Common oil painting mistakes……the transition from water colors to oil colors

Making any kind of transition is always tough. It requires determination, adjustment and ability to adapt in every possible way. As much as making a transition is tough in many situations of life, so it is in the life of an artist when switching from one medium to the other. When I started learning oil painting, my biggest challenge was to make a transition from water color techniques. In this transition, I made some common oil painting mistakes.

I had to re align myself, my hand movements, the way I hold brushes, the way I apply color. It was like a reprogramming of the mind. It was fun but it was time taking too. I made several mistakes in my initial attempts at oil painting. However, all those mistakes and experiences made me better at oil painting than ever before.

Let’s get started:

Speaking of common oil painting mistakes, following are the few major ones that I made. These could be helpful to anyone especially for people making a transition from water colors to oil paintings:

1. Oil painting requires application of color. Unlike water colors, one can’t just take minimal amounts of color and lots of oil in oil painting. However, some special techniques of oil colors do require more oil. 
2. In water colors, tones can be varied by varying the amount of water involved . However, in oil colors, one has to actually form the tones by mixing different shades.
3. The way a brush is held while water color painting is totally different from the way it is held in oil painting. Since more color is applied in oil painting, brushes are held more tightly.
4. Oil painting is done in layers and the previous layer needs to dry properly (except “alla prima”) before working on it again. Though that’s the same with water colors ( except wet on wet ) but comparatively, a layer of oil takes way much more time layer to dry. So, in a way, a kind of mental adjustment in terms of patience is required in oil painting.
5. The last and most disastrous mistake that I made was the care of brushes after the coloring part was over.

 A note on taking care of oil painting brushes:

I cannot emphasize enough on how important it is to wash brushes properly after each session of oil painting. It is one of the most common oil painting mistakes while making oil painting. Although water color brushes also require regular washing but the speed at which oil painting brushes can get unusable is very fast.

 Unless one is willing to purchase a set of new brushes at rather quick intervals, every second spent on taking care of them is worth it. It can get very frustrating when colors get accumulated in oil paint brushes and one cannot get the required effect. After some time, the brushes might get just so much of accumulated color that its like a dead end from there.