Oil Painting Portraits
By Kevin F. Gold
Oil paintings are an integral part of art history. Famous artists have immortalized a number of topics into oil paintings that are now scattered the world over in museums, churches, and as part of private collections. The history of oil painting is rich and diverse. Through time, each artist has added a particular style to an earlier accomplishment that influenced later oil painters for better oil paintings.

Oil has also evolved through time. Originally done on surfaces using pigments that are mixed with different oils for varying drying times and intensities, oil used in paintings have now been developed to remain liquid until heated. This minimizes clean-ups that makes oil paintings easier to clean, maintain and manage, which accounts for their increased popularity.

These days, one can have oil paintings made using photos or pictures rather than sitting for a painter or having a painter stay in a particular location to paint a landscape or setting. Oil paintings from photos are considered very classy, timeless and highly personalized, not only as gifts but as personal mementoes that can be passed from one generation to the next. Anyone or anything can be models of oil paintings that can be immortalized and, may be even set out as family heirlooms.

Oil paintings are enjoyed for their beauty; the careful combination of colors, lines, forms and the arrangement of parts. They appeal to the senses and in most cases, even leave a lasting imprint in our memories. Especially so if oil paintings describe something or someone familiar to our memories: our loved ones, a precious moment in time, a favorite possession, a place worth going back to, in short, just about anything unforgettable. The enjoyment that one gets from looking

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