Oils versus Colored Pencil

I have made some interesting discoveries about oil painting. I find that I still have a tendency to work oil paint like I work my colored pencils and Turpenoid. And they don't work the same way. One of the first things I learned was not to try and draw lines with oil paint! You have to think patches of color, semi-blended out. Another thing I learned is that you can put on a really black, dark color or white paint, and if you work it too much, it becomes another color--usually gray. It is hard to get darks really dark and white really white. I have also learned that when I have worked on a painting for at least four hours, applying color becomes a whole different ball game because the canvas is so saturated with wet paint. It is easier for instance to apply a very light color onto a dark area when the painting has been set aside for a day or two to dry a little bit.

But when you are use to one or two types of media, it is hard to erase what you have learned before and learn something else. With colored pencil, there is an advantage in doing lots and lots of blending. But this isn't necessarily true with oil painting. Some blending it required, but not nearly to the level that colored pencil requires. This is a hard habit for me to break. I am learning to be a little bit more loose, using broken patches of color, but this is still hard for me. When I do paint something in a very loose way, it is usually a small part of the painting and I can't seem to carry it throughout the entire painting. I can see how oil painting lends itself to the impressionistic style of art much better than colored pencil does.

I have also learned that I am uncomfortable doing paintings that are larger than 16 X 20. And sometimes that is too big for me. The larger the painting, the more you have to understand that the painting has to look a certain way when you stand 1o feet or more away from it. I tend to be very 'tight' in my painting, so that it looks great close up, but when you stand far away, something gets lost in the translation. I find this a hard skill to acquire. Some of this applies to my colored pencil paintings, but not to the level that it applies to oil painting.

What I do like about oil painting is the brush strokes & different techniques you can use and how you can work with patches of unblended color to give it an impressionistic look. You can paint over something you don't like without ruining the painting. What I don't like about oils is you can't do line work. Fine detail doesn't work as well in oils as it does in colored pencil. You have to create texture without painting lines. It is messy, takes a longer time to clean up, and is more environmentally unsafe, and takes forever to dry.

I'll take my colored pencil, Turpenoid and mixed media any day over oils. I don't care if oil paintings are considered more "ritzy" and bring in a higher selling price, I don't like this media enough to make a switch from colored pencils.