Drawing & Painting
Landscape Painting from Photographs with Water Mixable Oil
Enjoy landscape painting in oil with the convenience of working indoors from photographs and painting solvent-free. Water mixable oils are real oil paint, but they clean up with water and use non-toxic thinners and mediums that don’t give off fumes.
Topics will include: working with water mixable oil, thinners and mediums, choosing a subject and arranging a composition for landscape, transferring a composition from a photograph to a canvas or panel, starting a painting, understanding value and edges, creating textures to suggest foliage, tree trunks, grasses, water and other surfaces, adjusting the thickness of oil paint as you paint, brush handling, paint mixing, understanding the color characteristics of hue, value and chroma and mixing a wide range of colors from a simple, limited palette.
The class will include demonstrations by the instructor and individual instruction at each student’s level of experience.
Supply List
Surface
- Canvas panels, gessoed hardboard panels (for example: “Gessobord”), stretched canvas, or “oil paper” (for example: “Arches Oil Paper”)
- 2 at either 8x10 or 9x12 (larger if you like, but use larger brushes)
- Synthetic brushes are best for water mixable oil. There are many good brands; one I happen to like is the Princeton 6300 line of synthetic oil painting brushes.
- 1/2” flat (ideally 2)
- 1/4” flat or filbert (ideally 2)
- 1/8” (#4) flat
- #2 round
- Melamine, wood or glass palette, or a pad of disposable palette paper.
- Recommended: rounded elongated diamond shape, roughly 1 1/2” long
- Thinner & medium cups, one for each, or a dual cup
- Water jar for cleaning brushes
- 6 or 8
- cardboard box or plastic bin for carrying wet panels or canvas
Table Easel (optional)
- Portable easel, tabletop easel, bamboo book rack or similar for working at a table. There will be floor studio easels available if preferred.
- I don’t recommend W&N Artisan because it is student grade. You can certainly use it if you have it, but I think the investment in artist grade paints is worth it. Here are two good brands that I can recommend (there are others as well), but they have to be ordered online.
We will be using a limited palette of five colors. You can bring other colors if you like, but I will be teaching color mixing in these colors (the two brands are slightly different). My assessment: Royal Talens Cobra is less expensive and has a nice flowing consistency out of the tube. Holbein Duo Aqua is stiffer in consistency but highly pigmented. Both are good artist quality paints. W&N Artisan tends to be a bit gummy and is less pigmented.
- If using Royal Talens Cobra water mixable oil (Note: not labeled “Study”, which is their student grade version)
- Ultramarine Blue
- Cadmium Yellow Lemon
- Rose Madder
- Burnt Sienna
- Titanium White
- Plus:
- Royal Talens Cobra Water Mixable Solvent-Free Paint Thinner
- Royal Talens Cobra Painting Medium (not fast drying)
- If using Holbein Duo Aqua water mixable oil (or W&N Artisan)
- Ultramarine Blue (or “French Ultramarine” in W&N)
- Cadmium Yellow
- Alizarin Crimson (or “Permanent Alizarin” in W&N)
- Burnt Sienna
- Titanium White
- Plus:
- Winsor & Newton Artisan Water Mixable Oil Paint Thinner
- Holbein Aqua Duo Medium (not fast drying) (or W&N Artisan)