Starting a Painting

When I start a new painting I always paint a thin wash over the canvas, toning the canvas. This prevents tiny white dots of canvas from showing through the finished piece. It also makes that big white newly stretched canvas much less intimidating. If using acrylic paint, thin your paint with water, grab a big brush and cover up all of that white. Let it drip or be uneven. If working with oil paints you can use acrylics for toning or you can use oil paints thinned with solvent. You can paint with oils over acrylics, but cannot paint with acrylics over oils. I most often paint with oils but will often use an acrylic wash to tone my canvas because it dries so quickly. A warm, brownish red or orange is the traditional color used for toning a canvas. However, you can use whatever color you please.

Next, I roughly "draw" the major shapes and elements of my composition with thinned paint. By this point I have already planned my painting in a sketchbook and I use that as a guide. I never use a pencil. I am sure many artists do. To me there is just something unnatural about pencil on canvas, like nails on a chalkboard...

 

As you can tell from the image above, I am working from the finished painting on the wall. It is a view from my studio window. I have been exploring painting the same composition several times...but that is a post for another day...

Next I paint in the whites or what will be the lightest areas. I am still using thinned paint. The goal is to lay the colors out.

 

This is as far as I got in my first session, about 2-3 hours. I will continue by painting in other areas of color with thinned paint. I want to see the painting come together and determine what colors should go where. It is important to see the painting as a whole and not finish a small area completely before moving on to another area.

 

Is this the only way to paint? Of course not. But it works for me. You will soon discover what works for you.