You will need the following materials
acrylic paints and gesso
oil paints
a prestretched canvas
brushes
palette
turpentine
"damar" varnish
stand oil
small jars with lids
First layer- Gesso and Acrylic underpainting
I work out the initial idea with water-based paint because there is slightly less smell and you know the paint will dry overnight. Build up the basic composition using very thick water-based paint, acrylic colours mixed into thick gesso. I've even used painter's caulk to get the paint really thick.
Don't paint at random, but try to break up repetitive patterns while mixing just a little colour here and there into the white underpainting. You can scratch into the paint to sculpt surface textures and details. Let the image come out on its own to a certain degree by just playing with the paint and watching what happens. Let this layer dry over night.
Second layer - oil paint and turpentine
Once you start using the oil paints over the acrylic and gesso layer, you can't paint acrylic back over oils.
Using a mixture of turpentine with just a tiny amount of damar varnish, try drawing with washes of transparent earth tones, allowing color to get thicker and darker in the cracks and crevasses of the underpainting's stucco-like texture. With a rag one can gently buff the surfaces of the texture, revealing the colors underneath, while allowing some color to stay in the cracks. The natural forms of paint applied with variety of motion will sometimes suggest strikingly naturalistic forms, almost at random.
Third layer
With more and more overpainting over time, you must add more oil to the layers as you go. Just add slightly more stand oil and varnish, with a 4 to 1 ratio of oil to varnish, and less and less turpentine as you go, hence the practice of painting "fat-over-lean". This is important to the stability of the painting's structure.
