Oil painting is the process of

painting in which drying oils are used as the

medium; linseed oil is the best known, but
others that have been used in painting include
poppy oil, safflower oil and walnut oil. It was
long believed that oil painting was invented by
Jan van Eyck in the early 15th century, but it
is now known that its origins are older and
obscurer (the treatise of Theophilus, written
probably in the 12th century, describes
‘grinding colours with oil’). There is no doubt,
however, that van Eyck revolutionized the technique and brought it to a sudden peak
of perfection. He showed the medium's flexibility, its rich and dense colour, its wide
range from light to dark, and its ability to achieve both minute detail and subtle
blending of tones. Other painters soon took up his innovations—first in northern
Europe,then in Italy—and from the 16th century oil colour has been the dominant
medium in Europe for serious painting (other than for murals, in which fresco
continued to be the norm). Its success has been largely on account of its versatility
and ability to show an artist's personal ‘handwriting’, for it can attain any variety of
surfaces from porcelain smoothness to violent impasto. Its versatility was increased
still further in the 19th century with the invention of the collapsible metal tube
(devised in 1841), which made it convenient to work out of doors. In the 20th century,
however, acrylic became a serious rival to oil paint.

Oil paint eventually became the principal medium used for creating
artworks as its advantages became widely known.
Traditional oil painting techniques often begin with the artist sketching
the figure onto the canvas with charcoal or a "clean", which is thinned paint.
Oil paint can be mixed with turpentine, linseed oil, artist grade mineral spirits
or other solvents to create a thinner, faster drying paint. Then the artist builds
the figure in layers. A basic rule of oil paint application is “fat over lean.” This
means that each additional layer of paint should contain more oil than the
layer below to allow proper drying. If each additional layer contains less oil, the
final painting will crack and peel. There are many other form of mediums that
can be used in oil painting, these includes cold wax, resins, and varnishes.
These additional mediums can aid the painter in adjusting the translucency of
the paint, the sheen of the paint, the density or 'body' of the paint, and the
ability of the paint to hold or conceal the brushstroke. These variables are
closely related to the expressive capacity of oil paint. When looking at original
oil paintings, the various traits of oil paint allow one to sense the choices the
artist made as they applied the paint. For the viewer, the paint is still, but for
the artist, the oil paint is a liquid or semi-liquid and must be moved 'onto' the
painting.
Traditionally, paint was transferred to the painting surface using paint
brush but now there are other methods used like palette knives and rags. Oil
paint remains wet longer than many other types of artists' materials, enabling
the artist to change the color, texture or form of the figure. At times, the
painter might even remove an entire layer of paint and begin a new one. This
can be done with a rag and some turpentine for a certain time while the paint
is wet, but after a while, the hardened layer must be scraped. Scraping may
also be used to smooth a portrait before scumbling and glazing. Many oil
paintings reveal evidence of scraping on close inspection, particularly when the
surface itself is examined. Oil paint dries by oxidation, not evaporation, and is
usually dry to the touch in a day to two weeks. It is generally dry enough to be
varnished in six months to a year. Art conservators do not consider an oil
painting completely dry until it is 60 to 80 years old.

