L I V I N G
C R A F T A P A I N T E R’S P R O C E S S EDITION FOURTEEN:
TABLE OF CONTENTS AND TEXT SELECTIONS
T A D S P U R G E O N
Z O E T R O P E THIS MATERIAL IS COPYRIGHT © TAD SPURGEON - ,
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for small portions to be quoted in a review, no portion of this book may be reproduced in any way, shape, or form without the express written consent of the author.
Quotations from Oil Painting Techniques and Materials by Harold Speed, The Craftsman’s Handbook by Cennino d’Andrea Cennini, and Methods and Materials of Painting of the Great Schools and Masters by Sir Charles Eastlake used by permission from Dover Publications. Quotation from Novum Organum by Francis Bacon, translated and edited by Peter Urbach and John Gibson, by permission from Open Court Publishing Company.
Published in the United States by Zoetrope Cover, design and typography by Zoetrope Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania First edition May Fourteenth edition October
PAPERBACK ISBN - - - - With regard to authority, it is the greatest weakness to attribute infinite credit to particular authors, and to refuse his own prerogative to time, the author of all authors, and, therefore, of all authority. For, truth is rightly named the daughter of time, not of authority. It is not wonderful, therefore, if the bonds of antiquity, authority, and unanimity, have so enchained the power of man, that he is unable (as if bewitched) to become familiar with things themselves.
– Francis Bacon Novum Organum, TABLE OF CONTENTS
Formulas x Acknowledgments xiii Major Sources xiv To the Intrepid Reader xv
INTO THE LABYRINTH . The Frame of Reference . Older Practice . Wonder
CONCEPTS . A Mysterious Portal . The Creative Dialogue . In Plain Sight . Simplicity . Synthesis . Balance . Authenticity . The Long View . Process
ASPECTS . Nature . The Painter’s Art History . Scholarship . Criticism . Alberti’s Triad . Drawing . Water Mediums . The Transition to Paint . Photographs . Memory . Rough and Smooth . The Structure of Style . The Narrative Moment . Creative Tension . The Value Scale . Physical Scale . Composition . Rhythm . Brushwork . Edges . The Axioms
COLOUR . An Unruly Lexicon . The Quest for Dimension . The Logic of Light . Temperature
i . Observed and Mixed Colour . Colour Blocks . Contrast . Value and Temperature Relation . Chromatic Relativity . The Greek Key T. The Tetrachrmatkón . Transparent, Translucent, and Opaque . Axes of Differentiation . Colour Types . The Envelope . Spatial Convention Overview . Dimensional Scale . Colour Key . Theory and Practice . The Art of Black . The Worlds of Gray . Unity . The Grammar of Colour . Spatial Convention Chronology
MATERIALS . Time . Space . A Craft of One’s Own .. Types of Written Craft .. The Most Reliable Resource .. Supplies .. Notebook .. Tools .. Safe Practice .. Easel .. Palette .. Test Panels T. Paint & Medium Test Panel T. Incremental Test Panel .. Long-Term Technical Issues . Structure . Supports .. Stretchers .. Canvas ... Bulk Priming .. Paper ... Increasing Stability .. Paper Board .. Panels ... Hardboard ... Quality Plywood ... Fabric on Panel Techniques ... Unattached Fabric on Panel ... OMG Panels . Size Overview
ii . Grounds .. Commercial Grounds .. Relative Absorbency .. The Traditional Stone Dusts .. Stretched Canvas .. Glue Gesso ... Gypsum Gesso ... Chalk and Marble Dust Gesso ... Paradoxical Gesso ... Glue Gesso Techniques .. PVA Size and Ground .. Acrylic Size and Ground ... Acrylic or PVA Ground with Gypsum .. Methyl Cellulose Size and Ground ... Methyl Cellulose Stabilizer .. Oil Grounds ... The Imprimatura or Toned Ground . Brushes .. Brush Types .. Using Brushes .. The Brush Tip .. Brush Care .. Painting Knives . Oil Paint .. Commercial Paint T. Medium to Commercial Paint Ratios .. Handmade Paint .. Handmade Tempera ... Methyl Cellulose Tempera . Recommended Colours .. Primary Colours .. Secondary Colours ... Brown Pigment Nomenclature Issues .. Black .. Earth Colours .. Emulating Historic Pigments .. Traditional Extenders .. White Overview ... Titanium Alterations .. Lead White ... Traditional Lead White Variations ... The Transparentizing of Lead White ... Unwashed Lead White . The Oil T. Drying Rates of the Major Painting Oils .. Paint Film Overview .. Linseed Oil ... The Darkening Potential of Linseed Oil ... Causes of Darkening ... Prevention of Darkening .. Walnut Oil .. Hemp Oil
iii .. Poppy Oil .. Further Slow Drying Oils .. Further Quick Drying Oil . Refining the Oil .. The Colour of the Oil .. Organic Flax Oils .. Refining Procedure Overview .. Traditional Refining Procedures ... Chemistry of the Process ... Refining Ingredients .. Water, Sand, and Salt Refining ... Storing and Aging the Oil ... Refining Details and Adjustments .. Emulsion Prewashes .. Larger Scale Refining .. Water and Salt Refining .. Water-Alone Refining ... Improving Commercially Refined Oil .. Alcohol Refining .. Boiling Water Refining .. Snow Refining .. Emulsion Refining ... Roland’s Liquid Soap Refining ... Methyl Cellulose Refining ... Ground Silica Refining ... Chlorophyllin Refining ... Water-Soluble Beeswax Refining .. Prior Oxygenation .. Refining Summary . Solvents . Driers .. Primary Drier Overview .. Primary Drier Alternatives
MEDIUMS & VARNISHES . Proportion and Evolution T. Relative Ingredient Proportions .. Medium Types .. Medium Characteristics .. Fat Over Lean T. Fat Over Lean in Practice Examples ... Fat Over Lean in Practice ... Fat and Lean Materials .. Layers and Increments ... Alla Prima Incremental System ... Indirect Incremental System T. Indirect Medium to Paint Ratios ... Medium to Paint Ratios T. Saturating Medium to Paint Ratios T. Saturating Medium Ratios in Layers ... The Number of Layers .. Creating Mediums
iv .. Using Mediums .. Historic Medium Patterns ... The th Century Dilemma .. Stabilization and Sequestering ... The Sequestering Agents T. Sequestering Agent Ratios . Oil Mediums T. Oil Types and their Characters .. Aged Oil .. Autoxidized Oils T. Relative Oil Thickness ... Minimizing Autoxidized Oil Yellowing T. Mixing Oils to Minimize Yellowing .. Preheated Oils .. Thickened Oils ... Handmade Prepolymerized Oils ... Commercial Prepolymerized Oils .. Leaded Oils ... Basic Leaded Oil ... Other Leaded Oils ... Leaded Oil Details ... Unsun Oil ... Unsun-Solvent Mediums ... Ecks ... Leaded Oil Conclusion .. Mixed Oil Mediums T. Prepolymerized Oil Comparison . Conditioning Mediums T. Example Conditioning Ratios .. Oil Conditioning ... Oil-in-Oil Thixotropy ... High Oil Phase Emulsion Overview . The Putty Medium T. Putty Ratios and Use .. Putty to Paint Ratios .. The Stone Dusts .. Putty Additions ... Dry Additions ... Thicker Oil Additions ... Resin Additions ... Water-based Additions .. Putty in Use .. Basic Putty Formulas .. Fused Damar-Beeswax Oil or Putty .. Putty Exercises . Silica Gel Mediums .. Silica Gel Proportions ... Silica and Water Gel ... Silica Gel and the Putty Medium ... Gel de Gent . Resin Mediums .. Resin History
v . Soft Resin Varnishes and Mediums T. Resin Ratings .. Damar Resin ... Fused Damar ... Incremental Fused Damar and Egg White .. Mastic Resin T. Incremental System Example ... Mastic Gel Mediums ... Roberson’s Medium .. The Balsams ... A Small Amount of Pine Resin ... Cold Balsam Medium ... Fused Balsam Medium ... Rubens, Resin, and Solvent ... Balsam, Oil and Solvent Medium ... Mobile Larch Medium .. Alternate Soft Resins ... Spirit Copal or Sandarac Concentrate . Hard Resin Varnishes and Mediums .. Sandarac Varnish .. Copal Varnish ... Copal Oil Medium ... Rembrandt Peale’s Copal Vehicle .. Amber Varnish ... Methods and Amber Oil ... Amber Spirit Varnishes .. Strasbourg Method . Emulsion Mediums .. Egg Emulsion Mediums ... Tempera Grassa T. Oil and Water Phase Tempera ... Tempera Grassa Using Commercial Paint .. High Oil Phase Emulsion Mediums ... Egg White Emulsions ... Starch Emulsions ... Starch Emulsion Additions ... Starch and Fused Damar ... Glue or Methyl Cellulose Emulsions ... Cherry and Almond Gum Emulsions ... Gum Tragacanth Emulsions ... Gum Arabic Emulsions .. Compound Egg Emulsions .. Silica Gel Emulsions . Beeswax .. Soft Resin, Oil, & Beeswax Mediums ... Fused Damar, Oil, & Beeswax ... Fused Balsam, Oil, & Beeswax ... Sandarac or Copal with Oil & Beeswax ... Triple Boiled Oil with Balsam & Beeswax ... Commercial Oil with Balsam & Beeswax ... Egg Yolk with Resin & Beeswax .. Combined Soft Resin, Oil, & Beeswax
vi .. Water-Soluble Beeswax .. Hardened Beeswax .. Other Waxes . Traditional Liquid Soap . Drying, Removal, Grinding Back . Final Varnishing .. Traditional Varnishes ... Traditional Varnishes in Use ... Oil as a Temporary Final Coating .. Modern Varnishes ... Modern Varnishes in Use .. Matte Finish .. When to Varnish . Framing
METHODS . Animation and Organization . Paint Handling . Paint Development . The Triads .. Single Triad Palettes ... The Tetrachromatikón ... Vivid Tetrachromatikón ... Classical with Modern Pigments ... Cool Process ... Painterly Process ... Dark Transparent ... Light Opaque .. Four Colour Palettes ... Modern Vivid ... Modern Grounded ... Painterly Process with Black ... Constable Study ... Valenciennes Study ... French th Century: Low Chroma ... Seascape or Dry Season ... Early Renaissance .. Two Triad Palettes ... Basic Traditional Palette ... Basic Monet Palette ... Modified Monet Palette ... Low Chroma Still Life ... Medium Chroma Primaries ... Modular Modern Primaries ... Modular Landscape ... New Amsterdam Palette ... Full Perennial Palette .. The Three Triad Palette ... Three Triad: Grounded ... Three Triad: High Chroma ... Three Triad: Classical Landscape ... Three Triad: Van Gogh Study
vii ... Three Triad: Sketch for The Hay Wain . Specialized Palettes . Indirect Painting .. Underpainting .. Underpainting Palettes .. Water-Based Underpaints .. Tempera Underpaints ... Methyl Cellulose Tempera Underpaint T. Water-Based and Tempera Underpaints ... Glue Tempera Underpaint ... Egg Tempera Underpaint ... Tempera with Optical Color Separation .. Indirect Medium Systems .. Indirect Method Example .. Indirect System Observations ... Wet-in-Wet Paint ... Saturation and Sequestering ... The Flexible Destination ... Smooth Surface Work in Thin Layers T. Smooth Surface Oil-Alone Layering T. Smooth Surface Sequestered Layering ... Micro-Impressionism ... Beading . Alla Prima Painting .. Studies .. Extended Alla Prima .. Layered Alla Prima .. Putty Alla Prima .. The No-Mix Method .. Outdoor Methods ... Modern Method ... Traditional Method ... Early th Century Outdoor Palette ... Outdoor Execution . Couch Methods .. The Prehensile Couch .. The Mobile Couch .. Water-Refined Linseed Unsun Couch . Optical Colour Separation .. Optical Exercises . Mixing Colour .. Intuitive Mixing ... Mud .. Systematic Mixing .. The Mixing Principles .. The Predimensional Palette ... Predimensional Example .. Positive, Negative, and Neutral Colour F. Positive, Negative, and Neutral Colour F. Predimensional Palette Layout ... th Century Approaches to Colour . System Review
viii .. Functional Systems ... The Conditioning System ... The Water-Refined Linseed Oil System ... The Fused Damar System ... Water Phase Emulsion System ... The High Oil Phase Emulsion System ... The Alla Prima System ... The Indirect System ... Non Toxic Systems ... In the Classroom .. Historic Systems ... The Early Panel System ... The Renaissance Florentine System ... The Layer System on Canvas ... The th Century System ... The th Century Outdoor System ... The French Impressionist System ... The Paris Academic th Century System .. Issues of th Century Technique .. The Case for Natural Painting . Technical Synopsis
THE PROCESS AND THE PEA
BIBLIOGRAPHY . Technical Art History & Older Practice . Scholarship . The Painting Professors . The Painter as Author . Outdoor Painting . Geometry . Conservation & Related Science . Older Manufacturing Methods . Lead White . Emulsion Chemistry . Plant Oil Chemistry & Refining . Resin & Varnish . Beeswax . Philosophy
APPENDICES I The Lost Components II The Hand Refined Linseed Oils III Properties of Ingredients IV Paintings Cited V Core Technique Reference
INDEX
ix FORMULAS
These are given in parts by volume, or in the metric system, by weight or volume, followed by American kitchen mea- surements in parentheses. Measure carefully, in order to paint creatively. Minimize cumulative measuring errors by keeping the measuring method consistent. Some formulas are designed for panels only. Variables in ingredients and mea- suring make a scale and a notebook a good idea. It is also helpful to outline the method as well as the ingredient propor- tions. The weight of hygroscopic ingredients such as natural chalk alters with higher and lower humidity. Relative humidity can make a difference in terms of systemic yellowing potential, see section .. and subsections. Some formulas specify hand- refined oil. Using mainstream art supply (MAS) oils tends to alter the formula’s rheology from taut to flaccid: a fundamental fork in the technical road. Some formulas use historical ingred- ients, including solvents, that can be toxic if not used with proper care or ventilation. Some oil formulas use high heat, which can be dangerous because hot oil can cause serious burns. In the text, these formulas are noted: These materials and methods are part of the historical craft, but none of them are necessary or crucial. It is recommended to avoid man-made versions of traditional materials. Use natural chalk, rather than precipitated chalk, actual bone ash, rather than calcium phosphate, etcetera.
