Hello Everybody!

For the next five days I will post one stage in my 5 stage method of creating a painting with oil paint.

This is the painting I will be discussing the stages from;

Me photographed with the painting.

The finished painting. ''Summer morning'' oil on panel, sized 100 x 80 cm.

My whole life I've enjoyed painting and drawing. I have experimented with all kinds of different mediums like watercolor, acrylics, gouache, charcoal, pencil and for the past ten years of my life, oils.

I must confess that the freedom and joy I feel when painting in oils is unlike any other and from I started exploring the amazing world of oil paint it's become my sweet number one. One of the biggest benefits I found working with oils is the lifetime of the paint. By this I mean how long the paint stays wet and movable. This is however just one quality out of many as oil paint can be used in as many different ways as there are people painting with it.

Through my studies I've been thought by various artist and have had the great opportunity to get many different approaches on how to use oil paint. Some people have a very quick process called " alla prima" where you paint wet on wet, others prefer to let each layer of previous paint dry before applying the next. No matter what the technique, it's been educational and helped me realize what works best for me and my own process.

This post is written just as much for myself as for anyone who enjoys the world and process of artistic expressions! In this series I will talk about five stages I go through more or less every time I make a painting. The same "recipe" is also applicable in portraiture or still life painting.

So, lets start!

Stage 1 - the big proportions

In the first stage I always start by sketching out the big proportions on the canvas.

Here I simply work with line and roughly estimate the distances and sizes of information that I'm portraying.
In the example above the first important thing to decide is the horizon line, the size and place of the mountain coming in on the right, the bigger cloud formations and some points in the lower section to show me where the water meets the sand etc.

Unfortunately I don't have a picture of just the lines before I started laying in the sky, but I think it still shows the idea.
The main reasons I only work in big lines in this initial stage is because of the freedom it gives me to move and change the information. By building the information in the painting from bigger to smaller it gives you the one benefit of never having to move a large area of paint, it gives you something constant to relate to with all the details.

Some people like to work in mass, moving blocks of value around the canvas instead, but I prefer my lines. ;)

What do you usually do in your first stage of painting?
Do you prefer mass or lines?

Stay tuned for tomorrows second chapter;

Stage 2- massing in the big areas of value.

Hope you're all having a wonderful and creative day!

<3