly.

Alkyd Paint Dries Fast

Alkyds are our modern version of 'oil paint'. They are made with exactly the same color pigments as oil paint.

They are easy to use and come out of the tube ready to use without adding any medium. They look and handle like oil paints. 

They are workable for several hours, but dry completely within 24 hours. Their faster drying time makes them a great choice for beginning oil artists.

All my 'oil' paintings are done with Griffin Alkyds made by Winsor & Newton.

What Do We Paint Oils On?

When we are learning how to oil paint, we have a choice of three painting supports.

Alkyds are beginner-friendly.

Canvas is the traditional oil painting support. The canvas is stretched over and around wood bars. Cotton canvas is best for everyday oil painting.

Panels may be made from wood or Masonite. They need to be primed with gesso in preparation for painting.

Gessobord an archival panel is primed and ready for painting. It has a smooth surface that is excellent for portraits or other detailed paintings. 

Canvas boards are a third option. They are suitable for student work and practice.

Beginning oil painters may use any canvas, canvas board or canvas paper. 

What Brushes Do We Use for Oil Painting?

Hog hair brushes are great when we are learning to use oils. Stiff brushes move the paint around better and are easier to use with oil paint.

Gessobord is great for details.

Natural hog hair brushes are the first choice for oil painting. Synthetic oil painting brushes are also a good choice.

Start with a couple of brushes like #8 and #12.

Choose from flat, filbert or bright brushes. They are all ideal for oil painting. 

Flats have long bristles that carry plenty of paint. 

Filberts are long like flats, but their corners are rounded off. They work well for paintings where we don't want the brush marks showing.

Brights have shorter bristles that leave brush strokes for bolder creations.

I don't recommend small or round brushes for learning. They make us too fussy.

Get the feel of using the paint before investing in more than 2-3 brushes.

Solvent and Paper Towels

Solvent is used for thinning your paint and cleaning your brushes.

Gamsol, odorless mineral spirits is recommended for studio use. Store the solvent in a container with a lid.

How do you clean the oil paint brushes?

Wipe the excess paint off with a paper towel. Then swish the brush in the solvent and wipe it on a paper towel. If you see color on the towel, repeat.

Light and Ventilation

The perfect light for painting is a north light window. When you are learning to oil paint, any natural daylight is good.

The next best option is using daylight light bulbs to light your painting area. Fluorescent bulbs will skew your painting colors so they don't look good in natural daylight.

Make sure you have good ventilation in your painting area.

The Rules of Oil Painting

There are two rules in oil painting.

Oil Painting Tutorial for Beginners

Artists may paint out of their memory, imagination, life or photos.

This painting used two photographs, Dogwood flowers and an Oriole hanging on the bird feeder.

Dogwood Flowers

Baltimore Oriole

Your Paint Colors

Lay out your colors on a palette. Disposable paper palettes are very handy for oil painting for beginners.

We don't have to clean a palette after the painting is complete. We just throw away the used sheet of palette paper.

Mixing blue and green for the background.

• A warm and cool yellow - Indian Yellow and Lemon Yellow
• Orange
• A warm and cool blue - Ultramarine Blue and Phthalo Blue
• Titanium white

This painting uses an analogous discord color scheme.

What color schemes do professional artists use?

Use a palette knife to mix colors. It saves paint compared to mixing with a brush.

In this painting I used #4, #8 and #12 flat brushes. Any bristle brushes of comparable sizes would be just fine.

Put a line drawing on the canvas. Use paint that is thinned with a little solvent or an ordinary pencil.

You may do the drawing on paper first and transfer it to the canvas with graphite paper.

Start Oil Painting

Use a #12 flat brush to paint the background.

Start painting the background.

• Paint a variation of warm and cool blues mixed with white.
• Make some greens by mixing yellow with the blues.
  

Mix your colors lightly on the palette. More mixing occurs on the canvas while you are painting.

Gallery-wrap canvas is stapled onto the back, so the sides of the canvas can be painted. Continue the colors from the face of the canvas over onto the sides of the canvas.

A painting on a gallery-wrap canvas may then be displayed without a frame.

Paint around the bird and flowers.

Use a variation of greens and blues throughout the background.

• It's a good idea to repeat colors in a painting. So, occasionally put in some orange or yellow to indicate light and warmth shining thru the background.

• The orange and yellow help warm up the cool background. That ties it together with the warm colored bird.

• Softly blend the background colors together.