. Glue Size, for Panels & Stretched Canvas . Gesso Grosso . Gypsum Gesso . Chalk and Marble Dust Gesso . Oil Emulsion Gesso . Paradoxical Gesso . PVA Size . PVA Ground . Acrylic Size . Acrylic Ground . Methyl Cellulose Size . Methyl Cellulose Ground . Methyl Cellulose Stabilizer . Titanium Oil Primer . White Lead Oil Primer . Textured White Lead Primer . Textured Titanium Primer . Methyl Cellulose Tempera & . Strong Titanium Paint . Translucent Titanium Paint . Salt, Sand, and Water Refining . Water and Salt Refining . Water-Alone Refining . Alcohol Refining . Marciana (Boiling Water and Sand) Refining
x . Marciana with Salt Refining . Snow Refining . Roland’s Soap Refining . Methyl Cellulose Refining . Ground Silica Refining . Chlorophyllin Refining . Water-Soluble Beeswax Refining . Prior Oxygenation . Ca: Preheated Oil . PbO: Leaded Linseed Oil . :-: Leaded Walnut Oil . Unsun Oil Method . Six Mixed Oil Medium Examples . : or Aged Oil Chalk Putty . : Thixotropic Chalk Putty . BPO or Stand Oil Alla Prima Putty . Modular Emulsion Putty . Two Versions of Calcite Putty . Four Quarters Putty . Egg Yolk Putty for Larger Work . Fused Damar-Beeswax Oil or Putty . Basic Silica Gel . Silica Gel with Silica and Water Gel . Basic Silica Gel and Chalk Putty . Gel de Gent . Fused Damar Medium . Fused Damar and Egg White Putty . Mastic Gel . Roberson’s Medium . Washed Soft Resin or Balsam . Cold Balsam Dipping Medium . Fused Balsam Medium . Balsam, Oil and Solvent Medium . Mobile Larch Medium . Spirit Sandarac or Copal Oil Gel . Copal Oil Medium . Strasbourg Method . Egg Emulsion with Resin . Egg Emulsion with Beeswax . Egg Emulsion and Methyl Cellulose . BPO Egg Emulsion . Modular Tempera Grassa . Egg Yolk and Oil Paint Emulsion . Fused Damar and Egg White Putty- . Two Types of Starch Gel . Basic Cold Starch Emulsion . Cold Starch and Glue Gel Emulsion . Enhanced Starch Putty . Starch and Fused Damar . : MC Methyl Cellulose Paste . Three Glue or MC Emulsion Putty Variations . Egg White and Glue Size Putty
xi . Egg Yolk and Glue Size Putty . Whole Egg and Balsam Putty . Egg Yolk, Methyl Cellulose, and Fused Damar . Fused Damar, Starch, and Egg Yolk . Two Silica Emulsion Gel Formulas . Wax-OMS Paste . % Wax-in-Oil Medium Bases . Basic Wax Emulsion Putty . Sequestering Emulsion Putty . Fused Damar, Wax and Oil Putty . Fused Damar and Wax Fine Gliding Gel . Fused Balsam, Oil, and Wax . Sandarac or Copal, Wax, and Oil . TBO & BPO with Balsam and Wax . Commercial Oil with Balsam and Wax . Egg Yolk with Soft Resin and Wax . Two Combined Medium Examples . Water-Soluble Beeswax Paste . Hardened Beeswax . Traditional Liquid Soap . Damar Varnish, lb. Cut . Soft Gloss Regalrez and Wax Varnish . Solvent Putty Underpaint . Water-Based Underpaint Options . Methyl Cellulose Tempera Underpaint . Glue Tempera Underpaint . Egg Tempera Underpaint . Smooth Surface Oil-Alone Layering . Five Prehensile Couches . Four Mobile Oil Couches . Mobile Silica Gel Couch
MATERIAL AND SCIENTIFIC ABBREVIATIONS BPO: commercial burnt plate oil CPVC: critical pigment volume concentration FD: fused damar MAS: mainstream art supply MC: methyl-cellulose MUFA: monounsaturated fatty acids OMS: odorless mineral spirits PUFA: polyunsaturated fatty acid PVA: polyvinyl acetate SFA: saturated fatty acids TAG: triacylglycerol TBO: triple boiled oil VOCs: volatile organic compounds
xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks to the following for their help with this project: Dr. Roland Greimers, professor of cellular imaging and flow cytometry at the University of Liège, asked and answered a great many technical questions, explained a great deal of chemistry, provided a unique dialogue about details of materials and methods based on his own research, and generously shared many ideas for materials and procedures. Allison B. Cooke, professor emeritus in the Department of Art and Design, Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, edited the early text with patience and enthusiasm. Belgian painter Wim de Gent contributed to the oil and resin technology, provided detailed discussions regarding the layered alla prima technique, and made helpful comments on the text. Dr. Michael Strauss, painter and Professor of Chemistry emeritus at the University of Vermont, contributed lab equipment, linseed oil chemistry, and suggested the efficacy of simple declarative sentences. Vermont conservator Suki Fredericks explained the details of a variety of conservation options about final varnish from a practical perspective. Dr. Christopher Lenard, painter and Senior Lecturer in Mathematics and Statistics at La Trobe University, made many insightful comments on an early version of the text and its organization. Dr. Philip Bayliss-Brown made extensive valuable suggestions about a later version of the text and its organization. California painter Ed Welch contributed samples of older commercial paint and historic pigments from his collection. Canadian painter Thomas Hirsz very kindly supplied hand- pressed linseed and poppy oil. Israeli painter David Louis sent a sample of triple boiled oil. European painter Christian Ward Hidaka supplied examples of cold-pressed French artisanal walnut oil. Swedish painter Peter Paduan contributed information about making lead carbonate from his experience. Last but not least, thanks to Lily, the tricolour semi-mackerel tabby who edited editions seven through fourteen with precision, daring, and an ever-incisive touch.
xiii MAJOR SOURCES Sources referenced by name in the text are listed below. Other sources are listed by their bibliography number in parentheses.
Alberti: Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, Carlyle: Leslie Carlyle, The Artist’s Assistant, Cennini: Cennino d’Andrea Cennini, The Craftsman’s Handbook, Translated by Daniel Thompson, Church: Sir A.H. Church, The Chemistry of Paints and Painting, Dalí: Salvador Dalí, Fifty Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, Delacroix: Eugène Delacroix, The Journals of Eugène Delacroix, - . Numbers in parentheses refer to specific entry dates. De Mayerne: Sir Théodore Turquet de Mayerne, The De Mayerne Manuscript, Sloane (c.-), English translation in Lost Secrets of Flemish Painting, , by Donald Fels. Numbers in parentheses refer to the Fels system of entries. De Wetering: Ernst Van de Wetering, Rembrandt The Painter at Work, Doerner: Max Doerner, The Materials of the Artist and Their Use in Painting, Eastlake: Sir Charles Eastlake, Methods and Materials of Painting of the Great Schools and Masters (I, ; II, ). Numbers in parentheses refer to volume and page numbers. Gottsegen: Mark David Gottsegen, The Painter’s Handbook, revised edition, Laurie: A.P. Laurie, The Painter’s Methods and Materials, Merrifield: Mary P. Merrifield, Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Arts of Painting, Mérimée: J. F. L. Mérimée, The Art of Painting in Oil and Fresco, French , English NG: National Gallery Technical Bulletin. Various authors, followed by volume number when applicable Oudry: Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Discourse on the Practice of Painting and its Main Processes: Underpainting, Overpainting, and Retouching, PRPT: Joyce Townsend, Jaqueline Ridge, and Stephen Hackney, Pre-Raphaelite Painting Techniques, . RAM: Bomford, Kirby, Roy, Rüger, White, Rembrandt: Art in the Making Series, revised edition, Stols-Witlox: M.J.N. Stols-Witlox, Historical recipes for preparatory layers for oil paintings in manuals, manuscripts, and handbooks in North West Europe, -: analysis and reconstructions, TAM: Edited by Jo Kirby, Susie Nash, and Joanna Cannon, Trade in Artist’s Materials: Markets and Commerce in Europe to , Wehlte: Kurt Wehlte, The Materials and Techniques of Painting,
xiv TO THE INTREPID READER Living Craft is a record of a research project into handmade oil painting materials that began in . It is for experienced painters interested in the handmade craft. The focus of the book is on what worked, and why, but also on constructing evolving systems within the creative process. Living Craft contains detailed explanations about how oil painting works, and many options about what to make, and how to make it. This book is about creative development using painting materials and visual logic. It references older texts, and the findings of technical art history, but is not about copying what was done four and five hundred years ago. On the one hand, crucial details of the past cannot be known with certainty, and, more importantly, the living aspect of the creative process occurs in, and only in, the present moment. Just as there was only one Leonardo or Rembrandt, there is only one you. Our culture tends to enthrone novelty and speed for their own sake. This approach is entertaining, yet, given that the purpose of creativity is transformative, tends to sacrifice the journey for the destination. The quick journey diminishes not only its quality, but the quality of the destinations available to it. If you read Living Craft as the record of a creative journey, each step of which is equally important, rather than skimming it in search of a speedy destination, this will allow the book to adjust, perhaps even alter, the definition of the painting process you have, almost inevitably, inherited from contemporary culture and education. This will contribute greatly to your experience making paintings with the book’s methods and materials. This is not to imply that you have been misdirected, conned, gulled, lied to, bilked, duped, flimflammed, gypped, tricked, cheated, hornswoggled, or sold a bill of goods by your culture and its ever-confident, yet ever-changing, definitions of painting, education, or reality. But every historical period operates within a frame of reference that is difficult to go beyond, simply because everyone exists and functions, unconsciously and often blindly, within it. If we look beyond technique, and investigate the foundation of older painting, we find an expanded frame of reference about how painting is defined, and learn why this definition remains personally and culturally relevant. This is the frame of reference of this book. It is based on the dialogue between perennialism and the hands-on ingenuity of older practice, and, as such, may seem new – even, irony of ironies – shockingly new at this point. Yet in terms of human culture, this approach to life, and the art we make from it, is quite old. It has, both practically and philosophically, stood the test of time, as the fount and origin of human creativity. As such, I humbly suggest you to explore the methods and materials detailed here, the experience of the craft they offer, and the definition of painting they embody, as an organic whole. Once you have taken the this into account, doing it your own way – the most crucial part, how did I know? – will be both more reliable, and capable of surprising creativity, in practice.
xv FROM ‘INTO THE LABYRINTH’ SECTION :
. THE FRAME OF REFERENCE Once upon a time, long ago, and even far away for those of us in the New World, painters had a deep understanding of their materials. This came about through a combination of training and experience, in a world both simpler and more complex than our own. Under these circumstances, the complimentary routines of life and art fused naturally into a living craft. Currently, this understanding is often framed as a myth, yet the work it produced can be seen in museums all over the world. Culturally, its existence is paradoxical: this type of evidence from the past is an inspiration to some, a burden to others. As painters, can we leave pride and prejudice behind, and explore older practice, artistically and technically, as a set of creative tools? That these tools produced work of unusual quality has long been an axiom of Western culture. As such, what became lost from the early craft has intrigued and plagued painters for centuries, perhaps even before Reynolds famously set out late in his career to emulate Rembrandt’s late style with such mixed results. At this point, through a combination of research and technological advances in the analysis of older paintings, we know more than ever before about the ingredients of older technique in terms of pigments and mediums. But how these were modified and assembled, the details of the working methods of the painter’s studio during the long th to th century apogee of the craft, will probably always remain a mystery. Given that secrecy regarding physical means – the art of concealing the art – was always a basic professional intent, perhaps this is just as it should be. The craft of painting has changed greatly in the last six hundred years, especially in terms of the vast array of mainstream art supply (MAS) materials now readily available. But, while modern life encourages us to be consumers, we still have opposable thumbs and the ability to make things, offering both a different type and quality of experience. Thus, there are now two crafts: one based on purchased materials, and one based on personal materials. The purchased craft is a search for what to buy, and from whom. The handmade craft develops incrementally with the materials themselves. It remains physical, and begins where it always has, in a daily relationship with pigments and oil, chalk and glue, grinding, mixing, brushing, scraping. For all the changes in the world since , when the Ghent Altarpiece, legendary centerpiece of the early craft, was completed, this story is still about learning, and discovering further levels of, a series of deceptively simple procedures.
