Many people have a rather contradictory attitude to contemporary art, therefore, everything that was created after the 19th century causes a certain skepticism - the majority still gravitate towards more classical forms than Malevich's Black Square and complex installations. However, modern oil painting is not always paint spilled on canvas; it can inherit the traditions of academic painting, and at the same time retain the atmosphere of the 21st century.

Modern oil painting

Among the huge number of contemporary artists, there are many really talented authors who paint in oils, whose paintings admire even harsh critics. We have selected ten noteworthy names whose works should not leave viewers indifferent.

Valentin Gubarev

Valentin Gubarev is an artist with a strong personality and an unusual vision of the world.

Paradoxically, he chooses the themes, plots and images of his works in a rather banal way, from everyday life. They do not look like the masterpieces of Russian painting, but captivate with their charming simplicity.

The power of these paintings lies in the fact that all subjects painted on them with oil after viewing look like some old acquaintances, guys from our yard. Such oil painting can be viewed indefinitely, penetrating into this strange but very curious world.

The characters of Gubarev's paintings are familiar to everyone: they are either us or our neighbors, but, in general, this is our past and present society, seen through the lens of healthy humor, some irony, nostalgia for funny times.

Jeremy Mann

In his creative endeavors, Mann strives to portray his city, San Francisco, and fill these pictures with drama, mood and character.

It brings a unique atmosphere and dynamics to the urban surroundings. Many of the artist's works are inspired by the rain and wet sidewalk reflecting street lights and neon signs.

Mann paints his works in oil on wood panels using different techniques: he paints surfaces with stains, erases paint with a solvent, applies sweeping ink strokes to the canvas, and always provides his painting with harmonious and colorful shades.

Gerhard Gluck

Cartoonist Gerhard Gluck is perhaps Germany's brightest and most skillful middle-class satirist. The artist's style has already become recognizable - cartoons and other works of Gluck are known throughout Germany and not only. His characters are stocky Europeans, with faces without a pronounced chin. They are all depicted in the stories of their daily lives.

"This was the first time Brochards ordered something online."

"The daily routine of Gioconda"

Before becoming an artist, Gluck worked as a school drawing teacher. One day one of his friends suggested that he send sketches to a couple of some newspapers. As a result, Gluck received a positive response from one of them, quit his job at school and continued his activity exclusively as a cartoonist.

"Andre would gladly feed the fish, but he feared the consequences."

All of Gluck's caricatures, although they reveal various aspects of human nature, and sometimes not the most positive, but this funny oil painting cannot be called evil.

Laurent Parsellier

The obvious talent of Laurent Parsellier manifested itself during his studies at the School of Arts, after the publication of several of his art albums entitled "Strange World".

His popularity spread even more when he won a street painting competition. Fans loved him for his unique style and easy way of painting in oil.

Laurent's works combine a complex color composition and a huge amount of light. Parsellier prefers to draw his painting in a realistic manner, because, according to him, everyone can guess what kind of place is depicted in the picture.

Kevin Sloane

Kevin Sloan is an American artist whose oil painting can be called modern realism. Kevin himself explains it as a reality with a catch.

The artist's paintings will really take you to some other, magical world. The author loves to use symbolism, poetic metaphors and allegories in his paintings, trying to convey the wonders of the natural world and its abundance.

The artist has been painting in oils since high school, and still, 37 years later, it remains his main passion.

Kevin loves drawing animals the most. As he says, they give him more freedom to choose who and how to draw than in the case of people, and provide an opportunity to better focus on the story that he lays in the basis of the painting.

Richard Estes

Initially, Estes was interested in traditional academic painting, but then he began to paint in the genre of photorealism, because he always wanted to learn how to display reality on the canvas as fully as possible. However, in the artist's paintings, reality appears to be idealized, along with perfect forms, clear lines and a verified composition.

Estes's favorite theme was cityscapes, seeing which, you begin to doubt whether it is really a painting in front of you, and not a photograph.

Modern paintings in this genre have become very popular among connoisseurs of painting of the XXI century.

Oil painting: landscapes and still lifes

In modern painting, in addition to portraits, genres such as landscape and still life are especially popular. We invite you to pay attention to the following names of contemporary artists performing oil paintings in these genres.

Dmitry Annenkov

Dmitry Annenkov seems to be able to draw any object in such a way that the viewer himself will look at it with different eyes. Not a single detail is hidden from the keen eye of this Russian artist.

He often draws the simplest and most banal, everyday and antique objects, endowing each of them with its own unique character - as if a soul appears in them. At the same time, they look so vivid and realistic that you want to reach out and get them out of the picture. Dmitry is a true master of such a genre of painting as still life.

Now Dmitry is collaborating with various galleries around the world, including from countries such as the United States, Norway and France.

