Journey Art Supplies Blog
Tips, Tricks, Thoughts, and inspiration from across the art spectrum.
Oil Painting Tips for Those New to Oils
Hello Artists, beginners and experts alike! This week, our blog post is inspired by a request from Tanya M. Nevin of Van Gough's Ear Paint Studio (check out her work!). She recently inherited a ton of oil paints from her late father, also an artist. Tanya has been painting with acrylics for over twenty-five years and she's not quite sure how to transition into working with oils. Well, Tanya and I are actually in the same predicament! I've never really used oil paints heavily either. So, what do we do when we don't know what to do? I start by asking questions of others that do. I was all to happy to take this opportunity to research the fascinating world of beginner oil painting and share the top 5 oil painting tips I found most helpful. Let's dive in and learn some great first-time oil painting tips together, shall we? 1. Prepare Your Painting Space Oil paints themselves and the solvents you will need to clean brushes with will come with strong scents; as such, you'll want the space you'll be painting in a well-ventilated area. If possible, make sure there is also plenty of room to keep all the items you need in reach and ready, like mediums, painting surfaces, turpentine, brushes, paints, etc. If possible, you may want to make sure your oil painting space is entirely separate from your acrylics or watercolors. In some cases, it's incredibly easy to grab a tube of Opera Rose watercolor instead of oil because the tubes look very similar. 2. Slow and Steady There's nothing more exciting than trying something new and learning a new art medium. However, it can frequently go from exciting to overwhelming very quickly if you jump right into trying to get all the colors, brushes, canvasses, etc. There's no shame in starting small and slowly. It's always good to start with a small painting surface and a limited paint palette to experience the way the paint applies and feels on the brush and how mixing it differs from other mediums you are familiar with. If you're looking for an excellent budget option, did you know that Gamblin creates a free paint called Torrit Grey? Torrit Grey is Gamblin's solution to ensuring high-quality pigments that float in the air of their factories and get filtered away from workers to keep them safe. To keep the environment safe, Gamblin re-uses these pigments to create a one-of-a-kind color tube of grey. Each shade of grey is different, and they also run an annual contest that artists can enter for a chance to win free stuff. 3. Prime your Surface If you don't have some Joe's Prime Stretched Cotton Canvas or Joe's Prime Cotton Canvas Rolls, which are 100% cotton duck that has all been pre-primed for painting with oils, you will absolutely need to prime your surface. Why? Oil paints have oils in them, and when you paint with them on an unprimed surface, the oils begin separating from the paint. Once they separate, they start seeping into an unprimed canvas, wood, or paper and can quickly ruin the piece of art you've worked so hard to create. Luckily, at Cheap Joe's, not only can you get pre-primed surfaces, but you can get highly budget-friendly primer options like our Joe's Prime Really Good Gesso, which starts at $3.59 for an 8 oz jar and can be used to prime for oils and acrylics. 4. "Thick over Thin?" "Fat over Lean?" Have you discovered the phrase "fat over lean" when researching oil painting tips yet, but have no idea what that means? These phrases refer to the layers in which you should try and paint with oils. Thinner paints with less oil for the bottom, or first play, then thicker, more oily paints go over the thinner layer. This ensures your painting dries at the correct rate. If your painting dries at the incorrect rate, you could have cracking. To make paint 'fatter' or oilier, you add more oil to it, and to make it 'leaner' or thinner, you add a solvent such as turpentine or a fast-drying medium. This helps each layer absorb oil from the layer above it evenly. If you didn't know it already, certain colors are known to have faster drying times too, and they can be incorporated into your lower layers. Paints that contain Cobalt, Manganese, and Lead can be added to other paints to speed up the drying process. On the other hand, certain paints are known for drying slowly, such as Quinacridones, and should be avoided on lower layers. 5. Keep Clean Oil paints, like many art mediums, can get extremely messy. In some cases, depending on the ingredients, oil paints can be pretty toxic if ingested or absorbed into your skin—but don't let that frighten you! It's all about keeping your work area and self as clean and organized as possible (and out of reach of children and pets) while learning how to dispose of everything responsibly and adequately. Paints, mediums, palettes, and anything else with oil paint should be disposed of in or at a Hazardous Waste Facility. Rags, paper towels, and items with less mess on them can be contained in a glass jar or a fire-safe trash container. But the containers must be fire safe because oil paints and solvents are highly flammable, and they could spontaneously combust when drying out! Hopefully, these five beginner tips will help you transition into your new oil paints, Tanya! I can't wait to see what you learn and all you can do! Good luck and good painting!
