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Building Textured layers with cold wax

Marina Teding van Berkhout
June 7, 2025

Texture and depth

Are you an artist looking to add depth to your paintings? Cold wax and oil painting can open up a world of creative possibilities! In my new YouTube video I show you how I build up my layers using a palette knife and a bowl scraper to create textured art and what I call a ‘busy background’. Whether you paint figurative like me or abstract, you can use this cold wax technique to create beautiful layered paintings.

When painting in cold wax medium and oils, I always start with these base layers before I add a figure or a face in my paintings. My paintings are becoming more and more 'mixed media' since I often add pan pastels, soft pastels, inks, neo colour II's but my first layers are always built up like this.

The colours that I used in the video:

Base layer 1

Permanent Mauve (Daler Rowney)

Prussian Blue (Daler Rowney)


Base layer 2

Bright Yellow Green (Sennelier)

Intense Turquoise (Charvin)

Top layer

Raw Sienna (Rembrandt)

Chinese Orange (Gamblin)

Quinadrone Red (Gamblin)

Mixed with

Burnt Umber (Rembrandt)

Titanium Buff (Daler Rowney)

Titanium White (Daler Rowney)


The process is all about experimentation and allowing your creativity to flourish. So, grab your tools and start building textures!

My Moto:

Explore, experiment and have fun!


I hope that you liked the tutorial! If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel, please do so to get notifications of future videos! 🔔  

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Paint with me - An Easy Abstract Landscape Tutorial
Paint with me - An Easy Abstract Landscape Tutorial
Marina Teding van Berkhout

Marina Teding van Berkhout

Dutch artist based in the South of France, passionate about cold wax painting and helping others discover the magic of textured art.

Learn more about Marina