If you are an illustration student at RIT, you will, at some point, have Bob Dorsey as one of your instructors. Throughout each quarter, he will give any number of demonstrations on materials, but two you can count on, and will want to see, are oil and acrylic. At the end of last year, I sat in and took some photos of one of his oil demos. To begin, he spends some time talking about setting up, his color pallet, brushes and other materials, and some history of painting.
We have a pretty good space for getting students together for presentations and discussions.
He chose Adam Francey, a Rochester tattoo artist and painter, for that days portrait. With this technique, Bob establishes his darks at the pencil stage which will show through the thin oil layer. Ensuring the portrait likeness at the pencil stage will save unnecessary pushing and pulling of proportions while painting. This is prepared prior to the demo and is sprayed with workable fixative to keep the pencil stable.
He begins by scrubbing a thin layer of oil onto the board (canvas glued onto Masonite). The oil is thinned with orderless mineral spirits. The sketch underneath is showing through and begins to establish some of the darks. This is a dark to light process.
Toward the bottom of the picture, he mixed in some purple for temperature variation. After putting in the color, the whole surface if gone over with a larger soft brush to blend. This is repeated at different times of the painting as the oil is built up.
After a layer of paint, he begins the removal stage which is key to this technique. Using a cloth (here an old tee shirt) he wipes away some of the oil to reveal the mid tones. Notice he is using latex gloves. They protect from the chemicals that come along with oil painting. Not everyone has gotten clean, so to speak, but its a good idea to start good habits if your just getting into oils.
After using the cloth, a small brush dipped in mineral spirits is used for finer removal before painting in lights.
As the painting moves along and gets lighter, darks are put in as well. The darkened pencil marks are not quite the darkest darks. When the darker values are added, the lights really pop.
This small brush is for final touches. Large brushes are used predominately throughout the painting, thinking about large planes and shapes, and keeping from being too careful.
Some warms are put in for the mouth and meatier parts but when greens and blues are introduced, a larger sense of space and personality show through.
A maul stick can be very helpful to steady the hand. They sell "professional" versions but dowels work really well.
Taking a step back to see if the values are working. These demos go about three short hours and he paints to finish. Its a fantastic technique and I could never see it enough. This year I hope to post his acryic demo.
Look for Bob's own blog coming this year. I will be sure to link to it when its up. He is a great instructor and is a wealth of knowlage when it comes to illustration and techniques.