This is for absolute beginners! Because this is a ‘Lockdown Tutorial’, we will try to work with what you have, even if it is the oil paints you inherited from your great-grandmother. Stay at home, stay safe and paint an onion!
Materials (scroll down to notes at the end to see how you can use whatever you have in your cupboard, as long as you have oil paints).
- An onion and a desklight (or you can copy this image).
- 6×6 surface
- Gesso
- 2-3 Paintbrushes
- Oil paints: Dark Brown, Reddish Brown, Yellow ochre, White, Yellow, Blue
- A palette knife is useful
- Palette: a glass chopping board (smooth side) or even a fridge shelf or a white plate.
- Oil or a medium
- White Spirits
- Cooking oil to clean hands
- Cotton wool buds are useful to fix mistakes.
Dilute the dark brown with medium and paint it onto the board then rub it off again with kitchen towel or a cotton rag to stain the board.
Set up your onion with a desk light shining on it to exaggerate the shadows and create highlights.
Draw the onion directly onto your surface using thicker paint with a smallish round brush. Draw it roughly with very few details. Gently rub over the lines to remove excess paint and make it a bit smudgy.
Start with the ‘white’ area – mix a little yellow ochre into the white and in the front part add a touch of yellow or even lime green.
Darken the lines next to the papery skin and brush in a little burnt sienna, and that pale colour made with the cream and Burnt Sienna.
Add the light areas on the highlights of the skin and the onions, including the root area.
Work up the colours on the onion a little more, then add some dark brown where the onion touches the table.
Mix about 3-4 shades of brown using white and ochre. Also darken the pure brown with a little blue paint.
Paint the lightest area on the right hand corner and blend it into the shadow. I often use my fingers to blend but you can wear latex gloves to finger-paint or use your brush.
Paint the entire background, changing the colour gradually. If the lines around the onion are too crisp, blur them with your finger or a cotton wool bud. Note that so far you have just been shading and that details get added last
Refine your light and dark areas. Do not overwork it.
It is a good idea to add the last few highlights on the onion while the paint is still wet, so that they are subtle.
Leave it at the stage on the left to dry. You can add the delicate lines (above right) a day or two later. When you look closely at an onion you can see lots of lines, but when you paint it, just do a few or it looks overdone
To do the roots, first make sure that the underpart is dark (and dry) so that the white roots will show up.
Hold an open tube of paint near the canvas and take a little bit of paint with a toothpick allowing it to string and make contact with the canvas. Repeat this but don’t overdo it.
Well done!
Below are some extra notes about how to improvise with your materials.
Surface: 6” x 6” or 15cm x 15cm
- Grey cardboard (the thickest piece you can find) You can paint straight onto it without a gesso undercoat. It is quite absorbent but dark colours look really velvety.
- !00% cotton paper: Masking tape it to a board or a file cover. Use masking tape all round.
- Gesso it (see below
- MDF board: Gesso as for white paper. If it is too silky, sand it lightly and scratchily.
- Coarse canvas: You can masking tape it to board
or you can glue it onto board with PVA. Use a needle and strong cotton like
embroidery thread to stretch the edges by ‘lacing it at the back’
Google: How to lace embroidery. https://annascottembroidery.blogspot.com/2013/01/lacing-embroidery.html?m=0 - A ready prepared canvas.
Surface: 6” x 6” or 15cm x 15cm
- Grey cardboard (the thickest piece you can find) You can paint straight onto it without a gesso undercoat. It is quite absorbent but dark colours look really velvety.
- !00% cotton paper: Masking tape it to a board or a file cover. Use masking tape all round.
- Gesso it (see below
- MDF board: Gesso as for white paper. If it is too silky, sand it lightly and scratchily.
- Coarse canvas: You can masking tape it to board
or you can glue it onto board with PVA. Use a needle and strong cotton like
embroidery thread to stretch the edges by ‘lacing it at the back’
Google: How to lace embroidery. https://annascottembroidery.blogspot.com/2013/01/lacing-embroidery.html?m=0 - A ready prepared canvas.
Gesso
Most surfaces are primed with white gesso to prepare them for painting.
- Gesso can be bought ready made.
- You can use a water based white emulsion. The cheaper ones are better as they will have more lime in them.
- Annie Sloan paints are great as they have chalk in them. Chalk is absorbent and gives the paint ‘tooth’.
- Pure Acrylic paint is best with whiting (lime) or ground chalk added, in a ration of 1part chalk to 4 parts acrylic.
- PVA Glue can be watered down slightly and painted over the surface. If its too smooth add a little bit of Polyfilla and do another layer.
Brushes
Ideally you need a half inch flat or filbert brush made of hog’s hair. This gives a ‘rough’ painterly mark. Most beginners struggle with the idea of roughness because they want to paint ‘neatly’
A fine brush is good for the finishing.
- Hogs hair brushes: My students use Handover Series 314 #6
(about ½“) - For the initial drawing any cheap round brush about #6 will do.
- Glue brushes may work.
- Hardware paint brushes are alright, although these tend not to be flat enough.
- Nylon brushes will give a smoother result but can work.
- For the fine brush detail at the end, if you don’t have a small fine one, use a toothpick for the onion roots and a feather for the thin lines. Cave painters used to use feathers.
Oil paints
You can mix and match brands. However, the really cheap ones are rather nasty with cheap pigment and lots of filler.
Dark Brown: Burnt umber; Reddish Brown: Burnt Sienna or Venetian Red, Yellow ochre, Titanium White, (Flake white and Zinc white are useable but toxic) any yellow, any darkish blue like Ultramarine or Phthalo Blue.
Medium
This is used to thin the paint and to speed the drying of it. It is a resin.
- Liquin made by Winsor and Newton
- Alkyd Flow by Daler Rowney
- Galkyd by Gamblin (needs to be mixed 50:50 with Gamsol by Gamblin)
- Traditionally, artists used Refined Linseed oil and white spirits mixed about 70:30 but this slows the drying a lot.
- At a push you can use cooking oil. This colours the paint in time, but with an i=onion it should not matter too much.
White Spirits
You can use ordinary White Spirits to clean your brushes, but this is very toxic and you inhale it. Low toxic spirits are available and I do most of my initial cleaning with ordinary cooking oil then finish up with low odour white spirits.
- Sansodor by Winsor and Newton
- Low Odour thinners by Daler Rowney
- Gamsol by Gamblin
Lin Kerr has taught art in all mediums to all ages for many years, but in the last few years has been teaching mostly oil painting in her studio in Oxfordshire. She caters for beginners, intermediate students and artists who would like to work in a group.
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