It’s frustrating and can make you want to abandon the whole thing. Yet, there is hope. You can fix your mistakes in oil and acrylic paintings both. Simply step back, take a deep breath, and follow these tips.
Determine the Best Approach
Before you begin to fix your painting mistakes, it is important to look at the problem area as objectively as possible. This may mean that you need to take a break for a while. Go out for a walk, have a cup of coffee, or simply call it a night and look at it with new eyes in the morning. We can often get emotionally involved in our paintings, and if something isn’t going right, it only builds up our frustration. That can lead us to do things to try and fix it without thinking clearly. The “fix” may only compound the problem. For instance, you may be tempted to just paint over a shadow that’s all wrong. Yet, if you do not allow black or deep-tinted paints to dry before applying white, the color will bleed through. It can create an endless cycle and result in an unnecessary buildup of paint that doesn’t match the rest of the painting. Instead of looking for the quick fix, ask yourself this:
Is the paint still wet or has it already dried?Do I have the patience to deal with it while it’s still wet, or should I just walk away and deal with later?
Whether your paint is wet or dry, acrylic or oil, you can remove your mistakes and begin with a white background in that area. You should, however, keep in mind that as you build up, remove, and build up paint again, you may lose some of the “tooth,” or original texture, of your substrate. This is particularly important when working with canvas if the rest of your painting is thin enough to show that texture. It may not be noticeable, but you should be aware that it could become an issue.
How to Correct Painting Mistakes
Your best friend when it comes to painting out your mistakes is a tube of titanium white. This extremely opaque, warm white will cover any color, even blacks, and other deep pigments when applied in a few thin coats. Many artists make the mistake of adding a single coat of titanium white, then continuing on with their painting. This may cause any new pigments you apply to be tinted by the paint under your cover-up, and the colors will not be as true as you wish them to be. You should apply at least two thin coats of titanium white, and the second coat should be applied only after the first is dry. This will give you a clean, white base to begin painting on after it has dried. Do check that you are indeed using titanium white and not zinc white, which is more transparent. If the tube says “mixing white” or similar, check the label information to see which white is in it. Think of titanium white as the painter’s eraser. First, however, you need to remove any texture, impasto, or paint ridges, and try as much as possible to get back to the original texture of your painting.
If Your Paint Is Still Wet
Oils do not dry as fast as acrylics, so these techniques may work best with those paints. Yet, if you catch your acrylic mistake quickly enough, the fixes here may still work. Tonking is another technique used with oil painting. It is often used to add texture to thick paints but works to remove painting mistakes as well.
If Your Paint Is Dry
You will use this dry-paint technique most often with acrylics because of the speed at which that paint dries, but it can be used for dry oils as well.
