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Artists’ oil colours are made by stirring dry powder pigments with particular refined linseed oil until it reaches a stiff paste consistency and grinding it by strong friction in steel roller mills. The perfection of the colour is important. The usual feel is a smooth, buttery paste, and not stringy or long or tacky. When a more flowing or mobile style is needed by the artist, a liquid painting medium such as pure gum turpentine has to be stirred in with the mixture. If the artist wishes to accelerate drying, a siccative, or liquid drier, should be often used.

Top-class brushes are sold in two styles: red sable (hair from numerous members of the weasel family) and chemically whitened hog bristles. Both come in numbered sizes for each of four regular shapes: round (pointed), flat, bright (flat shape but shorter and less supple), and oval (flat shape but bluntly pointed). Red sable brushes are widely utilised for smoother, more detailed style of brushstroke. The painting knife, a finely tempered, thin version of the art palette knife, is a common utensil for applying oil colours in a robust way.

The common support for oil paintings is a canvas made from pure European linen of stable close weave. The canvas is cut to the required size and cast over a frame, generally made of wood, to which it is secured by use of tacks or, from the 20th century, by use of staples. In order to lower the absorbency of the canvas and create a consistent surface, a primer or ground might be applied and is left to dry before painting begins. The most commonly found primers have been gesso, rabbit-skin glue, and lead white. If stiffness and consistency are preferred over elasticity and texture, a wooden or processed paperboard panel, sized or primed, should be employed. Many other supports, like paper and varying textiles and metals, also have been attempted.

A finish of painting varnish is usually given to a completed oil painting to protect it and prevent atmospheric attacks, minor abrasions, or an harmful accumulation of dirt. This film of varnish can be removed without damaging the painting by experts who use isopropyl alcohol and other ordinary solvents. The picture varnish also brings the surface to a consistent lustre and brings the tone and colour intensity basically to the vibrancy first seen by the artist in the wet paint. Some modern painters, in particular those who do not favour deep, intense colouring, prefer a mat, or lustreless, finish in oil paintings.

Most oil paintings made before the 19th century were built up in layers. The first was a blank, uniform field of thinned paint known as a ground. The ground subdued the glare of the primer and formed a gentle base on which to apply the oil paint. The shapes and figures in the painting would then be roughly blocked in using shades of white, along with gray or neutral green, red, or brown. The eventuating field of monochromatic colours were termed the underpainting. Forms would be further defined using either paint or scumbles; non-uniform, thinly applied layers of opaque pigment that can create a range of pictorial effects. At the last point, transparent layers of pure colour known as glazes would be applied to create luminosity, depth, and brilliance to the shapes, and highlights would then be effected with thick, textured patches of paint known as impastos.

Oil as a painting medium is dated back to the 11th century. The practice of easel painting with oil colours, however, resulted directly from 15th-century tempera-painting methods. Essential improvements in the process of refining linseed oil and the availability of volatile solvents post 1400 coincided with a desire for some other medium than pure egg-yolk tempera, in meeting the developing needs of the Renaissance (see tempera painting). Initially, oil paints and varnishes had been employed to glaze tempera panels that were painted in the common linear draftsmanship. The technically brilliant, crystal-like works of the 15th-century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck, for example, were done with this new technique.

In the 16th century, oil paint became firmly established as the ultimate painting material in Venice. By the 17th century, Venetian painters had grown proficient in the exploitation of the essential characteristics of oil painting, notably in applying successive layers of glazing. Linen canvas, after a long era of development, overcame wooden panels as the most popular support.

A 17th-century master of the oil technique was Velázquez, a Spanish painter in the Venetian tradition, whose remarkably economical but certain brushstrokes have commonly been copied, especially in portraiture. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens challenged the norm in the manner in which he loaded light colours opaquely, juxtaposing the thin, transparent darks and shadows. A third notable 17th-century master of oil painting was the Dutch painter Rembrandt. In his works, a single brushstroke would effectively depict form; cumulative strokes give great textural depth, with a combination of the rough and the smooth, the thick and the thin. A field of loaded whites and transparent darks was fully enhanced by glazed effects, blendings, and highly controlled impastos.

Other notable influences on easel painting are the smooth, thinly painted, deliberately planned, tight styles. A great many admired works (e.g., like those of Johannes Vermeer) were completed with smooth blends of shades to achieve shadowed forms and delicate colour variations.

The technical requirements of some schools of modern painting cannot be realized by traditional genres and techniques, however, and many abstract painters – as well as a few modern traditional style painters – have expressed a desire for a different plastic flow or viscosity that cannot be had from oil paint and its conventional additives. Some desire a greater variety of thick or thin applications and a speedier rate of drying. Some mix coarsely grained materials with the colours to create new textures, some of them apply oil paints in heavier thickness than usual, and lots have begun to favour acrylic paints, which are more versatile and dry speedily.

Interested in oil painting? For art supplies Brisbane, including canvas art supplies and artists supplies, visit or call the Discount Art Warehouse.