How to Buy A Canvas for Oil Painting Your First Oil Painting
“Teacher, what size canvas should I buy for my first oil painting?”
This is the most common question I get from my beginning oil painting students. It always makes me smile. I know they want me to say something ridiculous like “Buy any canvas 16″ x 20″ maximum to 4″ x 6″ minimum.” Beginning oil painting students have a lot of fear about buying a canvas for their first oil painting.
Conch Shell, oils on canvas
“First, do you know what you are going to paint?”
If the answer is “no” you should not go shopping because there is no way you can buy the most perfect canvas for your first (or next) painting. Talk about putting the cart before the horse!
The most important aspect to buying a canvas, for oil painting your first picture, is that you understand that the inner vision of your first oil painting is chemically and energetically imprinted on every cell of your body. There exists in the artist’s body a strange and beautiful dynamic tension –that even the artist is totally unaware of until the painting is completed and signed. The best way I can explain this tension is to perhaps coarsely defined it as ”the inner knowing or knowledge of the finished product, which exists in time and space as a completed painting, that the artist has become aware of at a subconscious level.” What I translate this into and tell every art student is this: Read more
Beginning Oil Painting – The Lesson of the “What Do I Paint?”
My First Oil Painting - Age 11
For more than ten years I taught beginning oil painting in Cupertino, CA in a community center setting that became a sort of open studio for more advanced painters who wanted to escape Silicon Valley and paint in a quiet setting with like minded folk.
The first lesson always begins with a talk about oil painting art supplies. I reveal what is needed and why…I even delve deep into the differences between water color versus oil painting brushes and use diagrams to help people remember the names of certain brushes. There is a good bit of info I share and then we discuss how to select an image to paint. This is the most important lesson of all. The idea behind this is so critical that if you get it wrong, you will never be a successful painter. Read more
