I hope that you will gather from these pages that I dislike very much falling into a system of using over and over again a procedure or a set palette. With your painting materials always the same, each picture will tend to appear just like the preceding one, with only a rearrangement of subject matter. If the materials you use are sound and compatible, and each lends itself to the realization of the desired final effect, then you have selected and used them for their best qualities.

ZINC WHITE possesses the wonderful quality of drying very slowly. When you also use a slow-drying painting medium, it allows you to work wet-in-wet, • sometimes for days. If you use a non-absorbent ground and, at the end of the working day, the picture is covered or placed away in a dark closet where the air is not allowed to circulate, the drying processes will be slowed even further.

TITANIUM WHITE does not have the history behind it of lead or zinc white, but has been used widely for a number of years. From all appearances, it holds up well and is compatible with other reliable colors of the palette. It is the lightest of whites, on the cool side, possessing extraordinary covering power. It works well when you are painting in successive layers or alta prima. It dries at a normal rate, but has a tendency to produce a glassy surface if • too much medium is used. Lead and zinc white have a much better glazing quality than titanium white. For grounds, the opaque quality of titanium is desirable, although you must allow for a longer drying period before proceeding to paint.

LEAD WHITE. The oldest of whites used in oil painting and the most versatile, it works well in grounds, has a semi-transparent quality and, when used with a little more body, will be opaque. Lead white dries fast and well. If the correct amount of medium is used, it will not build up a glassy surface • that is hard to work over with glazes. It yellows more than the other whites and has a tendency to become more transparent with age. A matte finish is easily arrived at without a large amount of turpentine. Of the three whites, it is the warmest. It is a poisonous white, so be especially careful if you grind your own paint.

UNDERPAINTING WHITE. One of the best forms of white I know for underpainting is the white you grind for yourself-either lead or titanium white in powder form, ground in a mixture of dammar varnish (heavy body) and linseed oil-one part oil, one part varnish. You may increase or decrease the oil or varnish to hasten or slow the drying time. If this white is not mixed too rich with medium, it will dry matte and will be a good surface to receive the overpainting. The drying time of this mixture will be but a few hours.

Paint Water

When I first turned my attention to painting the water in the ocean and its surroundings, I came face to face with the exasperating and ridiculous task of trying to make it stand still long enough for me to study and paint.

I soon learned that the very thing that had brought me to the ocean as a subject was the quality I was trying to take away from it. I came to realize it was not just the ocean that had movement-tides, currents, changing surface –but so did the sky and the sun. Our source of light, the great zenith of the sky, the clouds ever changing, all reveal to the artist reflection and reflected light, with the atmosphere breaking up the light and allowing us to observe and live with the colors on nature’s palette. Even the stately rocks had their days of movement when the Ice Age pushed, shoved, and arranged them in the beautiful patterns and shapes that we see today, the ocean constantly gnawing at their polished surfaces, breaking and chipping, creating new forms to delight the eye.

To the person who wants to paint the ocean, I say: go to the ocean and live with all its moods and movement-become, as much as you can, part of it- give yourself a chance to acquire more understanding and respect for the subject that you have chosen to paint. There are many today who use books, paintings, prints and photographs to work from. I grant that they have some merit. By studying them some useful information may be gained-eve something that is bad may point a good direction. But the great lesson is in experiencing the moods of nature, the moods you wish to paint. To paint only the surface of the subject, and the surface may be only paint-skin deep. The true beauty of art lies beyond this point. It lies within the realm of feeling. In order to feel the ocean, one must go to the ocean.

Winslow Homer’s paintings are great, not because of their surface, but because of the depth of emotional knowledge he gathered from his association with his subject. When viewing one of Homer’s paintings, you do not at first sense his paint quality, but you feel a great emotion that comes only from the elements-the ocean, the sky, the wind, and life itself. It goes without saying that the canvases of Homer show great technical skill. An artist’s search for more understanding of his medium and its application never ends. As your knowledge increases, you will be free more and more to express your thoughts.

As for the technical side of painting, leave no stone unturned to increase your understanding of the artist’s materials and their use. You should have a good sound working knowledge of color, linear perspective, aerial perspective, light and its effects, composition, values and what constitutes a good working palette. In this regard, a number of books on the market today will help. From these technical books, you may find he different materials best suited for your own particular needs.

