I'm a modern English landscape painter. I love painting my landscapes using oils. Here's why…
Speaking as a landscape painter: it's true. I spend most of my time lost rather than found! That's another story. The lost I'm talking about here is… well, read on.
(Edit: April 2023. This article is due an update, my art practice has changed since I wrote it. Not a lot, but enough)
Sounds soppy, doesn't it? Yet it's true, especially in landscape paintings. And rainbows are challenging to paint.
Oil paint is a gift when trying to paint rainbows. This is another reason why I use the medium – a landscape painter needs to paint rainbows.
The next time you're fortunate enough to be out under a blue summer sky with time to stand and stare, have a look. How many blues and shades of blue, transitioning from one to the other, can you count?
Take a late evening sky after the fireworks of a sunset have faded. That brief time before the glow of the sun disappears. You might see a soft flush of pink shading through dusty blues to dark inky night hues. Each of these skies is a beautiful and beguiling rainbow if ever there were.
Unless hidden by clouds or fog, every sky is a rainbow of colour, even if it's all blue.
At the time of writing, I'm currently enthralled by skies and often yo‑yo in and out of the house looking at the sky (yes, I know). I'm focussing more and more on the skies in my paintings.
You understand now, that no sky is ever ordinary.
Skies are a distinctive feature of landscapes. Portraits and still life paintings can contain skies.
In those paintings, though, a sky is never in a supporting or lead actor role. It's a walk‑on part instead. If omitted from a still life or portrait, would a sky be missed?
A scenic painting without a sky is likely to look strange. Like a play without one of its star actors. So a landscape painter needs a way to paint those extraordinary skies.
The thing is: rainbows are not restricted to skies. Vibrant colour ranges abound on hillsides, in distant haze and throughout vegetation too. Rainbows show up in expanses of water because it often reflects the sky. An Autumn tree will display umpteen colours at once, as parts of it change at differing rates.
Rainbows are everywhere in the landscape.
Oil paint passes through several stages of semi-dryness. I began describing this above. New pigment (colour) is absorbed by previous layers. I know no other way to describe it. An oil painter gets to know how to use this feature. I'm still learning. The ability to create subtle changes in colour and/or tone is considerable with oil paint.
Oils have a high ratio of pigment to binder. It's why it's often expensive. The quality means the colours don't go 'dirty' as quickly as they would in other media.
All this means oil colours stay fresh and vibrant despite being worked a lot if you know how. So it's the subtlety achievable with oils that makes it perfect for landscape painters.
The third reason why I use oils for landscapes involves having to stop painting in mid‑flow.
It might seem odd that having to stop painting is a good thing. Here's why it is…
I've suggested scenic art can be more difficult than other subjects before. This is because there's no definite structure to them. Landscapes can also be complicated, with many elements in view.
A painter chooses what's in still life paintings and what's not. They arrange things, including lighting, to suit their ambition. A painter can simplify a still life subject before they touch a canvas with paint.
None of this is possible with scenic paintings. Digging up a tree to simplify a scene is a bit excessive. Trying to stop the sun moving or playing King Canute attempting to halt a rising tide would be crazy.
Portraits have a natural structure to them. A human being's anatomy is a structure we're all familiar with. Noses centre between two eyes. Heads connect via a neck to the torso. All logical, all easy to see.
Landscapes are both complex and chaotic. Add complexity and chaos together, and you've a lot of problems to solve! (I've discussed the relative difficulty of different subjects elsewhere more fully. I'll put a link in here soon when I've reviewed it).
Whether landscapes are more difficult or I just think they are is unimportant. Degree of difficulty does not equate to 'better than'.
I mastered life (figure) drawing at art school. Proficiency with portraits came a few years after leaving.
Still-life was an avid hobby as a child. Buildings and cities were a forte during my illustration years. Landscapes were my last great challenge, and this informs my view rightly or wrongly.
In the end, it's not the difficulty of a process that determines artistic success. An artist's vision, decision making and execution hold the trump card. A poor painting of a landscape, however difficult, is not better than a great still-life. A grand portrait or still-life can be better than a great landscape.
The thing is: I'm a beggar for charging on fuelled by inspiration and an overwhelming urge to paint.
It can be the worst thing to do. I've paid the price of angst and disappointment on many an occasion. If subjects are complex and nuanced, as landscapes are, then it's a recipe for disaster.
Putting the brush down and stopping can be when the art happens. This requires a lot of discipline when creative energy is high.
An oil painter has to work in a structured way. Many of the modern mediums were invented in response to oil's inconveniences. The paint needs to be layered up correctly (fat over lean), for example. I've found my studio paintings need to 'settle' before adding more.
This need for structure encourages a landscape painter into contemplation in the studio. A regular, careful study of a painting in progress has an impact on its success.
