I'm teaching a student today a private lesson. I'm going to talk about the Rub Out Method in painting. These are a couple of photos of a small study I did for a larger painting.  

          • Start with an underdrawing of varied detail or just draw freehand
          • Pull paint off the canvas with brushes, cloth, q-tips, anything that works
          • Leave paint in areas that you want the darkest values
          • Usually it is done in umbers or siennas

This helps in numerous ways

          • Helps establish values before color
          • Creates an underpainting to "follow" when adding additional paint
          • Without a lot of invested time/supplies a composition can be established and re-worked

Here is another example Oil Painting Studies • I Love You Painting 

Here is a series of photos from an oil painting study I did recently for a larger painting I'm doing later .
Painting title: I Love You.