Oil Rub

[Ancient]

No its not a sensual massage...its a drawing technique! We're just learning it in my Illustration Media class this week. Its quite fun. And you use dern near everything on it: graphite, oils, acrylic, and colored pencils. This is my pic so far. (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v205/MSD3000/oil-rub-working.jpg) Its still got a bit more smoothing and blending to do for the final look. But its really nice looking so far...I just wished it scanned better. But its to be expected I guess, this technique relies heavely on your eye's particular way of translating mixed layers of color, something a scanner can't simulate. So just bare in mind it looks much better in person.

[HUnewearl_Meira]

It looks rather striking just as it is, scanner-mangled or not, Ancient. Good work!

[Relam]

Oh wow, I didn't expect seeing this. Nice work, it reminds me that I should head back to the land of physical art instead of digital every so often.

[Sord]

woah, very nice. looks almost impressionist. though the thing does look like some of the color was reduced to pixel-sharp shapes at a close look. Eh well, i wonder when high quality scanners will become cheap for the mainstream.

[AzureBlaze]

This technique looks interesting.
It seems versatile too, that you can use it with that bunch of different media. How do you do it? Is it very hard? Is it fun?

[Ancient]

Hey, sorry for the slow response...PSU and all http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif
Its not a hard technique at all, just a little...varied.
You'll need:
graphite pencils
paper
artist tape
Krylon Workable Fixative Spray
Ultramarine blue Acrylic paint (optional)
Burnt Sienna Oil Paint
some paper towels
and brand new kneeded eraser
colored pencils
You start with a fully rendered graphite drawing, all shading and things should be done. And you should be working on some pretty thick drawing board...Strathmore 500 cold-press is good. Tape off the border area (to keep the edges neat for the next couple steps).
First, spray your drawing with Krylon workable fixative, to seal in the graphite. The oil paint will eat through any other type of sealant, so it has to be that type. Spray it and let it dry 4-6 times (outdoors if you value your brain cells) or untill you can rub the drawing with your finger and not have any graphite come off.
Optional: if you want to get some really dark darks (and its good to) without having to work the hell out of your pencil, you can use acrylic paint after you've sealed the graphite drawing. Use Ultra-marine blue over what you want to be the very darkest parts of your drawing. You dont have to use black, because once you put the oil paint down over it it will appear black, but an energised black and not the usual lifless black you would get otherwise. Make suer to use Ultra-marine blue though. Also you dont have to seal the acrylic before the oil rub, nothing is gonna move acrylic once its dry.
And now comes the fun part! Get a tube of Burnt Sienna oil paint (burnt Umber is too dark), and squeeze a glob out onto a makeshift pallete (a piece of paper will do just fine). Get a paper towel, and dab it into the paint, then start to rub it onto the painting. You want the paint to be farely translucent, but dont rub too hard. Your just rubbing paint not starting a fire...Now, once you've got the paint on nice and even, you've got about an hour to do the next step.
Take a kneaded eraser (brand new is best, cause you arnt gonna be uing this eraser on any drawings afterwards cause of the oil, and you don't want any crud from an old eraser getting in the paint), and start erasing out the highlights. That's right, you're erasing paint. Its best to pull out the whitest areas first while the paint is still wet and you can rub a bunch off. And as it drys you can start start pulling out the halftones and milder highlights. When your done it should look very much like an old brown photograph.
Once the oil paint is fully dry, (anywhere from 1-3 days) you can start in with the colored pencils. Start very light. The underlying oil paint, and graphite drawing will be doing most of the work for your shading. Actually, its best to only use colors that have a lot of white in them, like pastels. And Prismacolors are the best brand as usual. My drawing has only used white, and a few various pastels to get the what it has. If you do need to darken things a bit though, once again an Ultramarine Blue pencil will work, or Burnt Umber for a more nuetral dark. Just keep working the colors untill you like what you see, and white is very good for blending things smoothly.
Whew, thats a lot of explanation...but its actually very simple when you see it done, or do it yourself. It might seem like a lot more trouble that just simply drawing in colored pencel from the start, but the difference is that you are free to work almost entirely on just getting the color right at the end. Instead of trying to get the values and shading and everything right while coloring normally.

[Jehosaphaty]

interesting stuff ancient, I really like the description. And you're right, the fixative will also blow the hell out of your brains and make you go all woozy if you're not venalated.

[Leviathan]

Thats pretty nice. Great job. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif