I use canvas, MDF or medium hard-board with two coatings of Gesso paste and a mixed ground of Undercoat White plus Burnt Sienna and French Ultramarine, for commissions, canvas. I lay in designs by "ragging out" negative space on an underpainting to establish the main accents. In an alternative approach I use a soft plastic crafts tube containing Yellow Ochre acrylic paint which dries rapidly and establishes the dark passages and the middle tones.

I try to get a pastel effect by using "cryla" paints with no medium using a "siccative" or drying gel such as Liquin Impasto. The next stage is then ready within a day or two.

Acrylics used as oils are ideal for sketching and as underpainting, or in their own right. They have the advantage of rapid drying stored in a home-made "stay-wet" palette of shallow plastic luncheon box, and kept wet by blotting paper covered with semi-permeable paper.

To see more oil paintings .......