Getting back into painting

As I said in a previous post about my new love of digital art I've always been fairly traditional when it came to painting. I've mainly painted with acrylic because oil paint is a bit of a nightmare to be honest. You can definitely tell why people describe the greats in oil painting as masters.

But I so love the idea of painting with oil and the way oil paintings look and age so I decided to give it another proper go :)
Also since painting digitally I've learnt to be a little braver with skin tones and recognising them. So I wanted to give it a go on canvas rather than just digitally.


Oil paint is a nightmare to paint with for so many reasons. One of the main reasons is because it takes literally weeks to dry so you've really got to know were the paint is going to go and then blend the blocks together. I think the biggest reason I've been useless in the past is that I'm so used to painting with acrylic paint, something that you have to work really quickly with. So every time I tried painting with oil I would just steam ahead and balls the whole lot up.
So this time I really took my time. I also used a smaller square edged brush so it forces me to slow down.

I've still got a way to go but I'm really pleased with this self portrait. I think it's the closest I've ever come to any kind of realism on canvas.

I've already got the next painting drawn up so lets hope this wasn't just a fluke.