First Experience with Oil Painting

I kind of went into oil painting blindly just to test it out and see what it felt like to work with. Most of what I knew beforehand came from random YouTube shorts of artists using linseed oil, so naturally that’s what I started experimenting with.

At first, I tried painting without it because I wanted to understand how the paint behaved on its own. Honestly, it wasn’t as creamy or smooth as I expected. It felt thicker and harder to move around than I imagined.

Then I added linseed oil.

Everything suddenly blended like butter.

The paint became smooth, workable, and way easier to transition between colors. It honestly felt kind of magical compared to the other mediums I’ve used. But this also led to my first major mistake and why learning fundamentals actually matters.

This is where I learned about the principle of “fat over lean,” which is basically one of the core rules of oil painting. Oil paint already takes forever to dry, and adding more oil makes it dry even slower. If you paint thick oily layers underneath and then layer over them incorrectly before they dry, the paint can eventually crack.

So technically… my very first layer was already too “fat.”

Luckily this was mostly just an experiment piece, but it definitely made me realize that understanding the fundamentals matters a lot more with oil painting compared to some other mediums.

Even though I was new to the medium, I still relied on what I already understood from drawing and painting in general. I started from basic shapes and values first, then slowly built up the forms from there.

Honestly, oil painting felt like a dream to work with because of how forgiving the blending process is. You have time to move things around, soften edges, and adjust colors without feeling rushed.

The hardest part for me is the waiting.

I’m impatient when it comes to art, so having to wait for layers to dry feels almost unnatural to me. I can already tell oil painting is going to force me to slow down and be more intentional with each layer instead of trying to finish everything at once.

Even with the mistakes, I think this was a pretty good first experiment into oil painting.