Glazing and other Painting Techniques

In this class you’ll learn the essential oil painting techniques: glazing, scumbling and impasto. Glazing is an amazing technique where you apply a transparent or semi-transparent layer of paint over another thoroughly dry layer of paint. It’s wonderful for creating luminous colors, as well as water and lighting effects. I’ll show you how to mix your paint to prepare a glaze as well as practical applications for applying glazes to get luminous results that you couldn’t otherwise achieve by using paint opaquely. Then I’ll introduce you to scumbling, which is a technique where you apply a very thin coat of opaque paint over a dry layer of painting to give a soft, sometimes smokey or misty effect. I’ll talk about the differences between glazing and scumbling in preparation and application and show you how to create hazy, misty, cloud like effects with scumbling. Finally I’ll demonstrate how to apply impasto painting application, which is a very thick layer of paint added to the highlights, to give a sculptural effect to your paintings. The course will conclude with the application of these three techniques in one painting to create a painting of a glowing candle.

This class is demonstrated in oil paints, but can be applied to acrylics as well. To do so simply replace the “Walnut Alkyd Medium” and “Solvent Free Gel” with “Acrylic Gloss Medium” and use acrylic colors instead of oil paints.