Art work is a great way to express yourself!
Traditional oil painting techniques often begin with the artist sketching the figure onto the canvas with charcoal or a "clean" which is thinned paint. Oil paint can be mixed with turpentine, linseed oil, artist grade mineral spirits or other solvents to create a thinner, faster drying paint. Then the artist builds the figure in layers. When looking at original oil paintings, the carious traits of oil paint allow one to sense the choices the artist made as they applied the paint. For the viewer, the paint is still, but for the artist the oil paint is a liquid or semi-liquid and must be moved "onto" the painting.
Traditionally, paint was transferred to the painting surface using paint brushes but there are other methods, including using palette knives, rags, ect. Oil paint dries by oxidation, not evaporation and is usually dry to the touch in a day to two weeks! Art conservators do not consider an oil painting completely dry until is it 60-80 years old.
(information taken from wikipedia.org)