Subtle weaknesses created early in an artwork's progress end up biting later. Fine defects have unsubtle and disastrous effects in the finished art.
They'll mean undoing days, even weeks of work. That's if it's even possible, by then, to fix things. Because they're subtle, they go undetected.
Painting with oils has slowed me down, in a beneficial way. This is one of the reasons I prefer painting with oils. I've begun to craft my paintings rather than plough paint on to a canvas. I put more thought into them. Carefully planning art before starting it is not enough. Taking time to check on progress is, in some ways, the more effective.
We're now at the fourth reason I use oils in my landscape paintings. It's all to do with colour again.
Where rainbows dance (above), it's blending colours into each other that's important. Here, it's about mixing colours.
I've always thought oil paints have a depth and sophistication to their colours. More so than other mediums. Even neutral colours keep an intensity soon lost by say, Acrylic or Watercolour.
I've found Acrylic is brash. Watercolour struggles with intensity and Gouache is duller, even when bright. Paintings are rarely all about colour. So colour purity is not a reason on its own to ignore the alternatives to oil. I've used, and use, all the paints I've mentioned for scenic paintings and each has its own beauty.
I should note I'm the least confident explaining this subject. It's a big topic. I'll press on though…
In portraiture and still-life, there is usually more than one light source. At the least, there's an artificial light source and residual natural lighting.
This is unless painting takes place on the darkest of nights or in a windowless room. It's unlikely a set-up will be lit by only one light, even without natural sunlight.
Artificial lights vary a great deal. Age, specification all influence artificial lights. So the variety of light source is much greater in studio‑based subjects.
In landscapes, there is natural colour harmony. It has a lot to do with the all‑pervasive, single natural light source called 'the sun'. In a daytime landscape, there is only one light source. This creates a harmony other subjects don't always have.
Lighting has a profound effect on colour.
I'm influenced here by a seminal work by USA artist Richard Schmid. He discusses the various harmonies observable in landscapes, at length.
A landscape painter needs to be able to create sophisticated colour harmonies. A wide variety. The lighting on any given day can be different from any other day.
I'm no expert on colour (yet). Despite my lack of experience, the colour schemes of my oil landscapes are far superior to my other works. Oils are renown for supporting rich neutrals. Distant haze, for example, is all about neutrals.
Being able to mix subtle colours without losing their intensity is a dream. It's why I use oils for my landscapes.
Oil is the last medium in my journey. It feels like I've arrived at my nirvana.
I've progressed through the different mediums as part of my development. From child artist to landscape painter.
As a child, I worked only in pencil, making black and white drawings. I learned the basics of tone, which is fundamental to creating a sense of three dimensions in a picture.
A lot of art courses start with these very exercises. Without knowing it, I was self‑teaching at home. School art classes supplemented the activity and fed my enthusiasm. I've not thought of it before, but looking back now, it's become clear what was happening.
Going to art school was where something miraculous happened. Until that point, I'd been working instinctively. While I was able to render shape and tone, I couldn't have explained it to anyone. Working instinctively only got me so far.
A marvellous tutor taught life drawing, which uses the human figure as its subject. She explained making art in sequence.
Assessing structure and calculating proportions. Detecting movement - even in static things. Understanding volume, analysing light (tone) and assessing local colour.
My art school tutor converted the instinctive to insight. Then, insight into the problem‑solving activity that is: making art.
This new deep understanding turbo-charged my development. My figure drawings went from pretty poor to so good I could not believe I'd done them – all within a year. Insight made instinct gold.
The boost to my confidence was huge, and I embraced colour with delight rather than fear. At first, I used coloured pencils which happened to be water‑soluble. After adding water, the next step to Watercolour paint – and to becoming a painter – was easy. I progressed through the mediums in harmony with my skills. Again, most ateliers work this way. An Atelier is a high‑level art workshop/course teaching classical art methods.
The rest of my art course, if I'm honest, was of minimal value. The academic life drawing module was priceless.
The progress I'd made while at art school was exhilarating. It's why I was reluctant to stop attending life drawing classes, after leaving.
I was painting and drawing obsessively. By day, I was a professional illustrator working with Gouache. In my evening classes, I was exploring Acrylics for fun.
Frustration with the limitations of other media prompted me to try oils. I'd always admired them while intimidated by them.
Though oils were frustrating at first, I loved the way they behaved and the effects I was able to get. I'd found a medium I could grow into. I became convinced I'll never discover its limits, no matter how hard I pushed it. I've been an oil painter for a short time only. It's felt as though the pieces have fallen into place though. A natural progression and slow building of skills have brought me to where I belong.
Where other media has limited me, oils always beckon onward. What better reason could there be to use them?