New Materials and Thinking Like An Oil Painter

The first and most important thing is that you need to learn the language of oil paint. I will explain..

You see, the material of oil paint has has certain physical characteristics...

It is a wet paste, it is applied with brushes, even just the fact that the paint is applied to a canvas, (instead of rubbing like you do with a pencil) at all is different than what you have been used to for your whole life.

In other words, it is not drawing.

Ok, now as far as thinking like an oil painter, this gets really interesting...

An oil painter must see the world differently than most people and this is the first thing that you must learn.

One of the biggest problems people have is that they see a subject like a vase of flowers, or a person...meaning they see the end product...and then they want to take those flowers or that person and just plop them on canvas.

They don't know how to go about building the picture. The steps to get to the end product.