The Description Of Oil Painting

Have you ever wondered how people create so many different textures using oil paint? I sure have, and I think it’s super interesting! In this paper, I’m going to go over what exactly oil painting is, and two famous works created with oil paint. So let’s talk about what Oil painting exactly is. Oil painting uses pigments combined with drying oil to make art. There are many different drying oils that you can use like walnut oil, poppy seed oil, safflower oil and even linseed oil. Usually, with the paint, you can paint in thin layers and then paint thicker layers over the thin layers. There are also many different techniques of using this paint, some make the texture look different while other techniques make it look smooth and delicate. One technique that’s used is called the Impasto technique which involves using the paint from the tube and applying it using your brush. With oil painting, you can also use many different sized brushes for different styles of painting. 

Color palettes are important for oil painting and provide different feels for the art involved. You can mix colors to get a new color entirely with oil paint. It was also super important for artists to mix the colors they wanted to use with white paint. It created different shades of that color to use in their works. With all of that in mind, I wanted to talk about some paintings that were created using oil paint. A famous work that most of you probably know is the Mona Lisa and believe it or not it was created by using oil painting! It used to have a bright tone to it but over time it’s colors suffered and warped slightly to be much darker looking. The mysterious history of the picture if what makes the painting famous. It’s unknown who was painted in the picture and there are many theories about who it could be. To add on to that many wonder what the purpose of the picture was as the theories make the purpose of it change exponentially. I think the Mona Lisa is a wonderful work on its own but I think it’d be great to go into another work that I find Beautiful. I wanted to talk a bit about Starry Night, it’s one of my favorite oil paintings today and I think it’s really beautiful and soothing to look at. Starry night has a dark history behind it, the creator Vincent van Gogh had painted it over his stay at a hospital in 1889. He had paranoia which eventually got to the point where he started seeing hallucinations and got depression. 

I almost think this painting is a representation of his paranoia and fears, the blue representing sadness. What I like most about the painting is how you can see the strokes of the paintbrush represented in the sky, it makes it look like a bright ocean. I also like how the stars stand out, it makes it look unique and special. One feeling I also get from this painting is that it almost looks like a dream, the way the sky looks and how gigantic the tree is. It almost reminds me of the Scream which is a different painting on its own. I love Oil Paintings but, I wanted to end the paper with my personal thoughts on Oil Paintings. I believe oil paintings are super unique, and I love the styles of them. I like how they can look extremely different according to who paints them. I hope one day I can eventually try out Oil Painting once I get the materials for it, and I hope this gave you a good insight of what oil painting exactly is.