Justina Kopanya

A Polish artist who paints in oil paintings amazing in their volume and depth, and all thanks to a special original technique.

Despite the sweeping and expressiveness of the works, seascapes do not lose the transparency of the water and the lightness of the sails, and even vice versa - they attract with their voluminous texture, which you want to feel by touch.

Justina says that the main task of her paintings is to convey atmosphere, not realism, and asks to perceive her oil painting as fragments of memories.

Despite the fact that a variety of landscapes prevail among her works, she considers people to be her main inspiration.

Xing-Yao Tsen

This young artist, originally from Taiwan, started painting when he was ten years old. Now he is twenty-nine, and he has his own style, painting of Xing-Yao Tsen is recognizable both by major art magazines and respectable art galleries.

The artist most often paints the cityscapes of San Francisco, where he graduated from the Academy of Arts with a bachelor's degree.

He performs his works in oil in a unique "floating" manner - some believe that because of this technique his oil works can be confused with watercolors. Xing-Yao Tsen considers sunset and sunrise hours to be the best time to create landscapes.

Pedro Campos

Another fan of photorealism is Pedro Campos, a Spanish painter from Madrid. This oil painting is easy to confuse with photography, but who would have thought! One way or another, Pedro's canvases delight the viewers with indescribable delight.

In painting of different genres - still life, landscape, portrait - the composition consists of different plans. Even if it is a simple portrait - all the same, the image will consist of at least two plans - the background and the human figure. But if we talk about spatial plans in a landscape, then I must say that a lot depends on them, because a landscape is, first of all, space. Even if it is a forest thicket, different plans will also be visible in it - tree trunks in front, behind, in the distance, etc. Therefore, in this painting lesson, we will discuss how you can convey spatial plans in a landscape. I will paint birch trees by the lake. The technique of execution is oil painting. Using this work as an example, you can follow what techniques artists use to convey space. So, let's begin.

1. Breakdown into plans.

We divide the depicted view into conditional plans: first, second, third ... for example, the trees in front are the foreground. Glade further - the second. The forest strip near the horizon is the third, and so on. The number of spatial plans can be arbitrary. However, you shouldn't do too many of them.

2. Linear perspective.

In accordance with the laws of linear perspective, all objects decrease in size with distance. This means that the trunks of birches in the foreground will be larger than the trunks of the same birches, but in the background. In the third plane, the entire set of trees merges into one strip of forest: individual trees are generalized into a single mass of forest.

Individual leaves of trees in the foreground are more noticeable than foliage in the background. On the trees in front, you can even write separate leaves. But you should not get carried away with such detailing, since visually all the leaves are combined into groups, even in the foreground. But in the distance, such a generalization will manifest itself more strongly and the further the more. Therefore, I boldly generalize the greenery of birches of the second plan and paint through spots.

3. Aerial perspective.

As you move away from the viewer, the objects of the landscape not only decrease in size, but also become less clear, less contrasting. This is called aerial perspective. There is an air mass between the viewer and the distant object. It changes the appearance of the object. The silhouettes seem to become more muddy. At a distance of 30 meters, this is not very noticeable. But at a distance of 3-5 kilometers, this effect plunges objects into the air so much that they can disappear like a fog. The aerial perspective makes dark silhouettes a little lighter and light silhouettes a little darker. It is better to remember this pattern, since you have to constantly deal with this when working on landscapes. And, of course, in different weather this phenomenon manifests itself in different ways. On a clear sunny day and in a wet cloudy time - the view will be different. But the aerial perspective will be noticeable in both cases, just with different strengths.

In addition to the physical laws of nature, the aforementioned effect is also needed for artistic reasons. To bring objects closer, they are made more contrasting, saturated in color, more clear. In order to "fall through" the silhouettes back, to make them less noticeable, artists remove the clearness of the contours, the contrast of the silhouettes, and reduce the color saturation. For example, the greenery of the grass, as you move towards the horizon, will be less "juicy". The silhouettes of the trees are less contrasting, and their outlines are more blurred and indistinct.

4. Techniques of oil painting in the transfer of linear and aerial perspective.

This is a very interesting topic. In order to create the illusion of reality, including the illusion of space, artists use a variety of methods. There are no clichés here, because each author intuitively can come up with his own technique of performance. Therefore, it is better to avoid stamps here. But some technical solutions have become so widespread that they have acquired the status of traditional ones.

• For example, in order to bring the trunk of a birch in the foreground closer, I paint with large pasty strokes of paint. Such "roughness" of execution makes the surface of the cortex more material, "tangible". It creates the feeling that we see the object in detail, as if it is close, right in front of us. This is an illusion. And it is with the help of illusion that the effect of reality is created in painting. For this manner of writing, you can use a palette knife. With its help, the paint layer becomes embossed, and this additionally gives the materiality of the depicted surface. The relief of the paint can also be obtained with a brush, the main thing is that the paint is pasty and in a sufficiently large amount.