Similarly, this book began with an apparently simple question: What would happen if the craft were explored once again as it had been originally: step by step, by hand? The goal was not the historically accurate reconstruction, but a creative analogy: older principles and methods applied within a contemporary context. Several related arguments are presented here about oil painting as a personal or vocational practice. They are addressed in relation to the quality of life – the daily creative tension between process and product – and are illustrated by examples of paintings from art history, and research from conservation and technical art history.
PAINTING FROM LIFE First, that painting is about life, and that life is the primary teaching tool, both literally and conceptually, which contains, and therefore cannot be defined by, ideas. Painting from life views the mental, emotional, and physical aspects of experience as equals. Second, that a handmade craft has exponentially more to offer than a machine-made one, but also that, within a given personal style, certain aspects of the craft may be more relevant than others. Third, that an experiential or heuristic approach to the materials offers more than an abstract or empirical one. Fourth, that the most functional relationship between art and craft is reciprocal, not hierarchical. Fifth, that honoring the original contract of art in service to society has more to offer than ignoring it. This last argument goes back at least as far as Diderot’s distinction between le naïf and le théâtral, and, by implication, to Plato’s complaint in The Republic that painting is merely copying, not a creative art. The philosophical and practical elements of painting are currently presented in separate covers. In this text, practice and motivation are viewed as complementary aspects of a craft whose tenets are neither materialist, empirical, nor intellectual, but grounded in the physical and metaphysical inter- dependence of craftsperson and society.
THE SECTIONS This book contains seven sections: concepts, aspects, colour, materials, mediums and varnishes, methods, and systems. The information basis is uniformly threefold, or triadic: older practice as defined by technical art history, the craft as a creative resource, and the equal validity of logic and intuition in the painting process. The goal is to offer an alternative to both the encyclopedia of differential description, and the grimoire of equivocal arcana, through a practical, holistic reference that documents one painter’s experience in detail. Whether of technique, proportion, or innovation, the details of daily experience combine to generate a process that is both stable and lively. Modern texts on painting occur in frames of reference that are either scientific or aesthetic. The case is presented here for the dynamic, and symbiotic, interaction between the art and its materials so evident in the th-th century heyday of the craft. Older practice is examined for what it explains about the cultural
attitudes that generated it, and what this offers painters working today. This approach can be applied to any level of experience, by anyone whose attitude stresses the quality, rather than the tempo, of the creative process. As a frame of reference, it still provides what it originally did: an opportunity for the life and the work to become one.
CONCEPTS Learning to think in colour and form develops the relationship between the visual and verbal realms of the brain. This connects logical and intuitive problem-solving skills and includes more of each over time. The concepts organize the process, aiding intuition through the simple but infinite logic of dialectic analysis. This ancient technique uses the interaction of opposites – the basic teaching tool of all human experience – to create new possibilities, even a new frame of reference, through creative synthesis. In using this book, the opposites that interact are reading and painting: the logical mind and the intuitive hands.
ASPECTS The aspects emphasize elements of the process and the high levels of visual logic and tactile awareness that are intrinsic to older painting. One expects this depth from the materials, but it begins with the way the process itself is conceived, then organized.
COLOUR This section explains how colour is arranged to evoke light and space, and the ways older painting used optical techniques to map colour to form. These methods create more perceptual colour from fewer pigments via discreet simultaneous contrast with the added dimensions of pigment optics and the many ways positive, negative, and neutral colour can be differentiated, and integrated. They define a triadic balance between the vivacity of local colour, the unity of an integrated light-shadow axis, and the optical depth of the paint itself.
MATERIALS The materials are principally traditional, based on the older texts on the one hand, and the findings of technical art history on the other. Modern materials have been incorporated when they have proven to be stable and non-yellowing.
MEDIUMS AND VARNISHES This section offers choices that developed based on the findings of technical art history, made with both handmade and, in some cases, quality modern materials. The positive, as well as potentially negative, aspects of six medium types are covered – oil, putty, egg, resin, emulsion, and beeswax – along with various useful combinations.
METHODS The emphasis of the methods is on the th century, but some concepts or formulas – panels, gypsum gesso, tempera grassa, the Strasbourg Method – are earlier. The methods developed by comparing the formulas and instructions in older texts with the findings of modern conservation research. Technical art history has shown that the older texts themselves are most often compilations, the work of scribes, not painters, and contain both useful and unlikely information. Technical publications from London’s National Gallery and Tate Gallery proved to be a reliable filter for the older texts. The consistent message of informed simplicity from these findings effectively sliced through the Gordian Knot of the literary trail, establishing the basis of the older system as simplicity, ingenuity, and expediency, derived from cumulative experience, and practiced in the service of longevity. For the craftsperson working to secure a livelihood in a cultured, yet highly competitive context, this approach also functioned as advertising, and insurance.
SAFETY This book contains examples of methods and materials from older practice that are hazardous, and are indicated thusly: . While historical, and well-documented in older sources, all of these approaches are now optional, and their use or avoidance should always be considered in light of the larger issues of personal and environmental health.
SYSTEMS The systems are technical, based on a specific approach to the materials and methods, or historical, based on sets of materials and methods that generated a certain style at a given period. In either case, the systems tend to be about the balanced interaction of very specific sets of materials.
PURPOSE This book explores the relationship between the creative and practical aspects of oil painting. Its materials and techniques are not historical reenactments, nor definitive; it is a record of what worked for one interested party, and why. The purpose has been to explore a partnership with the craft that is functional and creative now. This bond occurred naturally during the th-th century flowering of the craft; there is no reason why it cannot happen again once again. This begins by addressing the materials on their own terms. Given that overarching attention to detail is the literal foundation of life on this planet, it makes sense that it is the basis of any creative process. Once observed, these details naturally assemble themselves into systems whose components and behaviors are logical, yet otherwise inconceivable. What we term the craft is actually the endless cornucopia of details generated by focused personal attention. Developing this dialogue with the materials incrementally, from the inside out, produces far reaching results for the life, the work, and their creative partnership at the easel.
FROM CONCEPTS SECTION :
. THE CREATIVE DIALOGUE Creativity in painting combines the opposite qualities of inspiration and organization. Inspiration is vivifying and compelling, but how can it be communicated with all its nuance and finesse? Inspiration needs a method of expression. Organization is meditative and anodyne, but what is its motivation? Organization needs a purpose. Inspiration and organization are fundamentally different qualities. Because of this, their combined effect can be far greater than either one alone. Inspiration is intuitive and extra-conscious; it arrives without warning and urges activity. Organization is physical and conscious, cumulative in its ability to codify, marshal, and deploy. These divergent qualities, as warp and weft, are woven together through the hands in the present moment. Inspiration may not be clear about what it wants, but is decisive about what it doesn’t. Organization, like a map, points out possible ways to get to a given destination. The potential of inspiration is infinite, but mercurial, while organization is a function of experience and diligence. The intensity of inspiration puts stress on organization to adapt to its demands. Within this context, inspiration as a sense of purpose or transcendental instinct comes first, organization as thought, or analysis, comes second. Organization prepares the soil, but inspiration provides both the seed, and the rain that allow it to sprout. The greater the level of organization, the more opportunity inspiration has to flourish. Yet each combination of inspiration and organization is unique, the product of specific circumstances. No formula exists through which inspiration and organization are permanently reconciled. Art history provides many creative models, and these form a pattern, but each reconciliation occurs in the moment, and is also gone with that moment. Despite talent and training, the process retains elements that are inscrutable. Even in the canon of officially ‘great’ painters, some paintings are unaccountably better than others. This is perhaps why fine art is viewed as invaluable, or valued to the point of absurdity. The ineffable has somehow been documented with both clarity and detail, the macrocosm of the universal has been expressed through the microcosm of a human being: an intrinsically miraculous event.
FROM ASPECTS, SECTION :
. THE PAINTER’S ART HISTORY Although painting is fundamentally a response to life, it is also a response to painting. For painters especially, art history has a compelling tale to tell. When Delacroix has a technical question, he visits the Louvre, and
returns to his studio with a solution. From this perspective, it is not important who was the royal painter, who made the most money, or whose behavior made the most eyes roll, but whose work offers the most meaningful example; who is the most relevant teacher. Exploring art history personally, outside the bright lights of a given period, offers more in the way of perspective and options. A deeper pattern of give and take, cause and effect, emerges. Older books are increasingly easy to locate, image searches online can be surprising in terms of illustrating the variety of a given painter’s work, as opposed to what is generally selected from that work for print. Just as the craft offers more than meets the eye, individual choices soon diverge from those of Art History . There are excellent painters who, even now, remain relatively unknown. Having had careers in daylight rather than limelight, their work may feel refreshingly genuine. Over time, a group of personal antecedents comes together, fellow travelers who become guides to the process. Art history often features biography, but painters also have their own words. Constable wrote incisive prose; his letters are full of period colour (..). Pissarro’s letters to his son Lucien offer deep insights into the milieu surrounding the birth of Impressionism (..). The Delacroix journal contains decades of piquant observations about every- thing (..). The letters of Van Gogh offer a systematic and far more accurate account of his approach to life and art than the ‘mad genius’ meme of popular art history (..). Gwen John’s notebooks offer koan- like insights into her thoughts and technique (..). Well-known painters tend to loom larger than life in art history, yet here is Delacroix in his fifties, excited as a schoolboy to be out of pestilential Paris; here is Constable, berating the dairyman for watering his children’s milk; we witness John and Pissarro struggling serially with the conflicting needs of security and independence. The familiar narrative of life reflected in a letter or notebook re-establishes a human context for the distant or ‘great’ historical figure. A large part of the early painter’s apprenticeship involved assimilating the master’s style; this was logical when a group of artisans worked together on the same painting. Early in his career, Raphael painted in a manner similar to his teacher, Perugino. As Raphael continued to develop, his own more fluid style emerged from an approach that remained creatively syncretic. Beginning with emulation, and ending with adulation, can be seen in the work of many well-known older painters. Today, we are told early and often not to copy, but to be original; with the best intentions this is even promoted ideologically in grade school. But oil painters have learned through the copying process for centuries, and this remains a unique tool for developing greater understanding of how a given painter thinks, feels, and acts, simply because recreating a painting is a far deeper experience than looking at it. Students copying a Monet painting are always surprised that the colours are less bright, more broken, than they appear: illustrating preconceptions about colour as well as simultaneous contrast. Copying
is especially valuable for learning more about realistic light, or for analyzing a painter of personal interest: Delacroix made copies after Rubens, Rubens himself copied work by Titian in Madrid while famous throughout Europe. The conventions used to depict light and shadow vary in different cultures and time periods. Studying these methods leads to colour mixing with more precision and depth. The relationship of current painting to its past generates attitudes ranging from adoration to rejection. Does the best painting follow a specific tradition, or is the individual response determinate? Art history offers a variety of solutions, but, like time itself, these are relative. During their own time, the Pre-Raphaelites were often criticized for being too past oriented. Yet, now that their work has also become part of the fabled past, this is not such an issue: this occasionally self- conscious but sincere style is another chapter in the story. But, does working with the past mean it should it be imitated as closely as possible? And if so, which past are we talking about? The aesthetics of Van Eyck, Giotto, Praxiteles, and Lascaux are all ‘old,’ and all quite different. The unreliable narrative of the past – the difficulty in interpreting Baxandall’s concept of the ‘period eye’ accurately from the present – also provides a perplexing factor. Is the painting process focused on present tense creativity, or aesthetic anthropology? Sorting these elements out can make it tempting to discard the past for the simplicity of a fresh start. Yet modernism has proven that nothing becomes dated more quickly than work based on this principle. Shorn of the past, the present easily becomes ephemeral; trends are seized upon and discarded with increasing rapidity, even vapidity, as painting devolves into a revolving door of fashionable diversion. Incorporating a larger time frame, art history demonstrates that, while the New must happen, it does so most reliably in relation to the Old. Working with tradition casts the past not as an idol to be worshiped or destroyed, but as a tool. Painting uses brushes to place colour creatively on canvas; style uses the self to apply tradition creatively in the present. The present chooses what is most relevant from the past, and brings this into being again in a new form. This process contains an initial element of exploration, even imitation, but the results are applied towards renewal. A seminal example of this occurs in the development of Manet, who consciously applied aspects of the past to recreate painting in the present. Manet is often spoken of as having been influenced by Velázquez, but the structure of this process is more creative. Searching for an antidote to the prevalent Neoclassical imitation of Poussin or Raphael, Manet found several things of interest in Velázquez: a forthright approach to observation and execution, a sculptural condensation of form, and the use of black and white to set off colour and amplify visual gravity. Yet, these elements also exist in Women of Algiers () by Delacroix, a painting that entered the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris when Manet was two years old. In contrast to the idealization of the past often featured in academic painting, these frank stylistic elements are combined as tools
to accomplish Manet’s own goals for painting which is unabashedly, and often uncomfortably, about the present. This is not just the influence of Velázquez or Delacroix, but these painters deeply considered and creatively recast. This seamless fusion can take time: in Manet’s case, he methodically develops ways to augment an earlier simplification of form with tighter and denser paint. This process results in a lively, detailed synthesis that becomes relevant, as something genuinely new, for the painting of the future.
