How to Make a Gradient With Oil Paint
- 1). Squeeze out two oil paint colors onto your palette. Choose black and white for the simplest gradient. If you'd like to experiment with color, choose pure colors near each other on the color wheel, such as cadmium red and cadmium yellow, cadmium yellow and cobalt blue or cobalt blue and cadmium red.
- 2). Mix together an equal amount of each color using your palette knife. Black and white mixed together will produce gray, cadmium red and cadmium yellow will make orange, cadmium yellow and cobalt blue will make green and cobalt blue and cadmium red will make purple. You should now have three colors.
- 3). Scoop a bit of your middle color onto your palette knife and mix it with an equal amount of one of your original colors. Wipe your palette knife on a paper towel to clean it. Take a bit of your middle color and mix it with an equal amount of your other original color. You will now have five different colors of paint on your palette. For example, if using cadmium red and cadmium yellow you would have, cadmium red, red-orange, orange, yellow-orange and cadmium yellow.
- 4). Apply your paint to your canvas. A practice gradient is best done in a rectangular shape, but you can use any shape you desire. Dip a flat or filbert brush into one of your original colors and paint an even stroke of it. Clean your brush in mineral spirits and dab on a paper towel. Apply a stroke of the next color in the gradient progression so it touches the first. Follow with the next three colors, cleaning your brush between each stroke.
- 5). Hold a large fan brush softly between your thumb and forefinger with a slack wrist. Quickly flip your wrist so that the fan brush moves lightly across your gradient. Don't push the fan brush down, only the very tips of the bristles should touch the paint. Move the fan brush in the same direction along the gradient several times to blend the colors.
- 6). Clean your fan brush by wiping it on a paper towel. Do not clean it with mineral spirits because you need it to remain dry. Use the same quick wrist motion to blend the colors of the gradient in the other direction. Move the fan brush in this direction several times until the gradient is fully blended.
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