Oil Painting Girl

Oil Painting Girl

Interior Painting Tips - Dealing With Underlying Paint Colors

In traditional oil painting, color layering used to be the method to make colors glow and shine. In the lifetime of Vermeer and Rembrandt, strong colors were very expensive and hard to get. And the colors that were available cheap, were earth colors: browns, earthy greens, yellowish brown. Still they managed to get radiant colors. They did that by color layering.

Plants and foliage were painted with the cheap yellow ochre first, and then they were glazed with a thin shine-through blue (blue usually was the expensive color). Working like that was cheaper, but also more beautiful. The same goes for faces: they were first painted in green. Then they could be painted over with a light brown, and they'd still have a lively pink glow - caused by contrasting with the green.

I tried out some of these recipes, and combined them with Goethes theory of color. To that, I added some of my painting experience, and I came to the following conclusion:

-Warm colors (yellow-orange-red) do good on a white or lighter warm colored background. That also applies to warm pinks and browns.

-cold colors (blue, blue-violet) look great on a darker neutral or a brown background.

-cold colors look good painted on warm colors, and warm colors painted on cold colors don't.

Some finetuning: for the more greenish blue colors (like turquoise), it goes even more, that they don't look good painted on white. But you can patch them up easily, by glazing a little white over them. Ultramarine is a bit of an exeption, it can also look OK painted semitransparent over white. But it looks better on black. I also did the patching up with white on a blue-violet color glazing that went smudgy. White helps blue colors to radiate. When I did color washing, I found that the only way to make a smudgy blue shine again, was to glaze some white over it. With red, that would never work. Reds need to be painted just the other way around: dark over light.

For reds, it's the other way around. You make them shine and glow, by painting them dark (without added white), on a light background. And if you find the color too strong, you add white to it. Warm browns then turn into skin- or earthcolors. A warm color, like brown, peach, yellow, orange, or red, painted on white almost automatically looks good - even when the colors don't hide and you see brushstrokes. Try that with a blue, and the results will be horrible. And for yellow goes: the only way to get a nice yellow, is to paint it on white.

For interior paint colors, a strong blue is a daring color. But it I've seen it already here and there. Now, if you paint it on white, the only way to make it look acceptable is, to put on two or three coats: to make it hide. But then you still have this onesided, rather flat color. You can also paint it with a partial hide, with the right dark underpainting color. For a really beautiful and radiating cosmic ultramarine, first paint the wall warm dark brown (darker than the blue). And strong, saturated violets look great on black.

The great thing is: if you get the color layering right, any kind of brushing looks good. All you have to do is, more or less repeat the same gestures while you brush, and make sure you get neat edges (by using masking tape). I've seen an orange wall, painted by two 13-year old girls, with abstract-expressionistic paintstrokes all over - and it just looked great. It goes with folk, modern and even with minimalistic living styles. OK, with antique and classic styles, the brushing needs to stylish too. But even then you get the best brushing look, when the colors are right.

These color effects can be explained by Goethes theory of color - all colors have light and darkness in them. In the reds (yellow/orange/red), darkness is active. So they look nice, if they can darken something light. In blues, the light has an active role. So blues look good when they can lighten things up. For me as a painter, Goethe was right all along. But that's another story.

About the Author

I'm Evelien Nijeboer, artist and wallpainter since 1990. Check out my website: http://www.painting-ideas-and-techniques.com

Click here for more interior painting tips on color layering: http://www.painting-ideas-and-techniques.com/interior-painting-tips.html

my mate who is clearly no oil painting as they say has always been a disaster with women..?

however he recently set his sights very high and tried to get off with the stunning (ex 'glamour' model so we're told) barmaid down one of the local pubs.sadly but predictably she wasn't interested in his repeated efforts.
i have just found out however that she has now moved in to his flat.normally i would be well pleased about something like this,however this sudden change of mind on her part came about after he broke his back and became a paraplegic in motorbike accident which was clearly not his fault. he has received an interim insurance payment of £150000 and is probably in line for about £2 million in compensation.
i have tried to warn him but his response is that i am simply jealous
that he has 'pulled' this girl and i have not. what else can i do?

bring to his attention her sudden change of heart and let him know that it only makes sense that she is trying to use him.
but if she makes him happy then i'd say just keep an eye out for him but let him enjoy it.