Cat. No. 1126 Snow Falls in Pianello – 23cm x 30.5cm – Oil on Board
When using oils, paint your darks using thin oil paint and your lights using thick oil paint (referred to as “impasto”). This enhances the quality of light in your paintings.
In general you will put the darker background using thin oil paint layers down first, and then in later stages of painting add the lighter foreground areas with thick oil paint.
By painting the darks with thin oil paint you get three benefits:
- You prevent light bouncing off ridges of paint and destroying the dark effect when the painting is viewed.
- It prevents the viewer’s attention getting attracted to passages of the painting that you may want to keep in the background.
- You can layer transparent strokes of different hues on top of each other and achieve a natural looking warm cool contrast. The transparency effect gives the impression of a luminous, transparent shadow.
By painting the lights with thick oil paint you:
- enhance the light effect by letting light bounce off the ridges of the thick oil paint brushstrokes when the painting is viewed.
- may attract the viewer to more interesting light sections of your painting.
To learn more about using thick oil paint and other brushwork techniques
To learn more about how you can use thick oil paint and brushwork to enhance the quality of your painting, see the Brushwork lessons in our year-two online painting class. Workshop F of the Virtual Art Academy Apprentice Program.
Note: You can also use acrylic paints for this technique if you add a gel medium to thicken the paint, so that it retains your brushstrokes.
Thank You
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. I hope you find it useful. If you would like to get free painting tips by email, please sign up for my free tips newsletter.
If you are interested in a structured approach for learning how to paint, take a look at my online painting classes.
Happy painting!
Barry John Raybould
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I finished the VAA course a few years ago, but always refer to the notes, rereading the course many times. This is not a course the day you are finished, you are done. No, you keep practising the assignments getting better and better over time. When I look back at my work when I had just… Read more “No need to buy expensive art books…. Just do the VAA 4 year course. I still refer to it”
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The VAA course is built on four main building blocks including PROCESS, REALISM, MUSIC AND POETRY. These are further divided into topics that are continuously developed throughout the curriculum. Drawing, Form, Observation, Colour, Brushwork, Notan, Composition and Poetry are all thoroughly taught. Working on-line we meet students from all around the world, interacting with them… Read more “‘Ladder of Learning’ adds to overall positive experience of this awesome course”
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I joined 2 years ago with my daughter. We have both learnt so much and have enjoyed our VAA time together. My daughter is now 13 and already produces amazing paintings. The Virtual Art Academy is simply the most comprehensive art instruction I could find anywhere online, and trust me, I had been looking for… Read more “The most comprehensive art instruction I could find anywhere online, and trust me, I had been looking for a long time.”
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I joined 5 years ago when I didn’t know anything about oils, painting, composition, or drawing. Barry’s way of teaching is extremely well versed in many aspects of painting. His building blocks of learning is the best I have seen. The academy is designed well and the community of fellow students is engaging and friendly.… Read more “Building blocks of learning is the best I have seen”
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This is a great course for anyone who is serious about improving their painting. I have been a student here for several years. When I am finished, I will have the equivalent of a 4 year art education at a fraction of the cost. I can do the lessons anywhere and at my own pace.… Read more “The equivalent of a 4 year art education at a fraction of the cost”
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I never had formal training in painting and my style has always been very realistic, slow and not at all artistic, just a copy of a photograph. When I got word of the course available through Virtual Art Academy, I was very excited for the opportunity to learn what I never knew about painting. VAA… Read more “An excellent foundation on so many aspects of painting”
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This is a far more superior school than anything I have seen being taught at colleges across the country and have learned much more from the Virtual Art Academy® than from any art course I have ever taken! I cannot begin to tell how the Virtual Art Academy has improved my observation of potential compositions… Read more “This is a far more superior school than anything I have seen being taught at colleges across the country”
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The Virtual Art Academy program is really comprehensive and gave me all the information and directives to learn painting in one package. The material is very well organized, just beautiful to look at and motivating to carry through. The online campus is a wonderful place to meet other artists and receive critical feedback on my… Read more “I started learning oil painting with VAA from scratch. Just one year later my paintings started to sell”
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