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Artists’ oil colours are made by stirring dry powder pigments with particular refined linseed oil until it reaches a stiff paste consistency then grinding it by powerful friction in steel roller mills. The perfection of the hue is fundamental. The common standard is a smooth, buttery paste, rather than stringy or long or tacky. When a transient or mobile quality is required by the artist, a liquid painting medium such as pure gum turpentine must be combined with the mixture. If the artist needs to speed up drying, a siccative, or liquid drier, can be often used.

First-grade brushes are produced in two kinds: red sable (with hair from different members of the weasel species) and bleached hog bristles. They both can be acquired in numbered sizes for each of four regular shapes: round (pointed), flat, bright (flat shape but is shorter and not as supple), and oval (flat but bluntly pointed). Red sable brushes are widely used for smoother, more detailed kind of technique. The painting knife, a thinly tempered, skinny version of a palette knife, is a common utensil for applying oil colours in a robust manner.

The generic support for oil painting is a canvas from pure European linen of strong close weave. A canvas is cut to the required size and stretched over a frame, mostly a wooden frame, and secured with tacks or, during the 20th century, by staples. If the artist needs to lower the absorbency of the canvas itself and to achieve a smooth surface, a primer or ground can be applied and left to dry before painting begins. The most generally used primers have been gesso, rabbit-skin glue, and lead white. If rigidity and consistency are preferred rather than springiness and texture, a wooden or processed paperboard panel, sized or primed, could be employed. Lots of other supports, for example paper and certain textiles and metals, also have been attempted.

A layer of picture varnish is commonly applied to a finished oil painting to protect it and prevent atmospheric attacks, minor abrasions, or harmful accumulation of dirt. This film of varnish paint could be removed without damaging the painting by experts who use isopropyl alcohol and such common solvents. The painting varnish also sets the surface to a uniform lustre and takes the tone depth and colour intensity essentially to the appearance originally formed by the artist in wet paint. Some painters, especially those who do not favour deep, intense colouring, and stay with a mat, or lustreless, finish in their paintings.

Many oil paintings made previous to the 19th century were built up in layers. The first was a blank, uniform field of thinned paint called a ground. The ground graduated the glare of the primer and formed a base of gentle colour on which to apply the paint. The forms and objects in the painting were then roughly blocked in with shades of white, as well as gray or neutral green, red, or brown. The ultimate field of monochromatic colours were called the underpainting. Forms could then be defined using either solid paint or scumbles; non-uniform, thinly applied layers of opaque pigment that can create a variety of effects. At the final point, transparent layers of pure colour called glazes were then applied to display luminosity, depth, and brilliance to the objects, and highlights would be imparted with thick, textured patches of paint known as impastos.

Oil as a painting medium is chronologised circa the 11th century. The practice of easel painting with oil colours, however, stems directly from 15th-century tempera-painting styles. Basic improvements in the process of refining linseed oil and the availability of volatile solvents from 1400 coincided with a desire for than pure egg-yolk tempera, to meet the changing needs of the Renaissance (see tempera painting). Initially, oil paints and varnishes would be utilised to glaze tempera panels that were painted in a typical linear draftsmanship. The technically brilliant, crystal-like paintings of the 15th-century Flemish artist Jan van Eyck, for example, were perfected with this new technique.

Throughout the 16th century, oil colour became established as the fundamental painting material in Venice. At the end of the century, Venetian painters had become proficient in utilising the essential elements of oil painting, notably in their employment of successive layers of glazes. Linen canvas, after a long period of development, topped wood panels as the common support.

One of the 17th-century masters of the oil technique was Velázquez, a Spanish artist in the Venetian tradition, whose highly economical but informative brushstrokes have frequently been adopted, especially in portraiture. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens influenced later painters in the manner in which he loaded the light colours opaquely, to juxtapose the thin, transparent darks and shadows. A third remarkable 17th-century master of oil painting was the Dutch painter Rembrandt. In his work, a single brushstroke can effectively depict form; cumulative strokes create great textural depth, with a combination of the rough and the smooth, the thick and the thin. A technique of loaded whites and transparent darks was fully enhanced by glazed effects, blendings, and highly controlled impastos.

Other basic influences on the later easel painting techniques are the smooth, thinly painted, deliberately planned, tight qualities. A great many admired works (e.g., from Johannes Vermeer) were created with smooth and graduated blends of colours to create subtly modeled forms and delicate colour variations.

The technical requirements of some schools of modern painting cannot be achieved by use of traditional genres and techniques, however. Some abstract painters - including some contemporary traditional painters - have demonstrated a need for a totally different plastic flow or viscosity that cannot be had in oil paint and its conventional additives. Some desire a greater range of thick and thin applications and a more expedient rate of drying. Some of them mix coarsely grained materials with colours to create new textures, some have applied oil paints in much heavier thickness than before, and a large part have begun to favour acrylic paints, as they are more versatile and dry fast.

Interested in oil painting? For art supplies Brisbane, including canvas art supplies and artists supplies, visit or call the Discount Art Warehouse.