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Artists’ oil colours are made by adding dry powder pigments with special refined linseed oil until the substance reaches a stiff paste thickness and then grinding it with harsh friction in steel roller mills. The smoothness of the shade is fundamental. The usual feel is a smooth, buttery paste, and not stringy or long or tacky. When a more flowing or mobile quality is needed by the artist, a liquid painting medium such as pure gum turpentine must be mixed with the mixture. If the artist wants to accelerate drying, a siccative, or liquid drier, might be commonly used.

Top-grade brushes are made in two kinds: red sable (with hair from numerous members of weasel) and whitened hog bristles. They both can be purchased in numbered sizes for each of four regular shapes: round (pointed), flat, bright (flat but is shorter and not so supple), and oval (flat but is bluntly pointed). Red sable brushes are often used for the smoother, more delicate style of brushstroke. The painting knife, a declicately tempered, thin version of the palette knife, is a common utensil for using oil colours in a robust style.

The standard support for oil painting is a canvas of pure European linen of strong close weave. The canvas is cut to the desired size and cast over a frame, often a wood frame, and then secured by use of tacks or, during the 20th century, by staples. If the artist wants to lessen the absorbency of the fabric and to attain a consistent surface, a primer or ground may be applied and given time to dry prior to painting. The most commonly used primers have been gesso, rabbit-skin glue, and lead white. If density and smoothness are preferred to elasticity and texture, a wooden or processed paperboard panel, sized or primed, may be employed. Many other supports, including paper and differing textiles and metals, have been attempted.

A finish of paint varnish is often given to a completed oil painting to protect it from atmospheric attacks, minor abrasions, and an injurious accumulation of dirt. This varnish may be taken off without damage by experts with use of isopropyl alcohol and other such ordinary solvents. The varnish also takes the surface to a full lustre and sets the depth of tone and colour intensity essentially to the appearance initially created by the artist in wet paint. Some contemporary painters, particularly those who don’t favour deep, intense colouring, and keep a mat, or lustreless, finish in their oil paintings.

The majority of oil paintings dating previous to the 19th century were done in layers. The first was a blank, uniform field of thin paint known as a ground. The ground graduated the white gleam of the primer and allowed a base of gentle colour on which to apply the oil paint. The forms and figures in the painting were roughly blocked in with shades of white, as well as gray or neutral green, red, or brown. The ultimate field of monochromatic light and dark shades were called the underpainting. Forms could then be further defined with either the paint or scumbles, which are irregular, thinly applied layers of opaque pigment that can display a whole range of visual effects. For the last point, transparent layers of pure colour known as a glaze were used to display luminosity, depth, and brilliance to the forms, and highlights were then effected with thick, textured patches of paint called impastos.

Oil as a medium of painting is recorded circa the 11th century. The technique of easel painting with oil colours, however, resulted directly from 15th-century tempera-painting methods. Basic improvements in the refining of linseed oil and the availability of volatile solvents from 1400 coincided with a need for mediums other than pure egg-yolk tempera, in meeting the developing needs of the Renaissance (see tempera painting). Originally, oil paints and varnishes were employed to glaze tempera panels that were painted from the traditional linear draftsmanship. The technically gleaming, gem-like paintings of the 15th-century Flemish artist Jan van Eyck, for example, were done in this way.

In the 16th century, oils became firmly established as the fundamental painting material in Venice. At the end of the century, Venetian painters had grown proficient in the exploitation of the basic characteristics of oil painting, notably in applying a number of layers of glaze. Linen canvas, after a long period of development, topped wood panelling as the most common support.

One 17th-century master of the oil technique was Velazquez, a Spanish painter in the Venetian tradition, whose supremely economical but sure brushstrokes have frequently been emulated, especially in portraiture. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens influenced later painters in the way in which he loaded light colours opaquely, in juxtaposition to thin, transparent darks and shadows. Another notable 17th-century master of oil painting was the Dutch painter Rembrandt. In his pieces, a single brushstroke could effectively depict form; cumulative strokes created great textural depth, by combining the rough and the smooth, the thick and the thin. A field of loaded whites and transparent darks would be then enhanced by glazed effects, blendings, and highly controlled impastos.

Other notable influences on the later techniques of easel painting are the smooth, thinly painted, deliberately planned, tight styles of painting. A great many admired works (e.g., those of Johannes Vermeer) were formed with smooth gradations and blends of colours to achieve shadowy forms and delicate colour variations.

The technical requirements of some schools of modern painting cannot be attained by use of traditional genres or techniques, however. Some abstract painters – including a few modern traditional painters – have demonstrated a desire for a plastic flow or viscosity that cannot be created in oil paint and its conventional additives. Some need a larger range of thick and thin applications and a expedient rate of drying. Some mixed coarsely grained substances with colours to create textures, some artists are applying oil paints in heavier thicknesses than traditionally, and a large part have begun to favour acrylic paints, which are more versatile and dry speedily.

Interested in oil painting? For art supplies Brisbane, including canvas art supplies and artists supplies, visit or call the Discount Art Warehouse.

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