First Oil Painting

About a week ago, I first tried acrylic painting with a small bookmark.  As I expected, I really didn't like how the paint was dry in only about 3 minutes so I had no time to mix and blend.  A day or two later,  I spent a while (at least a half an hour) starting my first oil painting on a 6x8 inch pressboard wood rectangle that I had already painted a couple layers of white acrylic. It is a simple tree on a green hill with a cloudy light blue sky.


Tree on Hill - First Oil Painting by Christopher Johnson

I only used blue, green, and white as colors at first. I mixed both green and blue with white to get lighter shades and painted the upper part blue and the lower green and blended the green up in stronger thinner strokes.  I then mixed some more white with the blue and made parts of the upper part lighter.

A few hours later, I decided to paint a tree. You'll probably see many tree paintings because I always loved to draw trees even though mine were never realistic.  Oil painting has the opposite problem it takes many days for it to dry so while you have time to mix and blend on the support, working in layers could take weeks to finish a complex painting.   This painting took about 5 days to dry.