FROM COLOUR SECTION :
. AN UNRULY LEXICON Colour as a language is at once articulate and inscrutable. A similar basis on wavelength and tonal relationships makes for interesting comparisons with music, but there are no discrete scales or specific notes in colour to rely on: colour in paint is in a constant state of flux. This means colour is limitless, which is always exciting. But, as is the case with words, it is not a matter of knowing them all, but of assembling a natural vocabulary in an inspired sequence. At this point, tension often exists between colour for its own sake, and colour as an aspect of the painting process. Early in The Interaction of Color (), Albers states that paint is too complex a tool for the study of colour (..). Conceptual colour and its physical vehicle can certainly be treated as different things, but, for painters, they act as one, meaning complexity of colour in paint needs to be understood. Wehlte suggests that the study of colour, like drawing, occur separately, and prior to work with paint, allowing the inevitable fascination with colour as a Ding an sich to develop on its own terms. After a period of experimental freedom, working with a basic selection of traditional pigments is more likely to provide a sense of direction, rather than limitation. We are typically educated with an emphasis on the efficiency of linear thought, and this is mirrored in the flat color of much th century painting: this is as linear as colour gets. But, conceptually and in nature, colour is multi-dimensional. Planar colour can certainly be artistic, but does not exist in nature. Which makes the planar approach complex: on the one hand, a search for the abstract basis of colour as a universal language, on the other, a rejection of the way colour occurs within the universe of our common experience. Because colour is so related to feeling, it is most often used intuitively: painters develop a personal method of altering or condensing colour, a chromatic shorthand. In realism this works up to a point, which is defined by both the period and the imperatives of the style. Convincing natural colour involves fine tuning value and temperature
within the light-shadow axis when mapping colour to form. More realistic rendering is typically paired with more realistic colour, but neither of these may be necessary: a great deal of art has been made with strong shapes and simple colour. To use colour intuitively and creatively, it must first be harnessed to, or filtered through, the system established by the logic of light. Colour can be creative within this logic, but is unreliable, or, at best, difficult to develop further, without it. We can turn to the scientific study of colour, but this is not based on the physical behavior of pigments. Modern colour models are three- dimensional solids that take value and chroma into account, but do not address the degree of transparence, the chromatic complexity introduced by layering, or the all-important way colours – especially colours of different types, or contrasting temperatures – interact. Any model is also relatively abstract compared to the living quality of colour embodied as paint. Colour knowledge can be helpful, but pigment awareness leads to colour instinct – an aesthetic feeling for colour in paint – which is more useful in practice. In realistic painting, colour is used to create a consistent illusion of three-dimensions on a flat surface. This means arranging colours to appear to be in different planes – to advance or recede – through mapping colour to form by type. Colour has a structure whose study makes it easier to comprehend. A given colour in a painting has a: . Value from light to dark . Temperature from warm to cool . Chroma from dull to vivid . Degree of transparence, translucence, or opacity . Level in the order of the paint layers . Specific technical type: a) Hues are made from colours alone b) Tints contain white c) Shades contain black d) Tones contain gray The endless potential of colour can be likened to the immense number of words in a dictionary. A realistic painting needs an arrangement of colour that is literally or figuratively accurate, and this is like choosing certain words to tell a specific story in the way that feels best. This means exploring colour within the light and shadow axis, as well as the air quality, of a specific place and time. The goal is to inte- grate chromatic variety with value, temperature, atmospheric recession, and midtone vivacity, so the painting reads as a unified whole. Given the primal appeal of colour, the variety of pigments available now is a mixed blessing. Even as late as the th century, the permanent pigments beyond the earth colours numbered less than two dozen. At this point, manufacturers gleefully put out a redundant exorbitancy of colours, and information about which to choose for the palette is of course contradictory. Paint nomenclature remains a disorganized
mélange of actual, historical, and alluring names, for which there are loose traditions but no rules. Under these circumstances, the harried painter is apt to substitute a variety of scintillating pigments for the art of colour mixing. This can easily lead to paintings with Chromatic Anxiety Disorder: too many pigments without enough relationship between them. When this occurs, we are not using, but being used by, colour. Relentless vivacity is wearying to the eye, just as relentless fortissimo is wearying to the ear. In nature, vivacity is selective, balanced by the neutrality of reflections and the unity provided by the atmospheric envelope. Similarly, finely tuned colour dynamics can be an important aspect of the painting as a work of art. To create harmony, or the sense of a specific place and time, a limited palette is an asset. This sets up a natural emphasis on colour mixing tech- nique, and the balanced colour relationships found in nature. Well- known colours can be seen as boring, but prosaic colour on the palette does not mean prosaic colour on the painting itself, because the perception of any colour is always determined by its context. We think of cadmium red light as a certain colour, but when it is surrounded by blue, orange, white, or gray, it appears different in each case. This introduces an important paradox. On the one hand, cadmium red light does exist as a specific bright red-orange hue, but on the other hand, no colour is absolute, either in a painting, or in life. The actual chroma of a colour may be less, or more, than its perceived chroma, according to the colours it is reacting with. And colours are constantly reacting with one another, this is what they do. As such, colours are tuned to create more or less perceived chroma, to advance or recede to a given degree. Creating a convincing illusion of light and space is a matter of mixing colour within the key of a given light-shadow axis. Because colour is so sensitive to context, mixing technique is the most effective tool for creating unique colour, allowing the development of a unique set of contexts or rela- tionships. Without using contrasting temperatures to establish the colour context, a tendency to substitute chroma and energy for accuracy occurs. This approach typically involves great earnestness and heroic gnashing of teeth, but is not consistent, nor replicable, because it ignores the logic of light as the immutable foundation of colour relationships. A lively execution is wonderful, as is getting in touch with one’s creative subconscious, but these admirable approaches do not somehow alter the physics of the planet. Alla prima techniques featuring spontaneous or reactive mixing emphasize a strictly limited palette for precisely this reason. Colour mixing has many levels; a limited palette facilitates finding evolved ones because these exist within the sphere defined by the axes of red, yellow, and blue. To make convincing colour, it is important to both see it, and envision it. A method of sequencing the transition from the colour we observe, to the colour we mix, provides the organization that allows inspiration to be translated clearly. Without this animating tension, we are either copying, which is boring, or guessing, which is exhausting.
The one hundred and forty-seven tubes on display at the store give the impression that all this choice is crucial. But this is not true. We only need to be concerned conceptually with the primaries: red, yellow, and blue. Each primary comes in two types: warm and cool. In the daylight palette, in addition to white and possibly black, there are six basic positions to consider: warm and cool versions of each primary. These positions don’t all have to be filled: a painting can be made with a triad of three primaries and white. Many older paintings were made with a limited palette to concentrate on the advanced depiction of value and temperature that establishes a given visual-emotional mood. As such, when constructing a light oriented palette, it is important to first chose not what feels new or provocative, but what is necessary. Observing the progress of successful colourists such as Bonnard or Matisse, we see that more adventurous colour comes after learning to depict light and form. Painting light convincingly is not enhanced by colour variety, nor by colour identity, but by the accuracy, and therefore harmony, of the colour relationships within the value structure. These must be finely tuned to feel natural and are far easier to access with fewer colours and mixing based on value and temperature – the logic of light – than with more colours and mixing based on guesswork. As with any practice, guesswork develops over time, but guesswork tends to bind colour to a reliable but predictable formula. Colour mixing is often subjected to rules, such as ‘never mix more than three colours together.’ This particular guideline is functional up to a point, but it is more accurate to say that mixing more than three colours together can achieve great subtlety, but the value and temperature shifts of the colour key in question need to be well tuned in order to keep the adjacent colours in the same key. Like training wheels on a bicycle, guidelines can be helpful for learning, but eventually restrict the potential of the vehicle. The precision of realistic colour is such that a system for organizing value and temperature shifts is necessary. Because painters have worked this way for centuries, and there are several specific patterns, and accepted conventions, from which to learn the art of dimensional mapping. In Western art history, the coordination of value and temperature to create the illusion of space is at first tentative and relatively formulaic, but becomes more subtle and creative, over time. The varieties of th century colourist realism all use different iterations of this principle. The eye accepts great license from colour as long as the basic logic of the light-shadow axis is consistent, as it is in nature. Colours clearly have meaning, but these are hard to pin down. Is that an angry, or a joyous red? A sad or hopeful blue? A cringing or affirmative yellow? Colours have a specific symbology, but these are inconsistent from culture to culture. How is meaning changed by shape or context, when many colours are arranged together? The power of colour is its existence as a language, but in a realm beyond words: it simply acts on consciousness. And, though we are unified in our response to colour, these responses are necessarily diverse.
The complex relationship between colour, feeling, and meaning makes colour selection largely intuitive. Shifts here are often unconscious. Is the palette too bright or dull? Discovering the current ‘right’ colour or colour combination is a relief: work can proceed in the appropriate emotional key once again. Conversely, certain colours may feel intrinsically wrong. In her diaries, Virginia Woolf recounts Roger Fry’s sudden pronouncement one day while painting in southern France that yellow-green is not an artistic colour, and the ensuing arch debate with her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell. Because all colours are, in the largest sense, created equal, exploring areas of colour which have been unconsciously edited out, or actively dismissed, can be intriguing. Are our inclinations highly refined, or prejudices in disguise? A given colour may not be seen, but this does not mean it isn’t there: the chromatic frame of reference of a time and place can become difficult to see when existing within it. The intensity of our reaction to colour is modeled on the evolved way colour occurs in nature. Analogously, older paintings often exhibit great finesse in the way colour dynamics direct the eye. The power of colour is always exercised within the logic of light. Examining colour through the system of nature allows value and temperature relationships to be tuned with natural creativity. Yet, just as painting is more than drawing, it is more than colour.
FROM MATERIALS SECTION :
. TIME The most basic material in painting is time. The consensus definition of time is fixed and linear: as children we learn very early that the clock goes tick-tock, tick-tock. But this is mechanical time, corresponding to the Greek word, chronos. Time as we experience it, on the other hand, is a protean, extra-logical substance that is responsive to our consciousness moment to moment: time flies, or stands still, based on how we feel. As such, control over the mechanical clock is not as important as awareness of the personal or emotional clock. This corresponds to the type of time the Greeks defined as kairos: the moment where a relevant change occurs, a moment of evolution which is necessarily outside of linearity. We have natural clocks available in the sun and the moon. Mechanical clocks move from left to right, while natural clocks move from right to left. The sun defines what can happen in a day, and, sea- sonally, Spring tends to be more creative than Winter. The phases of a given lunar cycle often define the arrival, development, and completion of a specific concept or approach in the work. The moon’s effects are emotional, and therefore personal, but the cycle has a pattern. The new moon can be somewhat puzzling until its often unexpected definition
of new is grasped. The full moon tends to be both energetic and fulfilling. The third week of the moon works best for work already in progress. The fourth week may see energy waning, especially in the last days before the new moon begins: a good time to do errands, make materials or clean the studio. Observing how this natural clock operates personally can help the work evolve more harmoniously. Early in the vastly calmer th century, Wordsworth wrote that, ‘the world is too much with us.’ Worldly demands, ‘getting and spending,’ tend to imprison the process of life, and the work derived from it, on the surface. A great deal may be going on, but, without the guidance of a larger purpose, the activity merely generates more of the same. When viewed from a broader perspective, temporal demands can easily seem arbitrary, even artificial. Simplifying the external life allows the inner life to emerge and pursue its natural course with certainty and dignity. The work is the fruit, the process is the vine, inspiration is the rainfall, but quality time is the soil in which the system is anchored. This is personal, as opposed to culturally imposed, time. In a prescient entry, Delacroix (--) observes that progress based on machines will only end up turning people into machines. The focus of modern life on haste and the gadgetry to enable it often means the sacrifice of meaningful simplicity for arbitrary complexity. Whether this creates actual accomplishment, or merely the perpetual illusion thereof, is increasingly open to debate. How can we still generate the expanded time clearly at the foundation of older painting? Painting shifts consciousness out of conventional time and space, to the extent that the painter is often not in the studio, but in the painting. This extended, even alternate, version of reality is the result of executing a routine that is familiar but requires concentration. The most exper- ienced painter still pays attention to the work in progress because this is precisely what makes the process function, creating a painting that feels alive. This level of attention makes the basic resources of feeling and consideration readily available. Access to personal clarity is provided by a spacious and personal sense of time. Spacious time occurs readily via external simplicity. If the external life is ordered and uncluttered, anxieties about time management fall away, and internal growth for the process can be fostered and implemented naturally. Practically, this means finding a way to disengage from other demands, and establish both external and internal peace. Painting is quite old and hard to fool. It is aware that it both needs and creates a qualitative difference in time; that this is fundamental to its identity and purpose. Once this is also intrinsic to daily life, the process becomes inviolable, simply because it functions more naturally when spacious time is the vehicle for consciousness. Struggling with endless social demands as a young painter in Paris, Delacroix is clear in early entries that he must learn to make the quality of his working time come first. These opposite types of time are helpful to one another once they are in relative balance: the
demands of the outer world are offset by the life of the inner world. An ongoing dialogue can then take place, developing the evolution of both.
