Oil sketch or Oil study

An Oil sketch or oil study is an fine art work made chiefly in oil paints, and which is more abbreviated in managing than a completely finished work of art. Initially these were fashioned as introductory study or modelli, particularly so as to gain sanction for the design of a larger custom-built painting. They were also used as design for specialist in other media, such as printmaking or wall-hanging, to follow. Later they were formed as sovereign works, often with no thought of being stretched into a full-size picture.

The common medium for modelli was the sketch, but an oil sketch, even if made in a limited choice of colors, could better recommend the tone of the estimated work. For an artist with excellent technique, the fabrication of an oil sketch may be as fast as that of a drawing, and a lot of practitioners had splendid brush skills. In its speediness of finishing the oil sketch may be used not only to express progress and transient effects of light and color, its gestural nature may even symbolize a mimetic parallel to the act of the subject.