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[onionpainter]

PAINTING SALE - Click through the images, they are numbered and titled.

Come Home, 20"x20", framed - 500usd+shipping [30usd]

4 Angus Cattle, 12"x10", framed - 300usd+shipping [20usd

2 Angus Cattle, 12"x12", not framed - 180usd+shipping [15usd]

Straw Bales, 7"x13", framed - 180usd+shipping [15usd]

To claim a painting please write the title of the one you want in the comments AND please DM me with your mailing address! then I can send a payment link via stripe. If you are outside of the USA+Canada the shipping may cost a bit more depending on where you are located so in that case I will send the payment link for the shipping after I have mailed it.

If you're not in the market for paintings right now but you want to support my work, a reblog would be very much appreciated, thank you! :))

[onionpainter]

English Paint Horse Grazing

8"x12"

Oil on canvas

[onionpainter]

you inspire me

hey that is so nice to hear!!! :)) I am transferring my powers to you. you are so strong, strong enough to pursue that thing u desire. you are surrounded by a sickening green glow of determination, crackling with electricity.

[onionpainter]

Red Angus Steer Trotting (Study)

8.5"x7"

Oil on linen board

[onionpainter]

Bison

12"x12"

Oil on linen - commission

[onionpainter]

Percheron studies from the Stampede last summer.

Remember: painting is just drawing and drawing is 80% observation. You can't paint accurate representations if you don't look.

[onionpainter]

cow practice

this is a little study for my big painting of cows, which i have now had on the easel for 8 months. my expectations for that painting are pretty high, but like everyone else my technical ability fluctuates day by day, which is why it's so important to do smaller exercises during the working period of a big important picture. only working on the big picture and not taking into account whether my hand is sharp or dull that day is a great way to destroy months of work.

Anyway, the big picture is nearly complete, i have 4 cows heads left to finalize and then some barbed wire to install. I will be very happy when it's time to put this picture away to cure for four months!

[onionpainter]

"Come Home" Oil on canvas 20"x20"

Boy this painting was real difficult to make! I found out a few months ago that the local arts contest that i was making THIS picture for actually had a perimeter limit of 100"! and that thing is 52"x26" so it categorically cannot be submitted. So I took a break on that one and put together the design for this picture based on a thumbnail sketch I drew last winter:

I did all of the painting process during May, which is crazy fast for me [you may notice its generally less "tight" than most of my other work, but for one month i think it's not bad.] It was a good challenge to get it done so quickly and I can paint faster now!

[onionpainter]

Straw Bales, 7"x13"

Oil on Canvas

Instagram

[onionpainter]

Four Black Angus Cattle

Oil on canvas, 12"x10"

Instagram

Process:

I just bought a new camera so as I get my bearings with it I will try my best to rephotograph and offer prints of my older pictures now that I have a decent camera. Thanks for reading!

[onionpainter]

In your pallete post you say that if you want to build up your skills you could only use burnt umber and white :0? Is there a reason burnt umber would be better than pure black and white?

Hello anon, that is a GREAT question!

My short answer is that burnt umber is a very versatile and forgiving pigment to use, whereas black pigments [ivory black, mars black, etc] have less uses in colour mixing, are more difficult to handle, and can cause archival problems down the line, like cracking.

Further discussion and a commentary on this chart is under the readmore.

The colours mixed on the chart above were made with approximately the same amounts of paint as each other, to show how the different pigments interact.

The main thing to consider about black pigments is that they are NOT neutral in therms of hue, so if you try to darken a mix by adding black, the mix will also be pushed towards blue [for the purpose of paint mixing, we can think of black pigments as dark blue], which is usually not the colour direction intended by the artist.

A better alternative is to mix your own black colour using Burnt Umber and Ultramarine, which gives you more control over exactly what colour of black you want to make, be it more brown or more blue.

So if you are mixing your own black with burnt umber and ultramarine, the circumstance where an actual black pigment would be of use presents itself only when your subject is darker than what can be achieved via brown+blue. A similar situation to this one would be a circumstance where you need to paint something that is more blue green than ultramarine can produce, so its time to bring out the pthalo blue. These stronger pigments are sometimes called "Power Colours" and are used to supplement a limited palette.