There may be some of you who read this book who only go down to the ocean on occasion to paint. Your first love in painting may lie in another part of nature. Let me assure you that the study of one phase of nature is the same as any other phase. In an obscure back yard, a seed is planted, watered, miraculously springs to life with movement and growth, produces flowers that possess color and scent, then returns new seeds to the earth to repeat he whole beautiful cycle again and again. This is the same explosive sequence you see as great waves crest and rush over rocks to return to the ocean. It is sometimes a great comfort to know that your fellow artist painting a different subject has the same unending search into nature as you have. It is only his interpretation that differs, along with his manner or style.

It would be best if I did not have to say a word about style. There seems to be a great seeking on the part of some students for a style. This is too bad, for there is little enough time to paint without wasting it on something hat exists from the very beginning, something that will develop naturally as you become more proficient. Your style is as your handwriting, a part of you. What you are is what your style will be.

To the beginner, one of the most frustrating studies to cope with is the movement of the ocean and foam breaking in and around the rocks. At times what is happening can be seen very clearly and is very obvious. Other times, it seems like utter confusion and chaos. So many factors come into play that some form of organization must be evolved to help study this seemingly erratic behavior.

If you are making your studies of wave movements at high tide and some of the action is unexplainable, be sure to return to the same spot at halftide, then again at low tide. Some of the action may be due to the formation of the ledges and the rocks beneath the surface. ocean can ricochet from one unseen surface of a ledge of rocks to another, creating turbulence that seems unexplainable. Another great factor is the tide and its movements. At high and low tide, there is a period of calm where there is no movement at all. The ocean may roll in a classic form allowing a clear insight into its formations. The action of the ebbing tide, running in one direction, is totally different to its counterpart approximately six hours later running in the opposite direction. When the strong tide begins its movement, it sets the great undertows in motion, pulling the ocean sideways, kicking large sections of foam skyward, first one way then the other. If the artist is conscious of what is going on, then all of this becomes organized and is readable.

If the ocean are caused by a fast-moving line storm in which the winds reach a high velocity in a very short span of time, the waves are choppy and high with very short spans or valleys between them, sometimes breaking as far as the horizon in short, choppy little mountains. These treacherous storms are hard to study for the breaking of the waves lasts for but a moment, not allowing any sustained study period. Storms which last for only a short time may end with the wind shifting in the opposite direction, knocking the choppy ocean down as fast as they made up. To the fisherman and his mall craft, these squalls are unpredictable and extremely dangerous.

Large storms that occur with winds reaching gale force for a period of three or four days are storms of huge ocean with long troughs between them. These ocean allow the observer to study them as they slowly build, crest and hold for a moment, then peel off, rushing their mountains of foam in and over the land. Then, as this water turns and rushes seaward again, creating an enormous undertow, it sometimes kicks the next wave right out from under itself. Only a large headland seems to influence these movements; the smaller rocks are just inundated. But as the torrents of water recede, smaller surfaces play a great part in creating patterns-the heavy foam pours off and around them, creating beautiful shapes of light against dark rocks. As the incoming ocean crest, large amounts of foam are caught up by the fierce wind, and driven ahead of the wave action, soaking everything in its path. The opposite is true as the storm breaks and the wind shifts. The spume is then driven back over the waves, creating a beautiful misty veil which is sent skyward and back-a waterfall in reverse.

There is a wave action that you may witness on occasion which is a delight to behold. The great ocean seem to come from nowhere. These are the great ocean swells that are created by some unseen storm. They literally develop from nothing, slowly becoming moving mountains in slow motion. These swells are known to have traveled for hundreds of miles. They create the classic wave type in action and, when breaking, allow for long periods of observation and study. They may arrive at your shoreline on the most beautiful of days. This is the only type of huge wave action that one can study in complete comfort. In some sections of the world, this is a common occurrence. These are places that have strong tradewinds that keep the ocean in constant movement in one direction.

I would like you to consider for a moment the actual movement of waves. At first glance, you would think that the water is actually in a forward movement. If this were true, then in a storm of great magnitude, all of the water would be on one side of the ocean. Rather, the movement of the ocean is up and down, not forward. To demonstrate this action, take a long clothesline and tie the far end down. Now, with a flip of the wrist at the free end, give the line a quick up-and-down motion. Watch the action move down the line to the far end, like waves. Because the far end is tied down, it can have no forward movement, but the line undulates in a pulsating rhythm, the same basic principle as the waves.

