page_title: Oil paint
section_title: Painting an oil painting
hierarchical_section_title: Oil paint / Painting an oil painting
context_page_description: Oil paint is a traditional method used for artists' painting. In oil paint, pigments are held together by the medium of oil. The most usual type of oil that is used in paint is linseed oil.
  A picture that is painted using oil paint is called an "oil painting". Oil paint takes a long time to dry. Artists find this useful because they can keep working on the painting for a long time. People say that Leonardo da Vinci worked on his painting of the Mona Lisa for four years, even though it is not a very large picture. Oils paints, and oil paintings are often just called "oils" for short. If someone talks about "painting in oils" they mean that the painting is done in oil paints.
context_section_description: Before an artist can paint on a board or canvas, they must prepare it with a "ground" or "undercoat" of plain white paint. Then the artist can sketch a picture onto the surface using charcoal, or paint that is made thin and quick-drying with turpentine or mineral spirits. The artist often works in a brownish or bluish colour, to suggest where the "tone" (light and dark) will be in the finished painting. Then the colours and details are put on in layers.
  The good thing about oil paint is that it can be used in all sorts of ways that most other types of paint cannot be used.
  Oil paint can be put on thin or thick.
  Oil paint can be almost as smooth as glass, or lumpy, bumpy or streaky.
  Oil paint can be transparent so that the layers underneath can be seen, or it can dense so that it covers everything underneath.
  Oil paint can be put on with brushes; it can also be scaped on with a knife, dobbed and smeared with fingers, rubbed on with a cloth, and squeezed onto the painting straight out of the tube.
  Because oil paint can be used in so many different ways, it is better than any other type of paint for painting different textures.
  The first European artists to use oils liked to make the surface very smooth. By the middle of the 1500s, some artists like Tintoretto were painting in a much streakier way. Rembrandt, in the 1600s, used the oil paint in all sorts of ways to get different effects. He used every technique that is described in the list above. After Rembrandt, there were always some artists who liked to work in a smooth way, and others who used many different ways of putting on the paint. This has continued through to Modern times.
caption: This painting by Rembrandt shows how oil paint can be used to show texture such as flesh, hair, cloth, leaves, fruit, gold and pearls.
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