The reason I recommend burnt umber as a beginner pigment is because it mixes well with other colours without overpowering them AND if you are just doing value studies with burnt umber and white, it's a much better time investment to learn the value scale in because burnt umber has way more applications in full colour painting than black does.

[onionpainter]

In the absence of any completed work, here is my palette and some personal recommendations under the readmore.

Colour List:

Burnt Umber* Cadmium Red Light* Quinacridone Red Permanent Alizarin* Quinacridone Magenta Ivory Black Burnt Sienna Cadmium Yellow Deep Cadmium Yellow Pale* Hansa Yellow Cobalt Teal Phthalo Blue French Ultramarine* Titanium White*

As you can see, some of these colours have asterisks on them, that's because those are the colours that make up my Limited Palette: Permanent Alizarin Cadmium Red Light Burnt Umber Cadmium Yellow Pale French Ultramarine Titanium White

These are the pigments that I consider essential, and the ones that I started learning oil realism with back in 2018 [actually I have just started using cadmium red light, because of all the orange cows i deal with these days. Back in the day I only used the other five.]

There are many benefits to using a limited palette, first of all it's cheaper to buy 5 or 6 colours rather than every pigment on the shelf, but more importantly, oil realism is really an exercise in colour mixing, and it is much easier starting out to learn all the possible combinations of 5 colours vs learning all the possible combinations of 14 colours. I would actually recommend beginners start with only burnt umber and titanium white if you are very serious about building your technical skills and can withstand the allure of bright and exciting pigments.

[onionpainter]

Pinned Post

He/him, 29

Hello, I make oil paintings in the impressionist realist style.

This is my painting tag for ONLY paintings

This is my instagram account

Twitter

Prints are currently unavailable due to the difficulty of sourcing acceptable quality printing. I will be looking into doing a limited run of prints of the "Onions" picture sometime in the future via preorder once I secure an adequate printing service.

Commissions are closed until late 2024 at the earliest (I have a lot of time sensitive painting plans and a move coming up. Will post an alert when I am ready to take comms again!)

I tend to delete past WIP/candid posts and asks unless it is a technical question or advice [I do this because I mainly want to keep this blog as a catalogue of work]

🧅Thanks for reading🧅

[onionpainter]

Georgia O'Keeffe give me strength....

Sketch and partial first pass, this is gonna be a big one (52"×26" to be exact)

[onionpainter]

I have a question about your prep for oil painting, or more like when ur practicing. Do you use a specially treated paper to practice with oils (studies, quick thumbnail sketches, etc) before using canvas or do you just sketch ideas, layout on canvas and then under paint? I enjoy the medium a lot but I actually want to sketch and do studies in oil (without much drawing involved) but don’t want to waste canvas. Also hate painting gesso over stuff repeatedly. Is paper something you have tried? Any advise would be appreciated o wise onion painter

Ok, so as for my personal habits, I tend to do "Practices" digitally [I have a tablet and SAI] or sometimes on paper like so: [garlic is pencil on paper, rest are digital]. I do draw thumbnails but they are usually in marker or pencil in my sketchbook, and are little more than like, very stylized symbols representing subjects or different compositional patterns. Most of my painting planning and composition happens via digital photo collages.

The rest of my very long answer is under the readmore

I'll do colour studies occasionally if I'm feeling particularly anxious about a picture, OR if it has a colour range that I am yet unfamiliar with. I have done a couple colour studies for my current big picture with the cattle, one I did on location so I could have an example of the colours present in the landscape to my eye, and another of a seascape because this cattle picture will be my first significant effort to include the blue colour range into my vocabulary, and also to spend some hours painting clouds to get a feel for them. [for context, when I began with my current method of painting I began only painting white objects against back fabric with a value range from chromatic black to titanium white and then added in new colour ranges one by one once I was fluent in all of the preceding colour ranges] When it comes to your practice [and I mean "Practice" as in everything you paint overall] I think you might find canvas panels very helpful, as they take up very little space BUT they are still rigid and therefore don't need to be taped to a board or anything. They also come in a really wide variety of sizes and are very affordable. If you enjoy using canvas paper then you should continue what you are doing, but try different kinds of surfaces. Some people prefer to do oil paintings on sheets of copper. There will be a material that suits your style and your personality, you just have to find out what it is. I like belgian linen, but others may prefer gesso'd particle board.