. OIL PAINT Compared to egg tempera, oil introduced increased saturation, more lifelike movement, a more dramatic value scale, and the ability to finish an image in less time. But the oil medium was also less stable and predictable. Linseed oil made the strongest film, but needed to be carefully refined to avoid yellowing. In an indirect or layered technique, the values of layers could alter over time: the white becoming more transparent due to saponification, the darks becoming more predominant due to the increasing influence of a toned ground. The ground and paint on stretched canvas needed to be thin and flexible to avoid longer term cracking due to movement of the canvas. With the later introduction of driers and resin globally in the medium, further issues associated with the degradation of the paint film over time could occur. While many different ingredients and formulas worked at first, it turned out, over time, to be a fine line between paintings that remained as they were painted, and paintings that did not. Oil paint, like life itself, appears simpler on the surface than it is in practice.
PERIOD SOLUTIONS, PERIOD PAINT Technical solutions to these issues have been different based on the materials of a given period, and the stylistic solutions appreciated by a given culture. Even in the same period, solutions can be different. The later th century French academic system involved significant technical fine tuning with the medium but, in the same period, the Impressionist system of Monet used paint alone. It is important to note that Monet used the period paint alone; this style is not readily accessible with modern paint alone. Painters are often interested in the style of a certain older painter: this painter is doing what comes naturally, in plain sight, it must be possible to do that too. Yet basic physical differences between that painter’s handmade paint, and the MAS paint available now, may make that style difficult to emulate in a way that is technically sound. There have been many versions ‘oil paint’ over the centuries. While it is expedient to work is with readily available materials, it is also important to be aware of what a given paint and medium combination can, and cannot, reliably do.
DEFINING BETTER PAINT The working qualities of the paint are the foundation of the style. Some painters prefer paint with more movement, or glide, others prefer paint with more density, or grab. The nominal behavior of the paint out of the tube is easily altered or adjusted by the medium, and, to a certain extent, by the ground. It is often assumed that commercial paint must be better than primitive older paint because it is the result of Superior Modern Technology. It is also often assumed that profit-oriented mod-
ern paint must be worse than the Sacred Handmade Paint of Yore. When these assumptions interact, hairs are split, and feathers tend to fly. Can better quality paint be defined technically? Yes, but it is not about the particle size in micrometers, or how perfectly the pigment is dispersed. The highest quality paint contains no chemicals or driers, the most pigment, the highest quality oil, and the least amount of the simplest ingredient, such as beeswax or fumed silica, to keep the pigment in suspension. Its shelf life would be relatively short, and not the same for all pigments. The latter of these criteria – the quality of the oil, and the amount of pigment – in fact eliminate all paint currently made. This does not mean that modern commercial paint is ‘bad.’ Modern commercial paint is simply the result of a set of interactions between manufacturer and marketplace, a situation with specific strengths and limitations. Awareness of these allows an informed set of decisions to be made about what type of paint to work with in a given situation.1
METAL SOAP FORMATION Though the paint appears to be dry, the chemistry of the paint film continues to evolve for centuries. Later in its life, the saturated fatty acids released by the aged polymerized oil interact with the various metallic pigments used for most of oil painting’s history to produce amorphous metallic soaps. This process is enabled by high levels of humidity (..), and has been studied most with regard to lead soaps. Metal soaps in the paint film enhance stability in the short run, but ultimately lead to degradation (..). This is principally because, as metal soaps crystallize and grow over time, they can cause various issues in the paint film such as surface cracks, eruptions, and delamination (..). Yet, paradoxically, research has shown that metallic ions are also necessary for the formation of a durable paint film (..). Because this phenomenon takes so long to develop, investigations of this are recent, meaning we know far more about the long term behavior of historic pigments than modern ones. However, research has identified the metals whose pigments are most likely to cause metal soap formation as: aluminum, manganese, copper, lead, and zinc. The metals least likely to cause soap formation over time are: calcium, iron, chromium, titanium, and cobalt (..). There are subtleties involved: the Mars pigments, as pure iron oxides, and the ochres, do not cause metal soap formation, but raw and burnt sienna, with their manganese and aluminum components, do (..). Research has also shown that aluminum stearate – a metal soap itself – as a dispersing agent contributes to metal soap formation, even with pigments that do not form metal soaps readily. Finally, it is important to note that this process takes centuries. It can be discouraged
1 Recent conservation research has shown that the th century system of chemical additives can be responsible for a variety of relatively serious conservation issues over time, see The Modern System of Additives in section .. below. Some of the smaller manufacturers are aware of this, and are now making simpler, additive-free paint.
by paint without additives, pigments resistant to saponification, calcium carbonate in the paint film, using a less acidic oil such as walnut instead of linseed, and by protecting the painting from excess humidity.
. THE OIL The traditional oils were long thought to be linseed oil in the north and Spain, and walnut oil in Italy, but research has revealed more general use of both. This is aligned with recent findings that explore the records of the materials trade network in Europe, highly developed even by the th century. At the Liegnitz Fair of , linseed, walnut, hemp, and poppy oil were available, with poppy eight times the cost of linseed (TAM). Terms such as linseed oil are often discussed as if they represent singular, finite things. But all oils from a given plant species are not the same. Factors such as the cultivar, climate, and degree of ripeness at harvesting all affect how an oil performs. Another, equally important and complex set of factors comes into play when the oil is refined. As such, a given oil, raw or refined, can be clearly preferable to another of the same name.
OILS IN GENERAL USE Linseed oil dries most quickly, and makes the strongest paint film, but its large proportion of linolenic acid (C:) also gives it the most potential to yellow. The De Mayerne Manuscript has many recipes designed to diminish this, and the Northern European painter’s opinions there are generally in favor of walnut oil, although Van Dyck prefers ethanol-refined linseed oil, which is relatively non-yellowing. The use of poppy oil grew in Holland in the th century, and is associated with the bright palette of floral specialists. Poppy oil is slow drying, and can wrinkle if too much raw, commercially refined oil is used in a layer, but is the most reliably non-yellowing of the traditional oils. It makes a relatively soft film, but, if prepolymerized somewhat, this may be a long- term advantage on stretched canvas. Walnut oil is closely associated with older Italian painting and provides a happy medium between linseed and poppy, especially in a warm, dry climate where it dries quickly. Hemp is mentioned occasionally in older texts, is between walnut and linseed in its drying time, and yellows less than expected based on that drying time. Historic use of hemp may have been impeded by its initial dark green colour, but this is fugitive. Grapeseed and sunflower oil – refined, all nearly colourless – are similar to poppy oil. They are non-yellowing, very slow drying, and make a relatively soft film. Very small additions of these can be used for colours that dry quickly in the tube, or, autoxidized or heat-polymerized somewhat, to extend the open time of a medium, allowing an alla prima painting to continue over a few days. It is important to be cautious with these slower drying oils, using them in small amounts, and in a heat polymerized state when possible.
FACTORS AFFECTING DRYING SPEED Each of the oils has a native drying speed, but certain factors aid drying in all oils. Any oil in a paint film dries faster when: . It has been autoxidized or prepolymerized. . Ambient room temperature is higher. . The pigments used accelerate drying. . A drier is added to the oil, see Driers, section ..
THE BEST OIL The debate about the ‘best’ oil for painting has gone on for centuries. Much is sometimes made of the film strength of linseed oil versus walnut oil, and linseed oil does make a stronger film. But most Italian Renaissance paintings were made with walnut oil, probably heat-bodied in many cases, and are still with us. Much is made of the potential of linseed oil to yellow, based on the th century experience with low quality oil. But it is more accurate to say that unrefined linseed oil yellows, hot-pressed (hardware store) linseed oil yellows, alkali-refined commercial linseed oil may yellow, depending on the refining process. Linseed oil is also more sensitive to darkness and humidity, making the use of a sequestering agent (see section ..), or an addition of % of a slightly prepolymerized unsaturated oil like poppy advisable for brighter colour schemes. Quality commercially refined linseed oil, though seldom cold-pressed, no longer darkens overtly. On the other hand, this oil dries slowly, four to seven days in an unpigmented test is common. However, an unrefined organic cold-pressed oil, which is then hand refined using the methods below, dries as quickly as one or two days in an unpigmented test, overnight when used with a palette of traditional pigments, yellows only slightly more than walnut oil when new, and about equally once aged. Commercial walnut, or commercial cold- pressed linseed oil are naturally suited to finer or thinner painting; the faster drying water-refined linseed oils to work with denser paint and more force. Still, the blandness of commercial oils can be transformed to some extent by the medium. As such, the best oil is still a personal choice: the one that both suits the painter’s style and is reliably available.
A CORNERSTONE OF THE OLDER CRAFT The way the oil is refined and subsequently modified is a basic cornerstone of the older craft with great potential to enhance the style and longevity of the work. This body of knowledge was lost to the increasing use of commercial materials in the th and th century, then virtually eliminated in the textbook th century version of the craft, resulting in the current MAS view of the oil as merely a placeholder for the pigment. Printed remarks about ‘the oil’ are about the readily available oil of the author’s period, and can be quite misleading Older oils were hand-pressed, and hand-refined. As such, regardless of the plant of origin, these oils had more body or snap than their refined modern versions. This behavior can be replicated with any cold-pressed,
unrefined oil by hand-refining it. These oils are typically available from nutritional or specialty sources, and can be extremely high quality. As the fastest drying oil, the change in linseed oil from the commercial to hand-refined version is the most dramatic, and the most profound in terms of the options this change makes available. De Mayerne collected many methods for refining oil, Eastlake, Merrifield, and even Maroger, in his posthumously published A la recherche des secrets des grands peintres (), concur that beginning with a cold-pressed, washed oil is crucial. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with quality commercially refined linseed oil at this point, but the natural behaviors and effects of hand-refined oil are unavailable with it, because the rheological potential of the oil is removed, rather than enhanced, by the commercial refining process.
FROM MEDIUMS AND VARNISHES SECTION :
. PROPORTION AND EVOLUTION Commercial paint is convenient, but also features the uniformity of a product, making the medium’s potential of perennial interest. The th- th century craft contains many technical variations, but these proved stable because the craft was handmade from the root of the process. Beginning in the th century with Watteau, perhaps the first well- known painter to disregard the craft (..), painters occasionally concentrated on short term results using complex materials. This means the medium is an area where a great deal has gone wrong: one of Turner’s paintings famously cracked within a week of leaving the studio (..). Once the paint was made commercially, the medium followed. The th century contained many proprietary formulas such as Roberson’s Medium, some books of formulas even contained blanks that could be filled by sending the author further payment! (..). In th and th century texts a separate medium component is given. But the concept does not exist in De Mayerne. In the palette illustration of entry , De Mayerne indicates a large blank space where the colours are mixed with the oil: the simplest system possible. In a letter written early in the th century, Constable warns against period ‘nostrums’ in favor of linseed oil alone (..). Still, later in his career in a notoriously damp climate, Constable used poppy oil, and the sequestering triad of egg, resin, and wax (..). Even for a painter committed to simplicity, technique evolved due to the nature of the medium itself. Literary detective work is often used to establish the pedigree of a material. The detective work may be sincere and painstaking, but the territory itself is quicksand. The amount of information actually written by working painters is small, and has been gone over assiduously. Scholarship has identified the occasional ‘impossible’ recipe – possibly
due to a mischievous copyist, possibly to a lost code – and there are also numerous improbable recipes, especially for varnish, clearly not sourced from practice. This occurred because books made up of various craft secrets were a growth industry for centuries, often attracting ‘authors’ who were simply collators and copyists. This can make the identification of specific materials obscure, and details of procedure non- existent. The secrecy of guilds and working painters means that the evidence presented in these texts is often highly condensed and equivocal. Even with a reliable source such as De Mayerne, a question exists about how much the mettlesome – and perhaps meddlesome – doctor was actually told. Within the craft, half the story is as effective as none, and far more polite. Rubens, for example, does not mention egg white to De Mayerne, a material now thought to be part of his technique (..). The consistent conservatism of older practice established by the NG research is logical for the artisan with a reputation to establish and protect. The degree of accomplishment in this work, and its hallowing over time, make it easy to forget that painting was most often a means to economic security in an aristocratic milieu with exacting expectations about the objects that represented it.
FORMULA A : IN PAINT : IN PAINT : IN PAINT
Wax % .% % .% Resin % .% % .% Chalk % .% % % Oil % .% % .%
FORMULA B : IN PAINT : IN PAINT : IN PAINT
Wax % % % .% Resin % .% % .% Chalk % % % % Oil % % % .% Table : Relative Ingredient Ratios Proportions offer helpful guidelines. Accurate measurement and consistent medium-to-paint proportions help the process be reliable and replicable. Through excluding or minimizing solvent, denser and richer mediums can be used in relatively small amounts by conditioning the paint with them before beginning, see section .. Say we want to stay below % wax and % resin in the paint film. With the mediums in Table above, Formula A can be used at medium to both and paint, whereas Formula B, by containing more wax and resin to begin with, is better used at medium to paint. Paying attention to the relative
ingredient proportions in the medium, combined with the proportion of medium to paint, allows the working personality and look of a given system to be replicated, altered, or refined easily based on how it looks, and whether the colour remains reliably bright over time.
. . MEDIUM TYPES There are six basic medium types. Which medium works best depends on how the style uses colour, whether the system is alla prima or indirect, whether the surface smooth or broken, and, last, but not least, on the quality of the oil. In larger terms, the best medium is the one that is invisible, allowing the most natural expression of the hands.
