Oil painting is a wonderful and rewarding way to paint- the colors are marvelous and rich, the paint itself has good body and an infinite number of ways in which it can be worked, and the basics can be mastered fairly quickly.

First off, painting classes and workshops are a wonderful way to learn new techniques and practices, and to get constructive criticism on your work. However, if the only time you work on your artwork is at your once-a-week class it is going to be difficult to improve, and that can be frustrating.

(A painting class is probably going to be one to three times a week, with you choosing a project or having one assigned to you, and group critiques scheduled regularly. A workshop is probably going to be a one or two day event, with the teacher offering their expertise in an intensive group lesson where you listen to them lecture and watch them demonstrate, and then, sometimes at least, create something using their techniques and under their supervision. Either type of lesson is valid and can be wonderfully informative.)

To work in oils on your own, you will need to be willing to commit some time to it, a small area in which to work, and materials.

There are good ways to start off small and inexpensive.

Your brushes need to be suited to oil paint- watercolor brushes, for instance, will lose their bristles all over your canvas if you try to oil paint with them. Get at least two, preferably 3-5 brushes of different sizes and shapes. You could also use disposable foam brushes, rags, your fingers (provided you are wearing gloves), or a palette knife. Along with that, odorless paint thinner, and a can or jar with a suspended screen for scrubbing out your brushes is ideal, along with a rag and extra paint thinner for cleaning other paint tools will be useful.

The paints themselves are not cheap. To start off, I would recommend getting one of those little sets that include about ten tubes of oil paint, and then buying a couple of other colors in larger tubes- definitely a white, probably a black, and then the primaries (cyan, magenta, and yellow) if you want to go a little farther. The quinacridone colors are a personal favorite, the most beautiful colors I've ever seen, but they can get expensive, and the initial batch of paint should help you get a feel for your color preferences, and for how fast you will use different colors.

So far as how you use the colors- there is no right or wrong way. There is a story about Sargent going

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