This is one of the Parisian cityscapes I’m currently working on.

I use oil paint. After drawing the cartoon, I block in colors using a very liquid mix of pigments that I mix on the palette and my own secret medium.  The medium is ninety percent odorless thinner. After blocking in the colors I cover the canvas with a wash, also very liquid. These three steps take three days. Each layer has to dry before the next can be applied.

Usually I wait a few days before the next step, applying thick brushstrokes. When I’m concentrating, or working on a deadline I can paint a 100x100cm size in a week. It depends on the detial

Yesterday I painted the sky using a palette knife and flat synthetic brushes.The colors in the sky are titanium white, cadmium yellow lemon, raw sienna and deep ultramarine blue. I use expensive paints. It’s a lot easier to get strong colors with minimal paint with good quality paints.

These detail shots show the cloud texture in the sky. The faint lines bleeding through the paint on the left are drawn with a fine line indelible black marker. This is a trick I discovered. The indelible marker will bleed through oil paint, no matter how many layers of paint cover it.

The photo on the right shows why it is important to paint the background before the foreground. The sky in this case is the back ground. All brushstrokes applied on top, come foreward. 

Have questions about oil painting? Don’t know how to do something or need to know what colors to mix? Ask me.