OIL-ALONE MEDIUMS The primary instance of the medium is the oil in the paint. Paint was originally handmade with oil that was cold-pressed, and hand-refined. The oil was also probably aged, preheated or thickened slightly in most cases. This type of oil is more stable, and more protective against humidity. A technical article often reports the medium in older painting as simply ‘oil.’ But this can be many different types of oil, most of which are not in the th century texts, or the current frame of reference. In reaction to overemphasis on solvents and resins in the th century textbooks, more painters are interested in painting with oil-alone. This is supported both by the findings of conservation – oil-alone films are stronger, less likely to delaminate over time – and those of technical art history – oil-alone films are dominant th – th century painting. However, here are two important points. First, this body of work was most often made with a lower chroma group of pigments with high chroma midtones, using the white light-brown shadow convention, and value scales that often emphasized chiaroscuro over colour. This approach places the viewer’s eye in an overall warm shadow matrix that is very effective at masking moderate darkening of the oil. Second, contemporary realism is unlikely to be executed in the older way, often featuring the brightest overall colour possible. This means that, while brilliant pigments may mask it temporarily, modern realism is likely to emphasize darkening of the medium over time. As such, nothing is more important to an oil-alone technique than the quality of the oil itself, used with an acute awareness of the Fat Over Lean principle, see section .., especially if the work is on stretched canvas. If the materials used are commercial, the oil quality has been pre-determined, and this may or may not be non-yellowing enough over time unless the painting is made in ultra-thin paint, which conservation has established has its own longevity issues. This means that long-term brightness in an oil-alone technique may be simplest to achieve technically the same way it was in older practice, with hand-refined oil in both the paint and the medium, the stability of which allows further indirect layers until brightness itself stabilizes. Conversely, the style can be adjusted to work with quality commercial
paint. The styles of th century painters such as Lucien Freud and Giorgio Morandi suggest that they may have been created to reference the traditional palette, yet with awareness of the limitations of the oil in commercial paint of their period. Experience suggests that high quality, additive-free commercial paint can do better at this point (), but this is a situation that is always in flux, therefore one to be aware of in terms of envisioning how the style can most effectively make use of the paint.
SATURATION VIA THICKER OIL For use in a separate medium, oil can be thickened three ways to saturate the final paint film. These are compared in Oil Mediums, section .. Autoxidized oils: These are thickened by exposure to air. They are the most adhesive or resinous group, especially made with one of the water-refined linseed oils in section .. Heat polymerized oils: These are thickened in response to high heat. They flow and level for smooth surface styles, and make long, sinuous lines with soft brushes. An autoxidized oil can be heat-polymerized, as in the Olio d’ Graves procedure in section .... A heat polymerized oil can be autoxidized as well, this occurs quickly compared to raw oil. Oxidized and saponified oils: Oils can also be thickened in the presence of air and a metallic salt, historically, lead metal, carbonate, or oxide, a process called oxidation-saponification. These oils have a gelled quality that lends itself to elegantly condensed form, see section ... Pros: Simple procedure at the easel, technically simple and potentially highly stable over time in layers. Cons: May darken over time if not sequestered, see section .., based on oil quality, quantity, type, observance of fat over lean, and climate. Substrate: Panels or stretched canvas.
PUTTY MEDIUMS Another approach involves altering the paint’s behavior using the putty medium derived from recent research into the methods of Rembrandt and Velázquez. These painters sometimes modified their paint with ground chalk or calcite, respectively; ground silica is also recorded in Venetian painting. Putty mediums aid stability, and create a variety of textures from broken to smooth. They work well with lower chroma palettes and chiaroscuro, as they were originally used, but may benefit from the sequestering agents, section .., to maintain full brilliance using vivid modern colour. See section .. Pros: Increased stability and brightness when used moderately with quality oil, charismatic application potential. Cons: Overuse of thick putty on canvas can cause long term cracking. A style using impasto beyond highlights may take time to master. As with oil mediums, may darken if not sequestered based on oil quality, quantity, type, observance of fat over lean, and climate. Substrate: Panels or stretched canvas.
EGG EMULSION MEDIUMS A third type of medium derives from the interaction of oil paint with the older egg tempera medium, incorporating a small quantity of egg – either whole, the white, or the yolk – into the paint. Egg emulsion mediums are often used with resin, but do not need to be. Egg yolk: The yolk gives a matte look, finer discreteness and handling, but is also an arresting agent, and helps keep the colours brighter over time. Egg yolk ages inflexibly, and is safest on panels, but the amount needed to make a difference is quite small, between two and three percent by volume. This group also includes egg emulsion mediums. These tend to lower gloss and brighten chroma. They feature the perm- anent, quick setting and drying, character of egg yolk, and produce semi-blendable paint in a wide range of behaviors. See section ... Egg white: Very small amounts mixed into the medium give a thixotropic paint with resistance to blending and charismatic handling. Whole egg: This balances the behavior of the yolk and white, and is typically seen in tempera grassa formulas. Pros: Increased brightness and chroma relative to straight oil paint, many possible stable combinations of ingredients. Cons: Must be made, often to order, requires understanding emulsion properties, conditioning on the palette, proportional discipline, mediums with egg yolk require refrigeration to keep. Substrate: Panels only beyond very small additions.
OTHER EMULSION MEDIUMS A fourth medium type is an emulsion made using a thickener such as starch, methyl cellulose, or hide glue as the aqueous element. These additions can be used in greater amounts to make water phase tempera on panels, or, with less water and in smaller amounts, as an oil phase emulsion to modify oil paint. Oil phase emulsions have density with pressure sensitivity and add an element of smush – the mashed potato effect – to the paint’s rheology. See section .. Pros: Increased brightness and chroma relative to straight oil paint, many possible stable combinations of ingredients and impasto potentials. Cons: Must be made, often to order, require understanding of emulsion properties, conditioning on the palette, and proportional discipline. Substrate: Panels, stretched canvas if used in moderation.
RESIN MEDIUMS A fifth type of medium uses resins from trees. There are many types of resin with different optical and working characteristics. Resins can be dissolved in oil via heat, or dissolved in solvent, making two basic groups. Hard resin varnish: Hard resins such as amber or the harder copals must be dissolved by heat, making oil varnishes. These protect the film well from humidity and, as such, from the effects of aging, but tend to darken because of the temperature the oil is heated to, and because of the oxidation of the solvent that is used to dilute the product.
Soft resin varnish: Soft resins such as damar or the balsams can be dissolved with solvent to make spirit varnishes, but can also be heated into the oil without solvent. There are also resins, such as sandarac or Manila copal, that are typically dissolved with heat, but can also be dissolved in a strong solvent such as spike lavender. These materials offer damar varnish alternatives in the medium, see section .... The NG research has shown that ‘small amounts’ of resin, predominantly softer ‘pine resins,’ were used consistently for certain colours, but not globally, i.e. in a medium used for the entire painting, in pre-th century painting practice. Resins add luminosity, and help protect against drying down or sinking-in: the technical basis of their recurrence as ‘the lost secret,’ see section .., below. The reliable way to incorporate resin is in a ‘small amount’ to add brightness and alter paint handling, not in larger amounts for increased saturation or bravura handling. In larger amounts, brittleness and darkening may not occur quickly, but do occur. Small additions of beeswax may mitigate this to an extent by protecting the paint film further from humidity and oxidation. See sections .-. Pros: Increased sequestering and luminosity in layers in small amounts. Cons: Darkening, brittleness in larger amounts. Darkening of oxidized solvent if used. Lower long term film integration of spirit varnishes. Substrate: Panels or stretched canvas.
BEESWAX MEDIUMS A sixth medium type uses beeswax in the paint. Wax is sequestering and the most flexible material in painting, but beyond very small amounts, is not used alone because this makes a softer paint film, especially at higher temperatures. It is, however, useful with other medium ingredients, as in the various sequestering mediums based on heat polymerized oil, soft resin, and beeswax. See Beeswax, section ., and its formulas. Pros: Sequestering, increases flexibility, set at room temperature, edge interest and painterly handling. Use at less than % of the paint film. Cons: Overuse makes a soft paint film. Long term darkening is reported for th century paint made with large amounts of wax (..). Substrate: Panels or stretched canvas.
MIXED MEDIUM TYPES These mediums often have complex working characteristics. Balancing the behavior of disparate ingredients allows these mediums to do unlikely things. The mechanics of this process can be deceptive. If, for example, a medium is made from three ingredients – oil, chalk, and egg white – it appears that there are three axes of behavior to consider. But the character of the oil is an important fourth axis. Refining procedure, age, and type of polymerization, and level of polymerization, are all factors. A little highly autoxidized hand-refined linseed oil, for example,
tends to make the paint tighter, while commercial heat-polymerized oils such as stand oil or burnt plate oil, make it looser. Pros: Can create unique balanced working characteristics. Cons: Can also create confusion, requires proportional discipline and awareness for success.
. . MEDIUM CHARACTERISTICS The medium’s job is to enable natural painting. The basic issue is how to balance the paint’s movement with how much it stays put. Is loose paint better, with plenty of glide, or should it have more hold, or grab? Grab can be increased until the paint no longer moves freely, introducing more potential for texture. Is this interesting, or frustrating? Should layering be possible wet-in-wet, a working balance of grab and glide? Or is the seamless, even elegant, blending of a single layer more important? Can grab and glide be balanced for both possibilities at once? At first, answers to these questions are not made, but just happen. Over time, a personal pattern becomes clear. At one extreme the paint is facile, mobile, and ever-blendable in one layer. This is a natural func- tion of commercial paint, or a medium of thin oil on a non-absorbent ground. At the other extreme, the paint sets firmly in discrete pieces, the technique is incremental, the surface is broken. This is a function of paint handmade with aged oil, or a medium with thicker hand- refined oil, an arresting agent, an absorbent ground, or combinations thereof. Between these poles many possibilities exist. Any medium has a zone of functional viscosity, which varies, slightly to greatly, with the ground and the brushes. This is also a function of temperature: colder temperatures typically make mediums denser. Formulating a medium is about adjusting its physical characteristics. These include the proportion of grab and glide the medium gives the paint, and the influence of the physical depth – thickness or thinness – of the paint. Pressure and timing may also come into play. When working wet- in-wet, pressure tends to decrease as the depth of paint increases, a case where firm pressure with a clean brush can result in blending, ploughing, or removal. With some medium types, the brushstrokes remain discrete if placed, but can be blended with more pressure, allowing a möbius of wet-in-wet options. Open time is extended with materials that dry slowly. Using solvent or materials that set, open time becomes another form of pressure. Finally, the medium can enhance or diminish saturation. Options are best explored by adjusting the system incrementally, and writing changes down for future reference.
THICK AND THIN Paint can be thickened or thinned by the medium. Thin paint is more literal, potentially more detailed, often perceived as less charismatic, but is also less likely to darken after drying. Thin paint is necessary for underpainting in an indirect method, and traditional academic technique always keeps the paint on the thin side. This is typically done
with a small amount of solvent, thin oil, a mix of solvent and oil, or a medium combining resin varnish, thicker oil, and solvent. Solvent adds mobility or glide until it evaporates. Thin oil adds glide for a full working day unless the ground is absorbent. Soft resin varnish introduces an element of grab as the solvent in the varnish evaporates, very small amounts of hard resin varnish introduce thixotropy or boing. Paint can be thickened with many different types of medium. Thick paint tends to have a larger application scale, naturally making a style that is broader, or more painterly. It is capable of an enormous variety of behaviors, and is often seen in expressive alla prima work, or the final layer of an indirect painting. But, especially in a system based on linseed oil, care needs to be taken to avoid thick paint drying down in value and brilliance in the first few months of the painting’s life. This is not necessarily disastrous, but can be avoided. See sections ...-.
GRAB There are three types of grab: one related to stickiness, one to thixotropy, and one to physical density. Resins increase grab; soft resin spirit varnishes in a sticky way, hard resin oil varnishes in a thixotropic way. Autoxidized oils such as sun oil and studio oil increase grab with moderate stickiness. Of the commercial thicker oils, only triple boiled oil (TBO) increases grab. Chalk, calcite or marble dust, and fine silica (quartz, flint, cristobalite) increase grab by increasing density. Wax increases grab in a cool studio, but not in a warm one. Small additions of egg – yolk, white, or whole – increase grab, but not as much as hard resin varnish. Egg white, as the water-based medium of manuscript illumination, may have had early use to arrest the paint, and is now suspected as an aspect of the Rubens style (..). Earlier st century research noted that the small amounts involved are difficult to find in older paint films (..), but this situation may be changing as a result of proteomics (..). Very small amounts of water-based additions such as methyl cellulose, starch gel, and hide glue, add a gentle but persistent grab that helps brushstrokes remain discrete, and hold a firm edge. Increasing the water-based addition makes layering and broken surfaces possible. More grab is helpful in small scale work, where flowing paint may not make the appropriate level of detail. Grab can be increased globally by an absorbent ground. Yet too much grab can mean difficulty in blending, or even in application, for the opening layer of paint.
