I’m now spending a few days in charge here while Stephen gets on with some particularly difficult painting plus puts the finishing touches to a documentary we’ve made.

Anyway, yesterday I spent a morning painting with oil. And what a calm and happy time it’s been. Not that it isn’t when I’m working with water. It’s just that, with oil, you can pretty much start and stop whenever you want.

And – rather than having a fixed idea of the effect you definitely want to achieve (as is the case with water) – you have the time to push the oil paint here and there, and reflect on what looks best, changing it as you see fit.

So here are some key points about working with oil on top of unfired water-based paint.

If you’re already a “convert”, these tips will come as a handy reminder.

And if you’re new to oil, they’ll show you its amazing potential.

So I’ll start off with 5 tips today, then we’ll continue the series the day-after-tomorrow (Wednesday) and see how we get on.