• To make the objects of the second plan "go into the distance" we generalize them. Consequently, the manner of writing will be smoother, maybe even more blurry. That is, in the distance we can avoid details and the paint layer will be smoother and less embossed. This can be achieved by rubbing the paint mass with a brush and using less precise brush strokes.

• The third technique concerns the transparency and opacity of the paint layer. The fact is that when white is added to the color, it becomes, so to speak, "bleached", that is, the color loses its saturation and becomes "smoky". And since aerial perspective is the immersion of the silhouette in the haze of the air, the use of white in colorful mixtures is encouraged. In other words, in the foreground it is better to combine translucent layers of paint with pasty ones, and in the farthest plan it is better to use more opaque layers with the addition of white.

• The fourth technique concerns elaboration of details and generalization. I wrote about this above. But how do you technically write the details of the foreground and generalize the objects of the distant plans? First, using different brush sizes. A large brush is convenient to write broadly and generalize. And with small brushes it is more convenient to paint small details. Second, you can combine work with the edge of a flat brush and its plane. In the first case, the strokes become "sharp" and clear, and they can write the details of the first plans. In the second case, the wide plane of the brush allows you to lay the paint "wide and boldly", and also to generalize by rubbing the paint. That is, the brush can, as it were, "slide" over the paint layer, rubbing and generalizing unnecessary contours. Thirdly, you can use the tip of a palette knife or its edge to write small details sharply and clearly. The plane of the palette knife blade, on the other hand, spreads the paint wide. It can also be generalized, lubricated and rubbed. Therefore, masterfully rotating the palette knife, artists achieve very interesting effects. For example, alternating clear, sharp lines with wide and blurred spots.

5. Application of theory in practice. Phased progress of work on the canvas "Birches on the shore of the lake".

In this example, you can clearly see how to implement the above theory in practice. This work should not be taken as a template. Each artist has his own style, his own creative solutions. Finally, there are exceptions to every rule. Therefore, those patterns that are described in this article should be wisely taken into account in your work, relying on intuition, a creative idea, and understanding of the essence.

1) So, as usual, I make a light rough drawing of the future landscape with a brush.

2) I put underpainting with translucent paints.

3) I introduce whitewash and pasty paint into the background. As mentioned above, the long shot must be immersed in a haze of air mass. White in a colorful mixture helps with this. The tonality of the forest strip in the distance will be lighter than the trees near.

4) I start working with a palette knife.

5) The first plan is worked out textured. The paint layer is embossed. This emphasizes the unevenness of the ground and grass, so the surface becomes material.

6) The tree trunks vary in tone. Some will be brighter, coming forward into the sunlight. Some will be darker, going into the shadows. With this we create a kind of tunnel of trees. A space is formed within the forest.

7) We write small details. The closer the objects are, the more detailed they will be. They will also look sharper and more contrasty.

8) We bring the painting to its finished state.

Oil painting is one of the most interesting, multifaceted and durable painting techniques.

Paints

The main distinguishing feature of this type of painting is paint. They are produced by mixing vegetable oil (linseed or poppy seed) with colored pigments. Drying period for paints is very long (from 3 to 30 days). This property of this art material has its advantages and disadvantages.

Solvent

Thinner for oil paints turpentine or white spirit. Since these substances have a very pungent odor, purified, odorless solvents are now available in art stores. Often, a tee (a mixture of linseed oil, turpentine and varnish) is used to dilute oil paints.

Canvas

Oil paints are very resistant and durable. Most often, oil is painted on canvases stretched on wooden stretchers. Linen or cotton fabric covered with several layers of special primer is used as a canvas. You will learn about the features and rules for the selection of canvases on stretchers from the publication. They also paint with oil on a specially prepared base made of wood, fiberboard, plywood, silk, stone, paper, and even on plaster.

Easel

You will also need an easel - this is a very handy tool for working on canvas. They come in a variety of shapes, from large bulky and stable ones to small foldable and lightweight ones that are comfortable to travel with. For the amateur beginner, a folding tripod is enough.

Palette

The paints are mixed on a palette, which can be a varnished wooden board, glass surface, small canvas, or a smooth plastic surface. On the palette, you can mix different paints and get the colors and shades you need. You will learn how to do this from the publication. To make the palette serve you for a long time - keep it clean, a short instruction will tell you how to do it.

Instruments

In order to paint a picture with oil paints, they use various artistic tools: brushes, palette knife, rags, fingers or other experimental devices (blades, cellophane, roller, etc.).

Oil paintings are painted in one session - alla prima, or in several approaches.

Varnish

To protect the paint layer, such works are covered with a special varnish. Since the oil takes a long time to dry, it is best to do this 2-3 months after painting, depending on the thickness of the paint layer.