The various background colors suggest things in the distance without having to paint any details. This makes oil painting for beginners easier.

Paint the Baltimore Oriole

We paint the bird with various yellows and oranges. Refer to the reference photo.

A close-up of the Baltimore Oriole

Use a #8 flat brush to paint the bird's body. Make the colors brighter and warmer on the sunlight side.

We will let the paint set a bit before doing the left leg and eye.

The bird was completed after the flowers, but I moved the photo up here to put the bird steps together.

• Mix thick, black with blue and orange. Paint the head over the thin background.
  
• Use the #4 brush to paint the beak and toenails black.

Always mix your dark colors with the colors used in the rest of your painting. When you mix your own black, it will harmonize with the rest of the painting.

How do we master mixing paint colors?

The Oriole

Mix a thick grey with blue and orange, plus white to lighten it.

Paint his legs with the unthinned grey paint. The thick paint easily covers the thin background colors.

Complete the Oriole

Touch a bit of color in the eye. Use a very pale-yellow white on the top of the eye. Put a bit of pale blue-white on the bottom of the eye.

Oil painting for beginners is fun when we don't stress out by trying to be perfect.

Just have fun!

Paint the Flowers

Always use the largest brush possible. This keeps your painting loose. A #8 brush worked for the flower centers.

Paint the flower centers

Mix a brown from Ultramarine Blue and orange for the centers.

Casually dab on the flower centers. They are not round circles.

Vary the centers, some are more yellow, others are darker or a mixture of dark and light.

Highlight the flower centers with yellow.

Next paint the petals

Mix a grey by adding white to the brown you used for the flower centers.

• Paint the petals a soft grey. Add more blue if necessary to keep the grey on the cool side. 

• Mix yellow or orange with white to make a warm white.

• Paint the sides of the petals that would be catching sunlight with the warm white.

Start the leaves and stems.

Mix some thick green and paint a few leaves with light and dark areas.

Spot out where you will paint the branches and leaf stems.

Use the old trick of how to do oil painting for beginners. Turn the painting over and look at it upside down.

It will give you a fresh look to see any mistakes.

The background was a bit light, so I darkened it for more value contrast.

Painting white daisies uses similar techniques on painting flowers. 

Paint the Branch and Stems

Paint the Dogwood branch the Oriole is perched on.

Mix light and dark greys with Ultramarine Blue and orange plus white.

In doing oil painting for beginners, it's important to note the light source. The light is from the right. So, the branch is lighter on the right and dark on the left side.

Giving the branch a light and a dark side to make it look rounded.

Complete the Flower Petals

Have both cool and warm white on the flower petals.

This helps to help separate the petals and shows the direction of the sun.

Make final adjustments on the flowers

The sun is coming from the top right.

Use a warm white mixed with a bit of yellow or orange for warm sunny side.

The shadow side of the petals will have a bit of blue or light grey mixed with white.

It's Your Turn to Paint!

You can do oil painting for beginners!

Enjoying the gifts of God, an Oriole and Dogwood

Get your oil painting supplies and start painting.

When you are learning how to paint, relax and enjoy yourself. You don't have to paint like a photograph. Paint from your heart and express yourself.

That is a lot more fun! That's why we paint.

Try some of the other how-to paint pages. The more we paint, the faster we progress.

Frequent Questions About Oil Painting

You may have a few more questions about how oil painting.

You now have a firm foundation on how to oil paint. We've gone from paints and brushes to the technical aspect of painting oils, cleaning brushes and lighting sources.

You are equipped with all the necessary knowledge for oil painting.

Your Next Oil Painting Tutorials

Do you want to do another oil painting? This fun dog tutorial is great for more practice with oil paint.

A dog oil painting tutorial

Use the 2 rules you just learned in this fun dog tutorial. 

• Paint dark to light.
• Paint thin to thick.

The painting uses a simple color scheme with only three colors and white. (Black, grey and brown are not included).

You get to use the easy method of mixing black, brown and grey from the selected palette colors.

How to Oil Paint Flowers

This is an easy flower painting is done in five steps.

This is an easy flower painting.

You can paint these white daisies. 

1. Assemble your materials and sketch the daisies on the canvas.

2. Paint the dark background before the white flowers.

3. Paint the petals in the shadowed areas and highlight the sun-kissed areas with a warm white.

4. Paint the center buttons from dark to light to show their contour.

5. Paint the leaves and stems.

I Wish You Many Successful Paintings!