Youtube Tales: Attempting oil painting (1st proper time – plus Beauty and the beast art)

This blog post is an addition to my video (here) which was supposed to contain real-time audio but unfortunately, does not as things did not turn out as how they needed to.

Hopefully, in the future, I can learn ways to get over the problems I face with audio, but as of now I hope this blog will provide you with a further insight of oil painting for the first time, so if you wish to try it out, you may avoid the mistakes I seem to have made

So for this weeks video, I had decided to try out some oil paints, given to me by my brother after he had picked it up at his Santa’s grotto. He had picked it up knowing it might be of use to me as well as the fact that everything else tastes. Upon seeing them I thought I would try them out and thought why not record it to let people see my epic fail.

Now, after getting a smell of these paints, I know for certain I have used these before, but at first, I did not know if I did. This is probably because, though I had bought oil paints (after saving money for a long time, determined to get myself a large 90 piece art set and not let my parents use the excuse of not having money on them) I had no idea how to use them. For me, back then, the difference with paints was simply what they were made of, not how they were used.

So the first thing I did, before actually recording this video, is research oil paints.

At first, I had simply researched the brand, in hopes of getting an idea of how these paints might work as they seemed to be a cheap set, so I didn’t want to go into this without knowing the quality.

But to my misfortune, it seems these paints barely exist! I had not found any trace of them on the internet, other than on eBay, where they had required no reviews what so ever. The majority of the paints which popped up for this brand are acrylic paints, which received many reviews (with many complaining that the company did not give the colors stated and lacked proper customer service, which leads me to doubt the quality of these oil paints slightly as the company did not seem top of the line)

Realizing that I was getting nowhere with these line of research, I turned to the next step in my plan, looking up videos on the basics of oil paints and how to use them. One of the main artists I had found on youtube is Lena Danya. Her videos were extremely helpful.

Here are a list of the videos I checked out if you wish to see them too:

• Oil Painting Basics | Mediums Explained Simply For Beginners

• Oil Painting For Beginners | How To Blend Oil Paint

• Oil Painting Basics | How To Build Layers

In addition to this, I also check out speed art oil painting videos by the artist Baylee Jae (if you do search her up later, do be sure to type in the correct name, or you will be getting more than what you bargain for :P)

I only watch one which was her oil painting of succulents (do check it out if you are like me  – an observation leaner) Watching her I picked up a few things here and there, the main being the idea to us extra oil with my paints, which I will get on to later.

As you can see in the video, I opened the items on screen, which was where the main audio was, but as I said it would not be used due to the lack of quality but the main things I had talked about was the lack of information about the paints in term of what grade they are (artist or student – something I learnt about from Lena Danyas videos) and whether they are water mixable or not.

The points where a set of 8:

• titanium white

• lamp black

• crimson red

• lemon yellow

• ultramarine blue

• vermilion

• sap green

• burnt umber

Along with these paints, I had also received an oil painting pad, filled with 12 primed sheets

To start with, I used one picture to try a couple of things I had seen attempted in the videos I had watched which were:

• gradient

• blending

• layering

• mixing with oil

• mixing with water

I had also done some color swatched to see how they turned out and as you an see in the video, there had been no breakthrough till I had mixed the paints with extra oil (I had used extra virgin olive oil as it had been the first I had gotten my hands on) for which I had forgotten to turn the camera on for, my apologies.

But you can tell the drastic difference from the colors along and the blending and gradient when adding oil. I feel as if, as the paints have been resting in the draw, they had dried out somehow. Or maybe this is my lack of knowledge of oil paints and this is how they are actually supposed to work.

Though there are still some problems, like when I use oil it can seep through the page and on to the next if I use too much. But these problems can be fixed through the experience of how much will work best, as I use the oils.

Overall I think I enjoyed using these paints, and as you can see from my beauty and the beast themed piece in the video, I have a lot to learn about these paints. I do wish to continue to use them and possibly create more videos using these paints, so make sure to subscribe for more content like this, and better!

Note:

I will post a proper scan of the final product upon this website here after it had dried properly – something it couldn’t do as I fiddled with it more.