Starting with oil painting can feel overwhelming — but it doesn’t have to be. After years of teaching adults and children in my studio in Garessio, I’ve found that the biggest barrier isn’t talent: it’s not knowing where to begin.
Here are five practical tips that will help any beginner feel confident picking up a brush for the first time.
1. Start with a limited palette
Don’t buy every colour in the shop. Start with just five: titanium white, ivory black, cadmium yellow, cadmium red and ultramarine blue. With these five colours you can mix almost anything, and you’ll learn colour theory naturally as you work.
2. Choose the right surface
For beginners, a primed canvas panel (the rigid kind) is more forgiving than a stretched canvas. It doesn’t flex, so your brushstrokes stay where you put them. A 30×40 cm panel is a great starting size — big enough to work freely, small enough not to feel intimidating.
3. Learn to see values before colours
Value — the lightness or darkness of a colour — is what makes a painting look three-dimensional. Before worrying about hues, squint at your subject and identify where the lights, mid-tones and darks are. Nail the values and the colours will follow.
4. Work fat over lean
This is the golden rule of oil painting: your lower layers should contain less oil than your upper layers. Start with thin, lean mixes (paint thinned with a small amount of solvent) and build up to richer, oilier paint on top. This ensures your painting dries evenly and won’t crack over time.
5. Embrace mistakes — they’re how you learn
Oil paint stays workable for hours. If something isn’t right, you can wipe it off with a rag and try again. This forgiving quality is one of the reasons oil is such a wonderful medium for beginners. Every mistake is a lesson, and every lesson brings you closer to the painting you imagined.
Ready to pick up a brush? I offer private oil painting lessons in my studio in Garessio (Cuneo), as well as online. Find out more about my lessons here.
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