Old Masters Painting Technique
- info1015902
- May 26, 2010
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 13
There are many approaches to building a good portrait oil painting. Since I have often used an Old Masters painting technique myself, I wanted to tell you about it.
I use photography for my references rather than having people, especially children, come for daily sittings while I paint. This is a modern method, of course. However, how one can use the photos is straight from the 1600’s.
Looking at them, I draw out my composition onto the canvas. After that usually (but not always) I paint the first strokes with washes of thin brown and white oil paint. This establishes the tones (lights and darks) of the composition. The next strokes consist of thicker paint, but still in the monochrome palette. When I did the painting that I am showing here, I went farther than usual in brown and white. I worked out all the minute features as well. Other times in other paintings, I skip to color way before the getting to the details. As a picture is worth all those thousands of words, let me demonstrate in the picture above. It shows the reference photo plus 2 stages of "brown and white" and a preliminary color stage.
You can see the final color painting in my previous post, titled "Children's Portrait: Two Little Angels".
My Cousin Norman Rockwell also used the idea behind this Old Masters painting technique to make his Saturday Evening Post Covers. He made it his own in a different way. He too used photography to capture his references. Then he made many preliminary small sketches. After a while, he drew out his ideas to-size on charcoal on paper in great detail. He did this to establish the arrangement and the tonal values (lights and darks). After doing that, he made a rough color sketch of it in oil on a small canvas. When he could envision his colors working, he transferred his large charcoal composition onto a new and final canvas. Then he painted it "alla prima.” That translates from Italian to "at once", i.e., without the building up of thin layers.
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