Farm scenes in paintings have been a part of American culture for decades. Farm settings are ideal for paintings because farm life offers a wealth of subject matter suitable for creating paintings that give off the warmth and charm intrinsic to many paintings created in oil. Farm settings also make a good starting point for beginning painters since they offer familiar subject matter and an array of stylistic possibilities. Learn how you can oil paint on your own and create paintings that you can display with pride in your home.
Instructions
1. Sketch your subject matter first. It isn't necessary, but many painters will do a rough sketch just to lay out the painting. You can work from a reference photo and reproduce it on your canvas, or just use the photo to give you compositional ideas.
2. Start at the top of the canvas with light blue oil paint and layer the paint on the canvas to create the base for your sky. Bring the sky all the way down to where your horizon will be.
3. Clean your brush and pick up some white oil paint. Brush this paint onto the blue to create puffball clouds. Your blue paint will still be wet, so dabbing white paint onto the canvas will bring the two colors together and lighten the area for your clouds.
4. Use a medium brush dipped in green oil paint. Layer the green onto your canvas at your horizon and bring it across the canvas and all the way down to the bottom edge. While the green is still wet, use a smaller brush to work in strokes of brown. This will give your grass a more realistic coloring and help give it definition.
5. Use black oil paint to to add a well to lower left portion of your canvas. Form just the rough shape of the well with a medium brush, leaving the edges jagged to create a stone well look, then use a smaller brush to highlight the black with touches of gray and white paint. These touches layered on top of the black paint will create shadow and texture on your well.
6. Add a barn to the right side of your canvas. A few strokes are all you need to shape the barn. Two strokes down to create the borders for the front of the barn and one horizontal stroke for the roof are all you need. Paint the barn red, then add strokes of brown to darken the red and bring out the look of a worn-with-age barn. Use a thin brush to add bales of hay in the loft. You can do this with yellow paint, but add a few light strokes of black to bring out definition.
7. Add an old tractor to the scene to complete it. Don't worry about detail. Use a couple of big circles in black paint for wheels and brush the general shape of a tractor around the wheels. The definition won't be there close up, but stepping back to look at the painting will give the illusion of a well-defined piece that comes together.