Oil Painting Tips for Those New to Oils
Hello Artists, beginners and experts alike! This week, our blog post is inspired by a request from Tanya M. Nevin of Van Gough's Ear Paint Studio (check out her...
Citra Solv Collage Paper!
Hi, everyone! Do you guys know about Citra Solv? Yep, the natural cleaner, degreaser, and solvent! But I'm wondering if you've heard about using it as an art medium. This week, I want to show you how to create some one-of-a-kind paper designs just using Citra Solv! I'm using National Geographics because the paper is clay-coated, which lets the ink on the pages dissolve almost entirely. I've tried using this technique with other magazines, but to no avail... Thankfully, it seems like everyone has stacks upon stacks of old Nat Geos hanging around. To start, you'll need to rip out the covers and ads on the front and the back. These pages aren't clay-coated and the ink doesn't dissolve at all, so don't waste your time or medium. You should also flip through to remove any other ads that are hiding in between the pages and you can also unfold these big sheets so that you'll be able to apply the Citra Solv to the entire page. I started by spritzing each of the pages with a small spray bottle, to really coat the magazine with Citra Solv. But that didn't end up giving me the result I wanted... So I went back through and used one of these Jacquard Plastic Droppers to give higher concentrated droplets in a more random pattern. Once I got all the way through, I closed it up and let it sit for about 10 minutes. When I opened it back up, there were still a few pages that weren't dissolved as much as I wanted them to be... So I just smudged the images with my finger and then closed the magazine back up to give me a new design! When I opened it back up, I had a TON of gorgeous pages! Just look at these beauts! I let them dry a little while longer (about 20 minutes or so in front of my space heater) and then I was ready to use them! Since I had a lot of browns and darker-colored papers, I decided to collage a nice Barred Owl. First I cut out a branch shape from a page that had some really cool bark-ish texture on it. Next, I used a darker sheet to give me the tail and part of the body of my owl. I used another sheet of a similar tone to make the rest of the body and the little footsies. With a few more shapes cut out from different pages, I had my owl! I wasn't happy with the branch going off the page or with how dark the feet were, so I trimmed and snipped a few more shapes... And then I was done! I used the same sheet for the talons that I used as part of the face, to keep the colors consistent and balanced. I also added some scraps around his neck to give him a little more dimension. I left the background blank because I didn't want anything to take away from the gorgeous textures I got in my papers! I still have stacks and stacks of unused pages that I can't wait to use in more projects. widget type="Magento\CatalogWidget\Block\Product\ProductsList" template="Magento_CatalogWidget::product/widget/content/grid.phtml" anchor_text="" id_path="" show_pager="0" products_count="1" condition_option="sku" condition_option_value="mgps-6nm" type_name="Catalog Products List" conditions_encoded="^[`1`:^[`aggregator`:`all`,`new_child`:``,`type`:`Magento||CatalogWidget||Model||Rule||Condition||Combine`,`value`:`1`^],`1--1`:^[`operator`:`()`,`type`:`Magento||CatalogWidget||Model||Rule||Condition||Product`,`attribute`:`sku`,`value`:`mgps-6nm`^]^]" sort_order="position_by_sku"
Citra Solv Collage Paper!
