As with most things, an oil painting begins with good planning, and the art graceful oil painting is the same. Start with plenty of good brushes, #1 to #10 (round kolinsky brushes are a good choice) together with one or two #20 brushes to cover larger areas, and not forgetting turpentine to wash the brushes afterwards.

The palette should be of hard, dark wood, wiped beforehand with linseed oil.

The paint itself should be of good quality and of the basic colour range, making sure that all paints are compatible. Again, planning is needed here as you may need to purchase any specific colours according to the subject of your painting. The paint is a vital ingredient, obviously, and as with most things, you get what you pay for. Do not use cheaper paint for things they are not capable of doing; realise their limitations. If you intend to use thick paint and bold colours, then cheaper paint can be a practical alternative. However, with cheaper paint, apart from using cheaper pigments, the pigment is not ground up so finely. The manufacturer may also use a base filler to bulk up the volume of the paint. This all means that the colour of the paint will fade over time, so the brighter colours may well be alright but the more subtle colours will suffer. Therefore, do not use them to mix the more subtle colours or for paintings that are intended to last.

The more expensive paints, on the other hand, have much greater tinting power. Therefore, when mixed with a white paint, which are usually inexpensive, they will go a lot further and so it is not quite as bad as it seems!

The canvas should be of a good quality, primed several times beforehand and ideally it should be rubbed afterwards with fine sandpaper, all for the purpose of covering and hiding the texture of the canvas.

To create a work of art, the painting itself should be planned out also. It can be either be drawn on the canvas initially, or drawn on separate paper and transferred to the canvas by carbon paper. Either way, it should be sketched very approximately to start with, making sure that the overall basic dimensions are in proportion, and then the increasingly finer details can be added.

The subject of the painting should be something close to your heart. Invariably, the more interest you have in a subject the more success you will achieve. Large areas of the background should be painted first, allowing sufficient time for drying in between coats. Some people tend to wipe the surface after each coat with half an onion in order for subsequent layers to be absorbed better. Foreground details and finer details are added last. A final coat of lacquer can also be added.

These are only some of the basics of creating an oil painting. Much can be learned by watching an expert at work, regardless of the topic, so you should make every effort to find a competent artist who can create a work of art, with flowing, graceful lines in his oil painting. But the internet is also an ideal place to gather a great deal of information about different oil painting techniques.