Peter's Sketchbook

[Peter]

Why use umber if you don't want your painting to dry quickly? It's like adding a dryer to your medium and then complaining that it dries too quickly. Use another pigment if it's an issue.

There are other contributing factors you should be aware of. What kind of ground did you put on the panel or did you get it pre-made? If you got it pre-made you should know what type of ground is on there because that completely changes how the painting will act. My guess is that the paint isn't drying, rather you've gotten yourself an acrylic or absorbent ground and it's just absorbing the oil rather than drying it. If it was actually dry, adding turpentine wouldn't do anything. If you want to fix this, use a non absorbent oil ground and it should extend the drying time by a lot.

Speaking of turpentine. Why does the paint look so oily? Did you add oil to it? Or are you using oily paint from tubes? Generally an underpainting is just done with a handful of colors and a bunch of turpentine, it leaves it nice and matte, somewhat absorbent and very easy to paint over. It can be a good idea to get in the habit of spreading your paint out on blotting paper before using it because manufacturers pre-load paint with medium rather than have it be properly stiff. Only company I know of that doesn't add medium to their paints is Old Holland.

They should teach you this stuff.

Apologies Tristan I forgot to mention what surface I was using and so on. I know umber dries quickly but this seemed to be drying in a 3 hour session which seems crazy to me. I know it dries quick but should it really be that quick?

This was done on a hardwood panel that I prepped myself with 3 coats of gesso (pip seymour to be precise).

Regarding the oily look I think that might be due to how I took the pic, in hand it looks matte (apart from some areas that are abit shiny but I think that's due to how the light is hitting the brush strokes, could be wrong though). I posiitoned a light above it to light the painting as best as I could. I normally use freezer paper over my palette. Not sure if it's the same as blotting paper though.

Not sure how the painting classes at Watts work in person but from the online videos that I've watched so far in their oil painting section they don't really go over tools and mediums etc in great depth. They tell you what brushes to get and medium, and suggestions for work surfaces but that's about it.