You have several points going on in your question, so I will address them individually:

Not wanting to "Waste Canvas" Canvas is not a precious commodity. It is a raw material which can be used in the process of painting, therefore, its value lies in the work hours and expertise of the craftsperson who uses it. One of the most common uses of canvas is in art training. So you are not "wasting canvas" by using it for the purpose of learning the skills necessary for painting: that is a perfectly acceptable use for canvas, and all other materials. I'm not "wasting" a pair of hiking boots by walking at the bottom of a mountain, I'm using them, and if I don't use the boots at the bottom of the mountain I will never get to use them at the top.

Putting Gesso over oil paintings Don't do this. Gesso is a water based paint so it dries much faster than the oil beneath it. If you want to paint over a painting you can either paint over it with a neutral oil colour, OR, just do the new painting over it without the middle stage. Some things to watch out for if you reuse canvas this way: Ridge lines [bits of textured paint from the previous painting sticking up through your new painting might take away from it], oil layers [remember the fat over lean rule when choosing a canvas to paint over. if you have high concentrations of oil, aka fat, on the canvas already, it might be better to choose a different canvas], dryness [try to only paint over pictures that have had a good amount of time to dry.] Basically all of these warnings are to prevent cracking and other conservator problems with your paintings. A good painting can happen to your canvas at any time and it would be a shame to paint something you really like and have it crack later from poor application.

"Without much drawing involved" Painting is "mass drawing" [shapes not lines] with colour, so you can't really avoid drawing if you want to paint. This doesn't mean you have to use pencil or other dry mediums if you don't want to though, painting a value study [mass drawing] with oil is a very popular technique which many employ. I'd recommend that you look into "imprimatura" and "grisaille", two methods of value painting used for oil.

In conclusion, I don't want to get all "just be yourself" in here, but i'd recommend you research the different techniques and materials available to you and pick the one that has the fewest barriers to your work flow, feels the best to work with, and creates the final product that you want to create. If you were me I would tell you to work on belgian linen stretched canvases and occasional cotton canvas panels, but you may prefer something different so that advice may not be helpful. Keep at it!

[onionpainter]

got a couple asks about my stuff so i thought i'd make a video about it, there's an items list under the readmore if you'd rather read it. [its my first video so uhh please be nice lol]

always read the labels of art materials because basically all of these things are toxic or dangerous in some way. if youre new to oil painting please look up safety guides for the materials, some of which literally will self ignite if you don't store them correctly [do some research to find out which one self ignites ;) ]

item lists [this video is not sponsored, i forgot to mention it in the video]

Electric drills: whichever you like, i prefer one that plugs in because you don't have to recharge a battery

Brushes: hog bristle 1/4 inch filbert - various brands [i forget] synthetic 1/4 inch ivory filbert - Rosemary and Co synthetic 1/2 inch ivory dagger - Rosemary and Co synthetic 1 inch ivory dagger - Rosemary and co hog bristle 1/2 inch flat brush - i forget the brand, might update this later but maybe not, just go to the store and try out different brushes because you might like something different than me.

LIMITED palette: titanium white cadmium yellow pale cadmium yellow deep [not strictly necessary] alizarin permanent french ultramarine burnt umber [windsor and newton burnt umber is darker than M. graham burnt umber]

additional colours: quinacridone magenta cadmium red light hansa yellow pale sap green pthalo green cobalt teal pthalo blue

mediums: linseed oil gamsol safflower oil

[onionpainter]

Sketch and partial first pass, this is gonna be a big one (52"×26" to be exact)