Another thought. To me, the life that accompanies marine painting is a life of freedom, not particularly physical freedom but freedom of thought. It is almost impossible, as you walk the beach or sit high above the surf on a rugged cliff, to do anything but organized thinking. You may have random or even subconscious thoughts, but this thinking always lends itself to a betterment of your understanding, no matter how small. You can free yourself from man-made laws at these moments spent by the ocean, realizing that it is the natural laws of nature that govern our very existence.

If you look to natural law as your teacher, you will more readily understand the cresting of the great ocean which have been spawned in the bowels of some unseen storm hundreds of miles across the curve of the horizon, as they make their way to the rocks below, ending their long voyage in a burst of spume for your contemplation. If, on this day, you but sense the vastness of your subject, your effort will not be in vain and your painting cannot help but improve. These are the blocks on which you build your painting, not on the fact that purple is the recognized color scheme this year, or thick paint on the canvas is more popular than thin. If you succumb to the latter, you are destined to change your thinking and painting each year as the trends drift from fad to fad.

Read Introduction on Landscape Oil Paintings

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 1

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 2

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 3

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 4

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 5

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 6

Step 5

For the fifth step-finishing off the treetops – fold the paper until you can hold it firmly. Again, dip just the tips of the paper in the paint on your palette. Choose light colors. Our most important consideration is that we want to create a representation of leaves, but don’t just rely on green. Light red will accomplish the same thing. We’ll really see what light can accomplish when you let it dance to its heart’s content. Light will illuminate and exalt even a portrait. How much more will it do when your subject is an organic miracle of nature that lives and dies with the sun! So put on l a little red with your green or pale blue. By the time you’re done, the tops of your trees can be crazy quilts of color, a lovely swirling hubbub of leaf and sunshine with tiny patches of sky peeking through. The novice just paints an object, dull and alone, but a good artist paints it in the full complexity of its relationship to the forces around it. He knows that when you look at a leaf, a good percentage of what you actually see are other elements that are forever playing upon it.

There you are in front of your easel with a wad of toilet paper dipped in light, spangly colors. Now press the paper gently against the canvas so that you cover the upper limbs of each tree. For all intents and purposes, the relatively large circles of thin bright paint that you create this way will complete the essential part of your landscape painting.

Using the same sort of easy wrist movement, drag another wad of toilet paper, also dipped in light colors, against your sky. The more interesting the color scheme, the more vibrant and convincing will be your background.

Again, I would advise that you spend a few moments I looking at the sky. Study its dynamism. The clouds pour I into the blue, while streaks of color from God-knows-where stretch across the horizon. So for goodness’ sake don’t hesitate to be creative with your color scheme. You’ll surprise yourself with just how new and delightful an unexpected burst of orange or pink can be. Naturally, not all your dabs of color will be equally pleasing. Often you’ll be disappointed by a blue that’s too pasty or a yellow that’s too deep. It’s a lot like cooking. Even the best chef puts in too much paprika once in a while. Fortunately you don’t have to eat your art, so the situation is considerably less critical.

Scumbling

Scumbling is painting thin layers of opaque light color over dark colors, which gives a broken color effect. Scumbling is rather like glazing, but with light colors over dark. The colors mix optically rather than on the palette, and the result is shimmery, opalescent.

Stippling

Stippling is similar to scumbling but you are adding more texture than contrast. Same strokes of paint but you are working for a texture effect instead of a color effect.

Sponging

Is using a seas spong to create dimensional paint. It is similar to stippling but you are using a thicker surface and creating a more dynamic color and texture effect.

These three techniques should be used on a dry canvas or the under painting with a thick brush head. These techniques can be used with all types of paint but they work best with acrylic or oil.

Best practice would be to add the under painting. Under painting  is an initial layer of paint applied to a ground, which serves as a base for subsequent layers of paint. Then use these techniques to add more layers of detail to bring out the focal points of the painting. These techniques would be characterized as a more impressionistic style of painting. Impressionism is an art movement beginning in France in the 1870′s, founded by an individualistic group of artists including, among others, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro; all concerned themselves mainly with the components of light and the immediate visual impression of a scene using unconnected colors that were to be mixed by the eye; bright colors and bold brushwork were often used to achieve these impressions.

When using these techniques in your paintings start small and always remember less is more. If you add to much texture and contrast to your work it can become very chaotic. I call it tunnel vision. Always keep the big picture and try not to get lost in adding more detail to your work.