Big bristle brushes and roughly primed canvas are not the only materials to use for painting.
I've always experimented with painting on surfaces that are smoother than your average commercial canvas, which is usually quite rough to start with and then primed to be textured like coarse sandpaper. But now that lead oil primer is unobtainable in this country, I've started experimenting with using high-quality sandable gesso (made by the Golden company) applying it to masonite, which is in itself very smooth, unlike plywood.
Just lately, I've also come to wonder if soft hair brushes just might be better suited to my taste and style than the usual bristle brush.
These are things I did not learn at art school, nor from any painting teacher, but only came upon by considering old paintings, reading old books on art techniques and materials and by reading artists' forums on the net.
Personally I find the look of many modern oils to be quite unpleasant--the thick clumsy-looking brushstrokes, the chalky matteness and opacity of the colour and the general dullness produced by working with toothpaste-textured paint, often thinned with turps and painted onto rough surfaces with coarse-haired, large brushes.
A certain way of painting or painting style is imposed on the artist by these materials. I find painting this way both difficult and sensually unpleasant. For periods of time it has put me off painting--both the doing of and appreciation of the efforts of others. Frequently at exhibitions I find myself thinking 'yuk' when I look at oil paintings--even when they are well done.
I'm currently experimenting with using softer haired brushes, such as sable, mongoose, 'fitch' hair and synthetic versions of natural soft hair.
In addition I find that not using solvent excessively or exclusively as a thinner, but instead using a medium that is part solvent and part walnut oil helps to produce a thinner but smooth and still juicy-looking consistency, suitable for painting with soft hair brushes.
I'm after a more transparent style, where the colour has a chance to sing against the bright white background. From recent reading, I've learnt that thick oil colour will never retain its brilliance--the very opacity dulls the colour, especially when combined with the inevitable yellowing of the linseed oil binder. Thinner layers of colour applied more transparently on a permanently white background however retain their luminosity for a very long time. This is why so many early tempera on bright white glue-chalk gessoed panel paintings have retained their amazing brightness, as well as the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites who likewise believed in using thin veils of colour on a white background.
Anyway, not everyone's style or talents are suited to the pervasive 'Big rough brushes are best' mantra that seems to have become ingrained in art teachers' thinking.
There are a million ways to paint but if we all use the same kind of materials, we are likely to end up with a similar look. Materials dictate style. Yes--I am a materialist. I've never gone along with the whole 'any materials will do--it's how you use them that matters' way of thinking.