Oil paintings before 19th century were normally built up in layers. The first layer used to be blank, uniform field of thinned paint recognized as ground. The ground submissive the shiny white of the primer and offered a base of mild colors on that to build images. The shapes and objects in the oil painting reproduction were then gradually blocked in using different shades of white, along with gray or neutral green, brown and red. The appearing a lot of monochromatic light and dark were recognized as under painting. Forms were further defined using either solid paint or scumbles that are irregular, delicately applied layers of solid pigment, which could impart a variety of pictorial effects. In the last stage, transparent layers of pure colors known as glazes were used to inform luminosity, depth, and excellence to forms, and highlights were displayed with thick, textured patches of paint known as impastos.

Oil as a painting medium is documented since 11th century. The practice of easel painting with oil colors, on the other hand, stems straight from 15th-century tempera-painting methods. Basic improvements in the cleansing of linseed oil and other accessibility of volatile solvents soon after 1400 matching with a want for some other medium than pure egg-yolk tempera to match up with altering needs of the Renaissance. At first, oil paints and varnishes were been used to give shiny finish tempera panels, painted with their customary linear draftsmanship. The strictly luminous, jewel-like portraits of the 15th-century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck, for instance, were done this way.

In the 16th century, oil color appeared as the fundamental painting material in Venice. By the end of that century, Venetian artists had become expert in the exploitation of the essential uniqueness of oil painting, especially in their use of consecutive layers of glazes. Linen canvas, after a very long period of expansion, replaced wooden panels as the most in style support. One of the 17th-century masters of the oil painting technique was Velasquez, a Spanish painter in the Venetian tradition, that are extremely economical but edifying brushstrokes have often been emulated, particularly in portraiture.

Other fundamental influences on the methods of later easel painting are the smooth, finely painted, deliberately planned, tight styles of oil painting. A vast many admired works (e.g., those of Johannes Vermeer) were applied with smooth gradations and blends of tones to reach slyly modeled forms and delicate color variations.