Still, for outdoor painters, it is probably less romantic but more practical to have brushes that can be held comfortably and easily, with the clipped hair which comes from short-haired animals.

Short or long, the most important points about oil brushes are having enough of them and keeping them soft and flexible.

I have dozens of brushes in my big oil-painting box, and recommend that you take at least two long-haired sable ‘writers’, size 4 or 6, six large hog hair brushes and six smaller hog hairs. The reason will become apparent the minute you start to work. Each brush holds one of the colors you are using, or one of the mixtures that you have made from your primary palette.

Since oil paint dries slowly, you need not dip the brush into turpentine again and again, as you do with water and watercolor; so the brush can stay either on the table or in your hand, ready to be used whenever you want to add something in that color to the picture. This is convenient; it wastes little paint, and you don’t have to clean up until the end of your day’s work. .

Acrylics should be washed off with water, never with turpentine, and you must not allow them to dry hard on a brush – they will be almost impossible to remove. You will have to use stainless steel or plastic palette knives.

The photograph here shows my big oil-painting palette with the colors laid out, as well as the fairly small selection of brushes that I take with me on any expedition.

I usually add another large ‘house-painter’s’ brush, for those first wide washes of earth and sky. I keep two of these, one for the blue tones and one for the greens. Even the slightest flake of another color on the blue brush (or vice versa) will eventually turn up just where I don’t want it.

Never be afraid to spend good money on good brushes. I have had some of mine since I was twelve years old, and they are as soft and flexible as they were when I first went to art classes. Of all painter’s tools, brushes become the most personal and most responsive to your way of working.

Working outdoors, however, can actually help you to appreciate fine pigments. Our color codes will show you just how much can be produced from only a few basic tubes. You’ll need to take with you the colors listed below.

Oil colors are pigments already mixed with a small amount of oil to help them flow. You can add more oil, or turpentine, to thin out the paint, or white to lighten the effect. Never use white spirit instead of turpentine; made of rectified paraffin, it usually contains impurities that affect some of the colors quite badly.

An important reason for mixing your own colors is that some commercially produced tones are extremely fugitive – that is, they will fade or discolor quickly. This is especially true if they are subjected to strong sunlight, as they would be out of doors.

Although there are some colors that will not be as clear in the cheaper grades, those listed below are all perfectly satisfactory in student quality. As your work improves, do add some artist’s colors to your palette; they are more finely ground, have few or no additives and are of incomparable intensity.

Basic palette

• White
• Cadmium yellow
• Yellow ochre
• Cadmium red
• Alizarin crimson
• Burnt umber
• Viridian green
• Ultramarine blue
• Ivory black

Acrylic paints often have different names from traditional oil paints, and the range is much more limited. However, you will be able to find the basic seven colors you need by looking at the chart in your local supply store. If you are using canvas or boards, you will need a special acrylic primer, and there are gloss, and matt mediums instead of linseed oils or turpentines. Acrylics dry more quickly than oils, are more flexible and don’t harden with age or change color, but the texture is different. Working with one or the other becomes a personal choice.

Once you have mastered the basic colors, you can add already mixed paints in a few shades to save time. The colors I would choose for any long painting trip would be those based on the earth and sky shades that I use most often in outdoor painting.

Remember that the color will vary slightly according to how you put it onto the canvas. Like most artists I learned to work in a way that is generally known as ‘lean to fat’,

In this the first washes are applied with only enough turpentine to smooth the paint Into the fabric. The effect is generally quite opaque, the colors changing from the deep blobs on the palette to a much dryer, almost filmy look.

These lean washes provide the best background for any style of painting.

Gradually, as I work nearer the foreground, and therefore nearer surface of the finished painting, I mix turpentine and! Or oil with the pigment, achieving more and richer coloring, and greater depth of intensity and tone. I add the top highlights with pure pigment and oil to give a final sheen, providing sparkle and light wherever it is most appropriate.

You will find that one of the great advantages of painting in oil is that you can physically move the paint about. If you go off to lunch, leaving the painting to dry, you may well come back and decide that a section on the right or left is not what you really want; with a few flicks of the palette knife you can be back to the canvas. No other medium can be treated this way. It makes it easy to begin when you know that changing your mind is always a possibility.

Extended palette

• White
• Lemon yellow
• Cadmium yellow
• Yellow ochre
• Cadmium red
• Alizarin crimson
• Purple
• Indian red
• Viridian green
• Light green
• Raw sienna
• Burnt sienna
• Raw umber
• Cerulean blue
• Cobalt blue
• Prussian blue
• Ultramarine blue
• Ivory Jack
• Lamp black

By learning and understanding the many different vehicles and how they will perform, you will build a sound knowledge of their usage. It does not make sense to me to search for a medium that will do all things, such as I dry slow, dry fast, be opaque, be transparent. The artist can from the outset easily select the ingredients for his medium that will do the job for his particular painting. A reliable painting medium, if used with knowledge and used sparingly, should hold up well and cause no bad effects in the future.

Once you select a particular medium for a painting, it would be bad procedure to change to another while in the process of painting. You may experience all sorts of bad effects on the paint if you do not follow this rule. [f you start your experiments with a basic medium, such as one-third turpentine, one-third linseed oil and one-third dammar varnish, you will have I a good point of departure. If you want to slow the drying time, decrease the amount of varnish. To increase the drying time, add turp or varnish. There is a point beyond which too much varnish will make the paint sticky and hard to handle. Also if you use too much oil, the paint will become and hard to handle. Also if you use too much oil, the paint will become disagreeably greasy and have a poor drying rate.

No amount of words will put together a medium that will give you just what you desire. The following checklist should allow you to select media I for the particular quality you personally desire in your finished painting. Any addition of turpentine or petroleum distillates will hasten this drying I time.

1. Resin ethereal varnishes-damar or mastic-will give the medium the desired depth of luminosity and transparency. If used in excess, these become disagreeably sticky and hard to handle. The drying time under normal conditions is one to two days.
2. Balsams-Canada balsams, Venice turpentine, etc.-lend a smooth effect to the paint surface. They combine well for a glaze medium and, if not used to excess, dry in two to three days. The effect of blending one color into the next can be obtained with the use of the balsams-no other medium will produce it so well, especially in conjunction with the thickened oils.
3. Sun-thickened linseed oil gives the paint surface an elastic enamel-like quality. It dries rather fast when mixed with turpentine, allows for a fluid I draftsman like application. The same may be said for stand oil, except that it has a slower drying rate.
4. Linseed and poppy oil are the basic vehicles used today in the grinding of tubed paints. Linseed oil gives the painting a hard surface and, if used in excess, tends to yellow considerably and to wrinkle. Poppy oil will yellow less but, if too much is used, and if painted in layers, wet over dry, will I crack. Poppy oil is best suited to painting that is to be finished wet-in-wet. It possesses a good buttery quality and feels good on the brush. The drying I time of these vehicles is influenced by a number of things, such as the absorbency of the ground, heat and cold, and humidity. You will also find that the size of the canvas enters into it. On a canvas 4 feet by 8 feet, the medium and its requirements are totally different from a small 12 by 16 inch canvas. We could sum up by saying that there are so many intangibles and personal preferences that you must, with experimentation and experience, build the medium that suits you best.