Hi, everyone! Do you guys know about Citra Solv? Yep, the natural cleaner, degreaser, and solvent! But I'm wondering if you've heard about using it as an art medium. This...
6 Ways to Use Your Old Brushes!
Hello, everyone! And welcome to the new year! I hope you all had fabulous holidays full of brand new art supplies! If you got some new brushes for Christmas this year, you're probably considering tossing out your old ones. But don't! Old brushes may seem obsolete once you've replaced them, but you can always find a use! Here are some ways you can still get some mileage out of them: If your rounds/detail brushes have lost their point, give them a new job! Your round can now be used to make more bold, expressive strokes and continuous fat lines and that detail brush would be perfect for applying masking fluid! But maybe you've got a brush whose bristles are really spread out: Don't toss it! Brushes with crazy bristles can give you organic textures and help you create patterns you otherwise couldn't. Plus, when you stop caring about the quality of your brush, you can just throw caution to the wind and go nuts with it. Brushes that have been left sitting on their tips almost always come out looking something like this: There goes a perfectly good Flat... OR there goes a brand new Deerfoot Stippler! Experiment with the new shapes you can make with your new-shaped brush! If you've committed the cardinal sin of acrylic painting and accidentally let your paint dry onto your brush, it's not a lost cause! You can use your seemingly-hopeless brush to create interesting patterns and designs within the paint, just like you would with a color shaper! And when that fails, you can still use...the handle! Some brushes have this cool tapered tip to them, which can double as a color shaper, Paint Pusher, or palette knife! Since these handles are made to be used with art supplies, they can withstand the torment of mixing paint or varnish--and you don't have to ruin a perfectly good butter knife! If you have a brush with bristles that are just too far gone, consider just cutting it all the way down. The short hairs all packed together tightly will act similarly to a scrubber brush, and you can use it to pick up color you've already laid down! Of course, you can only do so much with some brushes, and then it's just time to let them go. The best way to keep your brushes from aging too quickly is to clean and condition them with a product I personally adore, The Masters Brush Cleaner and Preserver.
6 Ways to Use Your Old Brushes!
Hello, everyone! And welcome to the new year! I hope you all had fabulous holidays full of brand new art supplies! If you got some new brushes for Christmas this...
A New Jewel in the Cheap Joe's Crown!
Hey, everybody! Crazy things have been happening in the Cheap Joe's world: namely, we opened a brand new store in beautiful Asheville, North Carolina I was part of the team who worked diligently to get everything up and running ASAP for the townsfolk, who have badly wanted an art supplies store--so much so that they even started a Bring Cheap Joe's Art Stuff to Asheville page on Facebook! Well, we heard those pleas and made it happen! And I wanted to share some photos of the journey with you guys: Very early stages, just getting basic fixtures put in. And there's Aly and David, the managers of the Boone Outlet and the Asheville stores! Reduce, reuse, recycle: these planks of wood are actually pieces of pallets that we receive deliveries on, but we knew we could use them for something creative, like an accent wall! Soon, these will be covered in stacks of canvas and watercolor paper! Here's Brian, our Marketing Manager, building a big front desk for our new employees! Then he added a big, sturdy, concrete top and continued the pallets motif! Finally! We can start loading in merchandise! The very first product placed! Bunches and bunches of sketchbooks! Sorting and finding a place for everything! (Natasha, who works in inventory, doesn't like having her picture taken...) Look at all those easels! And the finished pallet wall! So...much...canvas! Coming along nicely! Our brush section! A few finishing touches...and we were ready to open! Come down and visit us! The address is: 829 Riverside Dr Ste 120 Asheville, NC 28804 And the local number is 828-232-8391 We can't wait to see you!
A New Jewel in the Cheap Joe's Crown!
Hey, everybody! Crazy things have been happening in the Cheap Joe's world: namely, we opened a brand new store in beautiful Asheville, North Carolina I was part of the team...
