When one is learning to paint, figuring out just how to get started can be confusing. For those reading this who are just starting out, looking for a little refresher, or have painted enough to know that one can always learn some helpful tidbits from almost anyone, this will get you started.

Personally, I like to work on canvas first with a medium lead pencil. This way I can get a light sketch that is easily changed. I like to first sketch the horizon line, placing it at the bottom of the tree line, the bottom of the mountains or whatever. Of course, a seascape's horizon line will be a hard line where the water meets the sky.

From this point, I work in two different ways - one way for acrylics and a little differently for oils. Since this is about painting in oils, that is what will be covered here. When working in oils, I usually work wet on wet. This means letting the background paints be wet while working over them. I really like to get my canvas done in one or two settings whenever possible.

I begin in the back by putting in the sky. We will talk about different skys at another time. The sky color will be lighter at the horizon line and deepen as you go toward the top of the canvas. This is because air contains water. It makes the sky and objects near the horizon appear to have a haze in front of them.

Be sure to carry the sky all the way to the horizon line. This way, you can work your next layer over the wet sky color and let the wet paint just lighten the trees so they are lighter in value. As you work forward with closer trees and details, you can let the colors become deeper and have more value differences to give more detail.

The reason I work the background first is that you can get better continuity in the background when you do it that way. When you put the sky in with broad strokes, blending the colors into each other before doing the foreground, you will not have to go around foreground objects with short choppy strokes. They always show. You have probably seen a painting, maybe a snow scene, with a barn or mailbox in the foreground where the snow or sky looked like it just came up to the edge of the object and stopped. Very distracting!

The foreground objects can be scratched back into the wet paint if you need to do so. Just be careful not to leave little ridges in the paint if you are going to have to let it dry before continuing.

Alternately, you can just do the background and let it dry, then come back in with your trusty little pencil and put in your objects.

You might want to check out our article on value: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art57859.asp

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Thanks for joining us,
Paula
Painting Editor