Alternative Process to Oil Painting

My Alternative to oil painting by Merrill Kazanjian- Recently, I have made a lot of videos teaching about the techniques that I use to make art. But, for once, I want to talk to you about choices that I made with my own art. The first medium that I was proficient in was oil painting. But after college ended, I was too drained to paint after I got home from a day of work. The setup and clean up of paints took as long as the process of painting and the drying time was way too slow for my needs. I estimate that I painted only once or twice per week for about three hours per day and I only produced about two finished paintings per year. I did this for six years.

I slowly started dabbling with mixed media art. What you are seeing now is a process that I have worked out over the past 2 years for the past two years. This process allows me to have results similar to oil paintings, done in one day rather than six months. I even incorporate oil paint in to one of the steps.

Here it is:
1.) Pencil Drawing
2.) Illustration Markers (prismacolor, Ad, Decocolor)
3.) Color Pencil
4.) Thin Layer of Oil Paint
5.) Digital Additions (Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro)

I use this process to make my characters. Over the last 2 years I have made over 1500 characters. I scan them and save them as PNG files and I use them over and over in my artwork. PNG files stand for Portable Network Graphic and they are basically a filetype that works like a sticker. Stay tuned until the end of the video and I will show you what I mean. Contact me through my website merrillk.com or leave me a youtube comment and I will be sure to get back to you.
Category: Education