Back in the 80s, I spent a while painting houses for a living, and I learnt more about applying paint and making it do what I wanted in that time than at any time before or since.
Which is what painting techniques are all about - making paint do what you want it to do. While making five litres of emulsion stretch to two coats on a living room probably isn't your idea of learning how to paint a masterpiece, don't knock it. There's a story about Ingres taking a group of students to watch a house painter at work, and pointing out how he loaded his brush with just the right amount of paint.
The topic does bring up a point I feel strongly about, which is this: any expertise is hard won. Don't dilute it by hopping merrily from one medium to another, as chance and whim dictate. If you start painting in oils, stick to it until you get somewhere. Don't go haring off to try whatever the latest art magazine fad medium is. Art materials manufacturers, like any other business, are on a mission to make a profit, and one of the ways they do this is by making new products for the amateur painter market, which I suspect is their biggest money earner.
Having said that, and sticking with oil painting because it's what I know - what painting techniques are there? Surprisingly few. To get the image you have in your head onto your canvas, you're probably working over a drawing, whether that's a simple outline or a full tonal rendering. You put on paint, using the hairy end of a brush, because that's the right tool for the job. You're working from dark to light because that's the easy and logical way to go about it. This paint matches the hues and values of your subject. So what else do you need to know?
Paint consistency. Stiff, with the oil soaked out by squeezing your paint out onto paper before using it? Or thinned down to a slippery cream, with an oily medium? Or thinned right out with turpentine, to a watery stain? All these have their place. Just remember to paint fat over lean, with more oil in later layers.
Paint thickness. Thin, smooth layers, or thick impasto? Why not both? The contrast between flat areas and impasto can help define different textures and spaces. And glazes over impasto can get some fancy special effects. Look how Rembrandt handled fabrics and flesh.
Transparency. Glazes can alter hue and value, and add a richness of colour you can't reach with a flat layer of paint.
Opacity. Scumbling can push parts of the painting back in space, or enrich dull colour.
Oiling out. Working over an area by first applying a thin layer of oily medium can help you achieve really subtle modelling when you work into it, especially if you let the oil dry a little and get tacky first, so that it drags the paint off your brush.
Brushwork. The marks you make can contribute to the modelling of forms.
Finger painting. The best blending tool you have is the tip of your finger. Just don't pick your nose afterwards.
Different brushes. A fan brush or blender can blend the edges of different colours or tones. A rigger* can make the fine lines you'll never achieve with a flat or a filbert. Sable, or some artificial blend brushes, give you a smoothness of finish you won't get with hogshair brushes. Just don't go buying 'foliage' brushes, or whatever else some marketing genius came up with.
And none of these things matter at all unless you take pains over every other aspect of your painting: colour, tone, composition, drawing. As with any other skill, when you try to take one aspect of it into consideration, you realize how interconnected it all is. Painting techniques are not a magic solution to painting well. They're more like tools in your toolkit. It's good to have them, and know how, when, and where to use them.
And eventually, after years of painting, they aren't really techniques at all. They're just what you do, without thinking about it, to get the result you want.
* Tom Keating tip: to get really fine lines, lay some varnish, then paint over that with egg tempera, using a sable rigger. The varnish squeezes the tempera thinner as it dries. Personally, I never got that to work without the tempera clumping into little blobs, so I used a dip pen instead.
Which is what painting techniques are all about - making paint do what you want it to do. While making five litres of emulsion stretch to two coats on a living room probably isn't your idea of learning how to paint a masterpiece, don't knock it. There's a story about Ingres taking a group of students to watch a house painter at work, and pointing out how he loaded his brush with just the right amount of paint.
The topic does bring up a point I feel strongly about, which is this: any expertise is hard won. Don't dilute it by hopping merrily from one medium to another, as chance and whim dictate. If you start painting in oils, stick to it until you get somewhere. Don't go haring off to try whatever the latest art magazine fad medium is. Art materials manufacturers, like any other business, are on a mission to make a profit, and one of the ways they do this is by making new products for the amateur painter market, which I suspect is their biggest money earner.
Having said that, and sticking with oil painting because it's what I know - what painting techniques are there? Surprisingly few. To get the image you have in your head onto your canvas, you're probably working over a drawing, whether that's a simple outline or a full tonal rendering. You put on paint, using the hairy end of a brush, because that's the right tool for the job. You're working from dark to light because that's the easy and logical way to go about it. This paint matches the hues and values of your subject. So what else do you need to know?
Paint consistency. Stiff, with the oil soaked out by squeezing your paint out onto paper before using it? Or thinned down to a slippery cream, with an oily medium? Or thinned right out with turpentine, to a watery stain? All these have their place. Just remember to paint fat over lean, with more oil in later layers.
Paint thickness. Thin, smooth layers, or thick impasto? Why not both? The contrast between flat areas and impasto can help define different textures and spaces. And glazes over impasto can get some fancy special effects. Look how Rembrandt handled fabrics and flesh.
Transparency. Glazes can alter hue and value, and add a richness of colour you can't reach with a flat layer of paint.
Opacity. Scumbling can push parts of the painting back in space, or enrich dull colour.
Oiling out. Working over an area by first applying a thin layer of oily medium can help you achieve really subtle modelling when you work into it, especially if you let the oil dry a little and get tacky first, so that it drags the paint off your brush.
Brushwork. The marks you make can contribute to the modelling of forms.
Finger painting. The best blending tool you have is the tip of your finger. Just don't pick your nose afterwards.
Different brushes. A fan brush or blender can blend the edges of different colours or tones. A rigger* can make the fine lines you'll never achieve with a flat or a filbert. Sable, or some artificial blend brushes, give you a smoothness of finish you won't get with hogshair brushes. Just don't go buying 'foliage' brushes, or whatever else some marketing genius came up with.
And none of these things matter at all unless you take pains over every other aspect of your painting: colour, tone, composition, drawing. As with any other skill, when you try to take one aspect of it into consideration, you realize how interconnected it all is. Painting techniques are not a magic solution to painting well. They're more like tools in your toolkit. It's good to have them, and know how, when, and where to use them.
And eventually, after years of painting, they aren't really techniques at all. They're just what you do, without thinking about it, to get the result you want.
* Tom Keating tip: to get really fine lines, lay some varnish, then paint over that with egg tempera, using a sable rigger. The varnish squeezes the tempera thinner as it dries. Personally, I never got that to work without the tempera clumping into little blobs, so I used a dip pen instead.