Materials
*Linseed Oil
The linseed oil itself comes from the flax seed, and this flax was a
common fiber crop. Recent advances have produced modern water miscible oil
paints that can be used with and cleaned up with water. Small alterations in
the molecular structure of the oil creates this water miscible property.
A still-newer type of paint, heat-set oils, remain liquid until heated to 265–
280 °F (130–138 °C) for about 15 minutes. Since the paint never dries
otherwise, cleanup is not needed (except when one
wants to use a different color and the same brush).
Although not technically true oils (the medium is an
unidentified "non-drying synthetic oily liquid,
imbedded with a heat sensitive curing agent"), the
paintings resemble oil paintings and are usually shown
as oil paintings.
*Canvas
Traditional artists' canvas is made from linen,
but the less expensive cotton fabric has gained popularity. The artist first
prepares a wooden frame called a "stretcher" or "strainer". The difference
between them is that stretchers are slightly adjustable, while strainers are rigid
and lack adjustable corner notches. The canvas is then pulled across the
wooden frame and tacked or stapled tightly to the back edge. The next step is
for the artist to apply a "size" to isolate the canvas
from the acidic qualities of the paint. Traditionally,
the canvas was coated with a layer of animal glue
(size), (modern painters will use rabbit skin glue) and
primed with lead white paint, sometimes with added
chalk. Panels were prepared with a gesso, a mixture
of glue and chalk.
Modern acrylic “gesso” is made of titanium dioxide
with an acrylic binder. It is frequently used on
canvas, whereas real gesso is not suitable for that
application. The artist might apply several layers of
gesso, sanding each smooth after it has dried.It is possible to tone the gesso to
a particular color, but most store-bought gesso is white. The gesso layer will
tend to draw the oil paint into the porous surface, depending on the thickness
of the gesso layer. Excessive or uneven gesso layers are sometimes visible in
the surface of finished paintings as a change in the layer that's not from the
paint.
Traditionally, an artist mixed his or her own paints for each project. Artists
could mix colors quickly and easily without having to grind their own pigments.
Also, the portability of tube paints allowed for plein air or outdoor painting.

The artist most often uses a brush to apply the paint. Brushes are made from a
variety of fibers to create different effects. For example, brushes made with
hog's bristle might be used for bolder strokes and impasto textures. Fitch hair
and mongoose hair brushes are fine and smooth, and thus answer well for
portraits and detail work. Even more expensive are red sable brushes (weasel
hair). The finest quality brushes are called kolinsky sable; these brush fibers
are taken from the tail of the Siberian mink.
This hair keeps a superfine point, has smooth
handling, and good memory (it returns to its
original point when lifted off the canvas); this is
known to artists as a brush's "snap."
In the past few decades, many synthetic
brushes have come on the market. These are
very durable and can be quite good, as well as
cost efficient. Floppy fibers with no snap, such
as squirrel hair, are generally not used by oil
painters. Sizes of brushes also are widely varied
and used for different effects. For example, a "round" is a pointed brush used
for detail work. "Flat" brushes are used to apply
broad swaths of color. "Bright" is a flat with shorter
brush hairs. "Filbert" is a flat with rounded corners.
"Egbert" is a very long "Filbert" and is rare. The artist
might also apply paint with a palette knife, which is
a flat, metal blade. A palette knife may also be used
to remove paint from the canvas when necessary. A
variety of unconventional tools, such as rags,
sponges, and cotton swabs, may be used. Some
artists even paint with their fingers.
Most artists paint in layers which is simply called
"Indirect Painting". The method was first perfected
through an adaptation of the Egg Tempera painting technique, and applied by
the Flemish painters in Northern Europe with pigments ground in linseed oil.
More recently this adaptation has been called the "Mixed Technique" or "Mixed
Method". The first coat or “underpainting” is laid down, often painted with egg
tempera or turpentine thinned paint. This layer helps to "tone" the canvas, and
cover the white of the gesso. Many artists use this layer to sketch out the
composition. This layer can be adjusted before moving forward, which is an
advantage over the 'cartooning' method used in Fresco technique. After this
layer dries, the artist might then proceed by painting a "mosaic" of color
swatches, working from darkest to lightest. The borders of the colors are
blended together when the "mosaic" is completed. This layer is then left to dry
before applying details.
The artist may apply several layers of details, using a technique called 'fat over
lean.' This means that each additional layer of paint is a bit oilier than the
layer below, to allow proper drying. As a painting receives additional layers, the
paint itself must become more oleo saturated (leaner to fatter) so that the final
painting will not crack and peel. After it is dry, the artist might apply “glaze” to
the painting, which is a thin, transparent layer to seal the surface. A classical
work might take weeks or even months to layer the paint, but the most skilled
early artists, such as Jan van Eyck, could have worked more quickly using the
Wet-on wet method of painting for some details.
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