Friday, November 25, 2016

Oils on paper

Taping the back of the paper
Some of you may know that every now and then I make an oil sketch on paper. Sometimes in preparation of a larger painting, sometimes to convince a potential buyer to place a commission and sometimes just for fun.

I buy my oil paper pads online, 50 sheets of 240 grs paper, 30 x 40 cm (11.7 x 15.8"). The one I buy has this fake canvas texture. Unfortunately I was unable to find smooth oil paper, so if there's someone out there who did find it, please let me know.

Ready for use
The next few lines will have the word 'tape' in it an awful lot. So if you're allergic to the word 'tape', I suggest you stop reading. Here it goes: I tape the paper to a piece of board. The trick is to apply the tape to the back of your paper, then turn it around and tape the tape to the board, instead of the paper itself. This way you don't have annoying pieces of tape on the front side of your paper and you can use the entire surface.
 Anyway, I made a number of fresh oil sketches on paper. Below is an example. If you want to see them all (or buy one) please go to the online sale section of my website, http://www.paintingskies.com.

Breakers on a Peer, oils on paper, 11.8 x 15.7"

2 comments:

  1. This one looks great as usual!

    Regarding oil paper, I don't really like the Arches oil paper. Hot press watercolor papers like Fabriano artistico can be prepped to be used for oil. I don't think many people do it but I've tried it and it works. I use airbrush . So I tape it down and spray a coat of thinned gesso or acrylic paint and let it dry. Once this is done it accepts layers of oil paint and no oil leakage happens on the other side. An alternate to airbrushing is just brushing gesso or something like GAC100 to the other ( same effect) . As the paper's hot press, it'll be really smooth even after this.

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    1. Thanks Asha, for your valuable comment. Before I started buying oil pads I also prepped water color paper with Gesso. Worked fine. The only difference is that you use airbrush, so your surfaces will probably much smoother than mine... Didn't know you could use thinned Gesso for airbrushing. Interesting!

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