THE FUNDAMENTALS

Oil painting fundamentals

Oil painting has fewer fundamentals than the number of courses selling them. One material rule, fat over lean. Value before color, because value carries the form. Color as a controlled system, not a bigger box of tubes. And the layer moves, transparent and opaque, that everything from Rembrandt to now is built from. Each guide below covers one of them, in the order they pay off.

Fundamentals are skills. What turns skills into paintings is a painting process, the order and logic connecting them. Learn these with that end in mind.

THE RULES OF THE MATERIAL
Fat Over Lean
The one structural rule of oil layers, why it exists, and what cracking actually is.
Materials, reviewed first-hand
The paints, panels, and brushes I actually use, with the specific colors worth buying.
VALUE AND LIGHT
Chiaroscuro
Light against dark as the engine of form and drama.
Grisaille and Underpainting
Solving value structure first, in one color, before color complicates it.
COLOR
The Limited Palette
Fewer pigments, more control: how four colors cover more than you expect.
Broken Color
Color mixed in the eye instead of on the palette.
THE LAYER MOVES
Glazing vs Scumbling
The two thin-layer moves, exact opposites, and when each is the one you want.
Impasto
Paint as physical material: body, ridges, and light catching the surface.
Deeper study: see how sixty-plus masters actually worked in How the Masters Painted, or find your own starting point with the free diagnostic.