Oil Painting - Mixing Paint Pallet Mediums and Sketching

Martha Spak: Hi, I am Martha Spak with MLSGallery and today I am showing you how to paint a still life oil painting. Right now I am going to show you how to lay out your paint palette, talk about mixing mediums and sketch our scene.

I have my paint tubes laid out in the order in which I have placed them on my paint palette. They are black, Payne's gray, cobalt blue, terra verte, yellow green, alizarin crimson, vermilion, yellow ocher, yellow cadmium medium, yellow misty blue, gray medium and white and I have laid them in as I say in the order in which I have got them laid out in case I need more. But I think I have planned okay. I have my three pale colors on the lower left, because I will be pulling those with the other ones into the center. Now let's talk about mixing mediums. I have turpenoid, which is a odorless turpentine, that I use for mixing to make a translucent paint. It is a very thin wash that goes on and helps to lay in our first scene of sketch. I also use another mixing medium, which is not necessary but I find that it's very useful because it helps to make the paint creamy, it goes on smoother and it does not leave a shine or texture at the end in the drawing process. So let's go ahead and sketch our scene. I put a little turpenoid in my little container here. I am going to go ahead and add some of the gel of the liquin. Take my cloth and a little Yellow Ocher and turpenoid and I am just going to make it into a very translucent wash. Now let's sketch our scene. Remember if you don't like the way you paint -- your sketch is looking, this comes off very easily and you can start again. Make it loose and then you can clean up as you check your scene. So that is how to lay out your paint palette, mixing mediums and how to sketch your scene. Now let's talk about laying in the body color and body shadow when oil painting.