GLIDE Thin or heat-bodied oils increase glide, as does solvent until it evaporates. A fumed silica gel increases the glide of thicker paint. Bone ash makes a medium more slippery or mobile. Stand oil or burnt plate oil, while thick, also increase glide, to the point of possibly melting in larger amounts. Glide with thinner studio or sun oil is sticky; aged or heat-polymerized oil has more glide regardless of density. Glide is helpful in larger scale work, increasing the sense of organic movement
and finesse. Glide is influenced by various factors: a putty made with calcite has more glide than a putty made with chalk, unless the oil involved is preheated or aged. Wax increases glide in a warmer studio. Soft brushes require paint with more glide than firmer ones. Glide can be enhanced globally by a minimally absorbent ground. Glide enhances blending and facility, but too much glide can lead to lack of cohesion.
RHEOLOGY The rheology of the paint is the sum of its physical working char- acteristics, how it flows from the brush. Paint can be thick or thin, mobile or adhesive, long (elastic) or short (buttery!), leveling and blendable, or quick setting and tending towards impasto. These qualities typically moderate one another when ingredients are combined, and unusually balanced combinations are possible. The rheology of hand- made paint is far more sensitive to traditional modifiers than MAS paint.
THIXOTROPY A paint is called thixotropic if it is gelatinous but mobile, and sets again after being moved. Scientifically, the fluid exhibits increased viscosity at rest, but decreased viscosity under shear stress. Thixotropic paint is gently adhesive, with elasticity in motion, and forms low relief. This is the result of a combination of grab, glide, and viscosity, and is typically achieved by a physical, rather than chemical, reaction. Paint handmade with hand-refined linseed oil is inherently thixotropic, more so if the oil is aged. A small addition of hard resin varnish, elastic oil, traditional burnt plate oil, thicker hand-refined studio or sun oil, or ecks makes even commercial paint thixotropic, as does the silica gel, the use of a chalk putty medium, a small addition of egg yolk, hide glue, starch, or methyl cellulose. The oils and varnishes have more elasticity, the water-based ingredients are shorter and tighter. These characteristics can be balanced many ways by the proportions of the formula.
DEPTH The behavior of the system changes relative to the amount of paint that has been put on wet-in-wet. Once the ground has been covered, more or less movement may become progressively possible with the same paint depending on how much the paint beneath it has set. Does paint go into paint, over paint, or can it do both depending on the amount of pressure and the brushes in use? Experience allows finely tuned layering as the painting progresses based on how pressure is applied relative to depth. A useful paint viscosity for alla prima or completion is one that is layerable with soft brushes, but can also be moved or ploughed with bristle brushes. This develops confident handling as colour and form can be adjusted by either adding or subtracting paint.
TIMING AND SET Mediums can be formulated to use timing for various painterly effects. The work develops on a schedule as the medium sets progressively. Timing is focal when using a quick-setting soft resin varnish in a medium or couch, but also in an extended alla prima system where the painting is finished over several days. Timing is related to depth: how much paint is put on, and how fast. The same system may produce different results when executed at different speeds. A medium that becomes sticky makes it possible for the paint to set, or become tight, too quickly. Increasing the application speed results in a looser feeling again. Conversely, if slower application works better, the open time of the medium can be increased. Alla prima work is more likely to use timing than work in layers, although the final layer in an indirect painting often benefits from a medium which adds liveliness. Serial adjustments to medium proportions can create systems with a surprising balance of opposite qualities.
PRESSURE With certain mediums, the relative pressure of the brush becomes an important factor in the look of the painting. Pressure can be used at different intensities to apply more paint, blend existing paint, or plough into previous paint. Pressure is an aspect of any additive system, but becomes focal with thixotropic materials. Pressure is also related to brush type: softer brushes have a more expressive range of pressure than firmer ones. A soft brush ploughs smoothly, a bristle brush ploughs bluntly, with more potential for removal, or for flipping obscured colour back onto the surface. Eastlake notes this method of weaving layers of paint together inscrutably in relation to Rembrandt’s later technique.
BRUSHES AND APPLICATION SCALE The medium is formulated for the style desired and the type of brush used. A viscous medium may quickly destroy fine brushes. Conversely, it is difficult to apply a thin, flowing medium with coarse brushes. Yet, there are also times when a slight mismatch between paint and brushes can produce interesting results. The viscosity of the paint can be adjusted to be mobile with bristle brushes, but tight or layering with softer brushes, allowing elements of both types of handling in one layer. By enabling a variety of manipulations, this offers flexibility with one palette of paint. The scale of the work is also a factor. A dense medium with a larger application scale may feel lugubrious on a small painting, but unify a large one. A quick setting medium may make appropriate detail on a small painting, but feel fussy or constrained on a large one.
SATURATION Medium ingredients either enhance or diminish saturation. Matte or unsaturated paint has a higher value structure, more reflective brilliance, and more emphasis on the pigment, as seen in fresco, or tempera. Glossy or saturated paint has a deeper value structure and the potential for great
optical depth: the original appeal of oil as a medium. In general, paintings made with opaque paint look better with low saturation, allowing the viewer to look at them. Conversely, paintings made with transparent pigments and optical colour separation (section .) look better with high saturation, encouraging the viewer to look into them. Prepolymerized oil, resin varnish, and egg white enhance saturation. Stone dust, egg yolk, starch gel, or beeswax, reduce saturation, requiring further thick oil to dry with a gloss. A conditioning medium (section .) sets up the surface quality desired globally, before the work begins. This can be as simple as mixing a small amount of thicker oil into the paint for more density, movement, and saturation. An alla prima medium can be quite saturating, but be wary of over-saturation. This is especially possible with commercial heat-polymerized oils – stand oil, burnt plate oil (BPO) and triple boiled oil (TBO) – and can lead to a slow lowering of tone over time. For indirect painting, it is important to observe the fat over lean principle, increasing saturation in small increments as the layers proceed. How small is a function of the number of layers. Using increased resin to make fine saturated layers is not recommended as these layers are prone to both long-term darkening and delamination. A traditional glossy surface is made most reliably by a final layer whose saturation is oil-based. There is then no potential for the varnish to alter the value scale, and the varnish will be on, not in, the paint.
FROM METHODS SECTION :
. ANIMATION AND ORGANIZATION Beyond professional portraiture and urban murals, relatively few paintings are any longer commissioned, or requested: most work is made because the painter wants or needs to make it. Given this relatively primal impetus – the physical generation of a personal myth – it is helpful if creative questions are balanced by a logical method. This is similar to packing carefully before venturing into the wilderness. The creative unknown presents sufficient challenges; further gaming with fortune is unnecessary. The intuitive aspect of painting functions in the present moment, often altering the best-laid plans. Barring a pixel by pixel approach, little danger exists of the process becoming over- organized. A consistent method encourages the process to evolve within it. When the process has certainty, more can be ventured with confidence, paving the way for an intuitive and creative finish. Variations in method are endless, but are derived from two basic approaches, direct and indirect. The direct or alla prima approach typically places animation first, adding just enough organization to balance it again. The indirect or layered approach places organization first, adding meaning and intuition as the painting progresses. Both have been
used to produce great painting, but both are more functional when their potential limitations are recognized, and factored into the system. The typical drawback of the direct approach is that the painting may not achieve enough functional balance in the allotted time frame. Usually this is about organization being fractured by the energy of the approach: the painting is charismatic, but unresolved; sound and fury exist without significance. Conversely, the detachment of the indirect approach may simply exclude liveliness, ever. In this case, organization overwhelms vivacity. Great prowess may be demonstrated, but the viewer is being lectured, rather than engaged. The earliest systems were indirect, and this approach has two basic approaches. The precise method of early painting used panoptical detail throughout the picture plane, resulting in a tension between deep space and the way the democratic detail tends to flatten spatial depth, as well as a tension between the stillness of the figures and the relative busyness of the composition. The later essential method flowered in the th century and featured less formality, more selectivity, atmospheric emphasis, and the introduction of various types of psychological mood. Following the procedure of egg tempera, the early method used a series of exacting operations designed to produce a formally perfect object. All compositional elements were established first through a detailed drawing, followed by a complete, often full-value, monochrome underpainting, then by thin, discrete paint layers that conform to the pattern of the drawing. Broadly, this is the method of most oil painting of the th and th century, the major technical exception being Bosch (..). Later, executed in different pigments, and often more broadly, it is also the approach of the various European Academies, of Ingres, Leighton, Alma-Tadema, and of much recent neo-academic realism. The essential method may have evolved because the precise method was so time consuming, perhaps also because it tended to produce images that, though intensely rendered, were relatively static. The ‘snapshot’ approach seen in so much th century painting seems casual, but was highly engineered, based on both visual logic and working efficiency. Painting evolved out of a timeless or frozen perfection, into a livelier finish that emphasized the present moment: both within the painting, and for the viewer. Painters realized that it was only necessary to make the detail once – at the end – and developed methods of working from larger compositional shapes to smaller ones. Sometimes this was done in increments, at other times as much as possible was accomplished in one sitting before beginning again. This led to a condensed procedure that finished the work in a single sitting: the direct, or alla prima style. This type of painting embraces experience, assurance, and physical engagement to create art, rather than a methodical campaign organized in stages. Both the alla prima and indirect methods involve personal adjustments to the paint, and how it is applied. In this situation, daily involvement with the materials informs and enriches the work.
Planning and theory have a place, but above all, execution must be natural. The system creates itself intuitively via experience, but what this means often evolves, or even changes considerably, over time.
. ALLA PRIMA PAINTING The focus on spontaneous creative freedom in th century painting led to a growing interest in the alla prima approach. In this method, the painting is made in one sitting. The length of this sitting, and the defin- ition of completion, are flexible. There are many sub-systems of alla prima technique, some emphasize speed, others proceed methodically over several days. On the surface, the alla prima combination of uncon- scious force with incremental organization presents an effortless way to develop creatively. By condensing the process, even turning it into a race, alla prima can arrive at relatively evolved pictoral results quickly. However, as in life, there are no guarantees or panaceas in painting, and the ideological promotion of alla prima as an enchanted threshold is misleading. This is something Matisse took pains to illustrate by documenting the twenty-two stages of Large Reclining Nude or The Pink Nude () before he considered it complete. In life, the painting looks spontaneous, but its process was not: the painting was scraped back after twenty-one of the photographs were taken. Using the alla prima method reliably requires a well-developed understanding of drawing, compo- sition, and colour for the work to evolve, both in a given painting and as an overall process. Even so, alla prima can be a double-edged sword in practice. Certain paintings end up better than others, and the intensity of the technique may make it difficult to understand why. A charismatic alla prima painting can also arrive in a zugzwang situation where it cannot evolve without a significant amount of deconstruction first. Yet, if procedural hurdles begin to curtail exploration, or define finished, it is difficult for the work to grow, resulting in energetic repetition. More fundamentally, like a piano that is only played fortissimo, force applied consistently can diminish its effectiveness, or translate into a subtext of prolonged emergency for the viewer. It is difficult for the process to develop when its conclusion is arbitrary or predefined. The creative process may well have rules, but millennia of art history demonstrate that these exist in the present moment only, making their secret safely beyond method or theory. Certainty is a necessary and attractive aspect of finishing, but it is more genuine, or lifelike, when tempered by doubt. In the context of the race, alla prima tends to acknowledge the speed of the hare, but not the diligence or persistence of the tortoise. This aligns with the modern emphasis on production, the studio as factory, but can also produce formulaic panache. Accomplished alla prima practitioners are aware of these issues, and introduce various balancing elements into the equation. Alla prima can incorporate bolder medium options than working in layers, and these can be further varied by the type and quality of the ground. However, though done is a single layer, alla prima work may still be subject to
drying down if too much paint is applied, or too fat a medium is used, see Wet-in-Wet Paint, section .... Small alla prima paintings, or alla prima paintings by skilled practitioners such as Avigdor Arikha, or Joaquín Sorolla, can contain significant detail, but more often this type of work distills a situation to its essence in an hour or two. At its best, the alla prima approach conveys a response with energy and bravura, but these qualities still require an element of self-examination to develop creative consistency. This has led to a variety of alla prima methods: gets tacky or sticky relatively quickly. This can be a conditioning medium with a thicker oil-in-solvent medium, or a very thin layer of chalk putty applied with a knife. A coat of absorbent acrylic gesso is also helpful. Warm weather thins oil and any resin varnish, freezing weather makes varnish thicker and oil gel. Gelled oil is fine if the painting is placed flat once indoors. Wax may slide in hot weather even in small amounts. The putty medium works well outside if it is thicker in warmer weather, thinner in cooler weather. A small container of chalk or marble dust can also be kept on the palette and used to tighten the paint. The paint can be conditioned for more movement in the beginning, then tightened progressively with chalk. Any Conditioning Medium (section .) can be used for this at medium to - paint, giving a variety of technically straightforward options to explore.
. MIXING COLOUR We see the colours, but not how they were made, making mixing technique a notable ‘lost secret,’ yet one about which little has ever been written. Systematic mixing makes more options, therefore more colours, available. With intuitive mixing, the results are less precise, but can have unusual force. These opposites inform one another: experience with intuitive mixing creates more personal systematic mixing; experience with systematic mixing leads to more reliable intuitive mixing.
