Oil Painting Medic is a practical guide to oil painting techniques, materials and troubleshooting. Begin with Home or Start Here. Browse my Artbooks and What’s Trending. With copious articles covering portraiture, landscapes, still life, and problem solving, this blog helps artists improve technique and overcome challenges. Navigate by theme in the sidebar.

The Ultimate Oil Painting Solution for Landscape Art, Portraiture and Still Life Hardback

This large oil painting guide, previously available only on Kindle is now available as hardback. This large art book comprises an amalgam of 3 of my titles, tackling difficulties with landscape painting, portraiture and still life art, hence its title; the Ultimate Oil Painting Solution for Landscape Art, Portraiture and Still life.

Large Book on Oil Painting Solutions


The Ultimate Oil Painting Solution by Rachel Shirley
Inspired by this blog to write solutions to common ‘peeves’ with oil painting, I wrote 3 art guides, tackling problems associated with various areas of oil painting. Separately, these art guides were entitled: Why do My Clouds Look Like Cotton Wool? (tackling landscape painting peeves); Why do My Skin Tones Look Lifeless? (portrait painting peeves) and Why do my Ellipses Look Like Doughnuts? (still life painting peeves).

Art Book in Paperback


The Ultimate Oil Painting Solution remained available only on Kindle for a while because of its size. But since creating a series of large edition art books, decided to do the same with this book amalgam. This new book measures a generous 10x8in, meaning its numerous and complex elements can be formatted in such a way that the book becomes viable as a hardback. Despite being quite big in dimensions, this art book still possesses a considerable page count of 234; quite a lot for its genre.

Solutions for Painting

In total, there are an incredible 78 chapters tacking various peeves with suggested solutions. There are also step by step guides on painting subject matter related to each painting area.

The peeves selected are the sort of problems that tend to recur in my art classes. Such difficulties are many and varied, but the list tackled in my book include: drawing ellipses, painting water, portrait photography, measuring tones, darkening the colour of snow, painting clouds, painting noses, drawing foreshortened objects, painting moisture on fruit, calculating vanishing points, darkening pale colours, painting highlights in hair. And much, much more. See screenshots below showing several pages within to get an idea of how the interior of this colourful book looks.
Preview of the Ultimate Oil Painting Solution
The Ultimate Oil Painting Solution preview

The Foundations of Painting


Key chapters explain important matters relating to art and which form the foundations to painting, which are: guide to art materials, negative space, colour theory, the golden section, setting up a composition, drawing modes, painting out of doors, types of gessoes, painting on a budget, measuring tones, drawing ellipses, complementary colours, pigments needed for skin colours. And much, much more.

This book’s intention is find a ‘cure’ for a particular issue and help the artist move forward in future painting practice. This will help spur creativity and growing confidence in the future.

Book to Help Improve in Art


Inside view of artbook by Rachel Shirley
Guide to Oil Painting Peeves by Rachel Shirley
The Ultimate Oil Painting Solution for Landscape Art, Portraiture and Still Life has been specially formatted for hardback and is crammed with colour illustrations, paintings in progress and diagrams. There are also almost 78,000 words within. As can be seen from the screenshots, every page is crammed with useful information and colour pictures, providing a visual feast as well as invaluable advice.

The 3 books that make up this amalgam can be purchased separately if interested in one subject area. And every book is available as Kindle. Select art books are also available in pocket sized editions of 8.5inx5.5in.

More Art Books by Rachel Shirley

Dedicated page to art books by Rachel Shirley
How do I make oil painting cheaper?

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