. . INTUITIVE MIXING This is the standard modern method, often based on an extensive selection of colours. These are mixed to order on the typically large palette and then applied to the painting. The aim is to either put down the right colour, once, or to cycle once from dark to light towards the right colour. In either case the goal is typically the vivacious, casually elegant surface originally popularized by Hals, and recast in many th century variations from Hopper to Matisse. With intuitive mixing, the key of the colour must be perceived, or chosen, early on, because each colour decision alters the context of the entire painting. This can be difficult to manage at first, but the method allows adjustment, and practice develops facility. Mixing spontaneously has a powerful directness, but needs its own form of restraint to make sure the colour is not clogged by over-application, or tortured by over- correction. In current alla prima practice, this method is often used with minimal actual mixing, allowing evidence of the original, brightest
colour to remain beneath somewhat more refined colour on top. If the context begins to get muddy, titanium white and vivid modern primaries come to the rescue. Areas that are more worked create contrast of labor with areas that remain fresh. Experienced alla prima painters often use a more rococo medium to generate charming accidents that offset or soften the rigorousness of the system. The potential downsides of this approach are: colour that is raw or fragmented to the point of disharmony, the difficulty of replicating spontaneity, an arbitrary definition of finished, and the exhaustion of chromatic guesswork. These issues are reduced by a limited palette – usually recommended by alla prima practitioners – and working from dark to light, warm to cool, transparent to opaque, large to small. See The Axioms (section .).
. . . MUD Popular texts often give various prescriptions for how to avoid the evils of ‘mud.’ Colour should be applied fresh, not overmixed, and no more than three colours should ever be mixed together. These rules, or taboos, emphasize simple colour mixtures, which in turn emphasize brighter midtone colour. As a generic shortcut this works to some extent, and, using vivid primaries, produces the scholastic plus of happy colour. But the governing assumption is that mixing colour itself is dangerous. Which it is when colour is defined as a language of the creative unconscious. The taboo approach tends to make work dominated by midtone colour without a unifying envelope. Unless the spatial convention is specifically flat and the colour itself well-chosen – i.e., the Matisse cut-outs, notably made with the low saturation of gouache – this approach easily leads to a chromatic beauty contest, a situation that is inherently fatiguing to the eye. Emphasis on vivid colour can be self-defeating unless space is compressed, and form is simplified to accommodate it. Lyrical colourists who worked with somewhat dimensional space – Monet, Bonnard or Vuillard – tend to feature an accompanying subdued envelope in which brighter colours nest, becoming brighter by contrast. Bonnard’s later work often tests the limits of this in terms of how much brighter colour and fragmentation can be woven together, resulting in the paradox of compositions that are geometrically solid, but float or vibrate as well. Colour is always experienced relative to its context. As such, there is actually no such thing as a muddy colour. The issue is an unclear, or muddy, context for that colour. Every low chroma colour has a comple- ment that makes it appear more vivid in context. When colour is mapped to form for both value and temperature, mud is minimized. When colour is premixed according to The Predimensional Palette (section ..), muddy context is avoided via intuitive chromatic organization, the logical pattern of the colour types in the topography of the picture plane. Working wet-in-wet, another aid to keeping context clean is to change brushes often, or use a warm-cool brush system to help keep temperature shifts clean.
. . SYSTEMATIC MIXING In this method, the palette is broken down into a range of related colours before painting. The breakdown can be general, such as the secondaries and tertiaries of the primaries, or specific, such as colours designed for dawn, sunset, snow, a rainy day, and so on. The branching of the colours can be simple, as in a triad of three primaries turned first into six, then twelve colours. It can also be more complex, as in those twelve colours mixed incrementally with white and black into a set of colours for each of three values. This makes a total of eighty-four colours: thirty-six with white, thirty-six with black, and the twelve originals. This begins to approach the detailed logic of the French academic method, subject of much celebrated rebellion, but notably by painters who had been trained in it, and knew its principles well enough to alter them. This method remains an excellent teaching tool, and an organized way to create a refined value structure. A simplified approach to premixing reorganizes the palette from just colours, into the all the colour types that make up form, see The Predimensional Palette, below. Chromatic opportunity is built into this approach, setting the stage for a spontaneous yet subtle execution. This allows finely tuned colour, heightened recession, and aids in working with elements in white: white clothing, white flowers, clouds, etcetera. Premixing was advocated by Whistler as a teacher and allows access to what he called tone: augmented natural colour expressed through an enhanced atmospheric envelope. Colour can be slightly altered, or exaggerated to the point of Tonalism. Many Whistler paintings feature lyrical colour attenuated wet-in-wet with expressive paint. Gwen John was Whistler’s student, and used this concept later in her career to create austere, poetic colour relationships that hover inscrutably between two and three dimensions. Gwen John used an absorbent ground in her later work so that the premixed colours remained in less formal ‘blobs’ once applied. This technique can be varied many ways based on the density of the paint and the absorbency of the ground, and is for panels only. Note also that absorbency in a ground is diminished quickly by medium ingredients such as thicker oil, resin, and beeswax. Experience develops a feeling for the type and degree of premixing that makes sense to help unlock a given situation. Colour can achieve infinite subtlety, but executive perfection can be oppressively impressive if it becomes an end, rather than a means. The larger point of premixing is to develop an awareness of what feels helpful, or creates a fresh avenue of inquiry, rather than working with, or enthroning, control for its own sake. With control on the throne, inspiration tends to go into exile.
. . THE MIXING PRINCIPLES Modern colour mixing tends to follow the intuitive model. In this approach, there are two obvious mixing options. First, colours are mixed with one another to make either bright midtone colours or, if the colours are opposites, neutrals. Second, colours are mixed with white, making
lighter values and ultimately highlights. This is in contrast to the th century approach of painters such as Murillo, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Velázquez, who mixed colour using all six of the systematic options below. The older approach is not necessarily ‘better’ in terms of making art, but, as a tool, it does utilize the potential of colour completely, creating more apparent chroma and space in the value structure using a minimum number of pigments that assures unity. Understanding how colour is mapped to form by type also allows attenuation – lowered chroma – without the context becoming muddy, a useful tool in any style. Six types of premixes can be made: Highlights: Technically called tints, these are single colours mixed with white. Premixed light blue, light yellow, and pink easily create increased dimension in higher values. A specific colour can also be mixed for the light and an opposite shadow colour. Highlights are all relatively cool. Translights: These are highlight area colours made with the putty medium instead of white. They are translucent and warmer than highlights, creating a combined optical and physical temperature shift in lighter values Transparent neutrals: Daylight is a frame of reference we tend to take for granted, but which contains more neutrality than is often apparent. Neutral tints can be used as reflections, or emphasized to affect the overall mood. A premixed neutral can be made using opposite colours such as ultramarine and burnt sienna, a triad of transparent red, yellow, and blue, or black. Warm and cool versions of a neutral can be premixed. A progressive neutral is cooler for lighter values, warmer and for darker ones, or vice versa. In context with colours made with white, any colour made without white is relatively warm. Chromatic grays: Technically called tones, these are made with the transparent neutral and white, or the shadow colours (below) mixed with white. Chromatic grays, along with translights, increase the sense of realism and dimension in higher values and in darker value reflections. Midtones: Technically called hues, the bright colours on or near the edge of the colour wheel are used most in middle values, and are very warm compared to colours containing white. Mixes between adjacent midtones on the palette have a positive or major feeling; as the two colours verge on opposites these become more neutral. Even lighter midtone values, made with the medium and no white, are relatively warm, and contrast well with highlight values containing white. Shadows: Technically called shades, these are made from the midtone colours of the palette, each mixed with ten to fifteen percent black or with a mixed neutral tint. Shadow colours are warm, but not as warm as midtone colours. They give a range of chromatic shadow possibilities for any value when mixed into a lighter colour or with a little white.
APPENDIX II – THE HAND-REFINED LINSEED OILS
This family of oils demonstrates options that were available to older painters using hand refined linseed oil. This oil has the most potential character of the traditional oils, and also has the most potential to yellow, see section .... The causes of this are logical, see section .... To prevent darkening, see section ....
HURRYING SLOWLY It is understandable to want to complete a procedure quickly, but research suggests, and experience confirms, that allowing more time for the water to act on the oil at any given phase of the refining process results in a cleaner and faster-drying (more preoxygenated) oil.
ORGANIC FLAX OIL The starting point of the system, available reasonably online in quarts and gallons. Quality varies! Branded nutritional oils and ‘green’ housepainting Swedish oil work, but avoid budget ‘personal care’ oils or those with anti-oxidants. See section ...
WATER, SAND, AND SALT REFINING (F ) This oil dries three times faster than commercial oil and has a noticeable snap in working. See section ...
WATER REFINING There are several traditional variations on water-refining, all of which produce fast- drying oil. See section .., .., and ..
ALCOHOL REFINING A quick process that produces a clean, relatively non-yellowing and mobile oil, but without much increase in drying speed. See section ...
EMULSION REFINING Various colloidal ingredients create emulsions whose processing generates relatively clean and fast-drying oils. Chlorophyllin refining gives the most reliably non- yellowing oil before further processing. See section ...
AGED OIL Processed oil is placed in full glass jars in a windowsill, with an addition of chalk. The oil is slowly oxidized by sunlight without polymerizing, and evolving acid is somewhat neutralized. Aging several years makes the oil more reliably non- yellowing, often gelatinous, and more ductile or mobile in use. Given that resins are found so seldom in older paint films, and never globally, aged oil is arguably the single most basic ‘lost secret’ of older practice. See section ...
HEATED OILS Preheating increases flow and minimizes yellowing; oils are always refined before heating. Oil can be preheated (lower heat) to change its rheology in handmade paint (-:), or prepolymerized (higher heat) to make it more glossy and leveling (:). Temperatures above ° C are best avoided as these begin to breakdown the oil. See section ...
STUDIO OIL When water-refined linseed oil is autoxidized in an open tray for several weeks, it loses all color, has more drag and viscosity when used as a medium with soft brushes,
and dries to a gloss even mixed with a moderate amount of chalk. This oil is useful in small amounts in alla prima work or final layers for saturation. Thick water- refined studio oil can be thinned with solvent for a fine medium with great control. An unaged oil slated for strong autoxidation or more than minimal use in a given layer is best preheated first (: or :) to help minimize future darkening potential. See sections .. and ....
: STUDIO OIL Heating studio oil to °C for four hours diminishes its pull or grab, making it thinner working as a couch or in an emulsion medium. See section ....
AERATED OIL This variation of studio oil is made by aerating the oil with an aquarium pump. This approach makes a moderately thick oil quickly. Again, preheated oil is recommended to minimize future darkening potential. See section ...
SUN OIL Quicker to make than studio oil in summer or a warm location, and slightly more adhesive. Stir it regularly as it thickens to avoid skinning or thick spots. Water- refined sun oil is extremely fast drying when thicker, and can also thinned with solvent to make a very fine working medium with great control. See section ....
ELASTIC OIL This is ultra-dense studio oil seeded with less dense studio oil to keep it from becoming a solid. Very small amounts cause handmade paint to seize, enhancing saturation and making thixotropy possible without a hard resin varnish. This is a way to reconstitute thicker studio oil, but, as it re-thickens, it generates even more grab in use. See section ....
LEADED OILS A small amount of lead carbonate, lead oxide, or both is added to any preheated water-refined linseed oil as it ages in the light to produce a faster drying oil. This oil can be heated for - hours in a waterbath to enhance the effect slightly. This procedure does not introduce discernible yellowing to the oil on drying. While historic, even intrinsic, to older painting, the process involved in making this material is toxic and generates toxic by-products. See section .. and its subsections.
UNSUN OIL Preheated linseed oil is thickened in a lead tray, producing a syrupy glide. Small amounts add saturation and gloss to alla prima or final layers. Very thick unsun oil – ecks – makes handmade paint seize. Thick linseed unsun oil thinned with solvent works finely with great movement. See section ....
A NOTE ON HAND-PRESSED OIL Research (..) and limited experience both suggest that hand-pressed oil is higher quality than the same type of seeds pressed by another method. This difference is not massive compared to the highest quality branded nutritional oils pressed at low temperatures, but is worth experiencing to compare the behavior of older hand- refined oil – the basis of older paint – as closely as possible with that of contemporary MAS oil – the basis of contemporary paint.
APPENDIX V – CORE TECHNIQUE REFERENCE
SUBSTRATE Fabric-covered panels are more reliable over time than stretched canvas if the process can be adapted to their limitations. With stretched canvas, use heavy weight fabric, and protect the back from moisture if possible. The larger the canvas, the more flexible all the materials in the paint film need to be to avoid longer-term cracking.
GROUND An oil-based primer can be used over any size, but otherwise, the size and the ground need to agree: acrylic gesso goes over acrylic size, glue gesso goes over glue size, etcetera. The ground has the best balance of brilliance and adhesion if white, slightly toothy and slightly absorbent. More absorbent grounds, or grounds with texture, can be used for painterly techniques on panels. Grounds containing stand oil or egg yolk are sometimes used to enhance facility, this is a basic fat over lean error that can lead to delamination, and is not recommended. Grounds for fabric- covered panels can be based on glue gesso, sizes and grounds for larger work on stretched canvas need to be as flexible as possible; always keep oil grounds lean.
SOLVENT Solvent is not necessary to make an oil painting. If no soft resin varnish is in the system, brushes can be kept in, and cleaned in, oil. Solvent is useful in certain techniques but must be used with ventilation. Protect any plant-derived solvent from oxygen and light: the residue of oxidized solvent – historically, usually turpentine – can create significant darkening. Small amounts of solvent can be helpful in the underpainting stage of an indirect system, but this can also be done in a water medium or tempera. Petroleum solvents do not oxidize: slow drying lamp oil (odorless, purified kerosene) can be effective in minute amounts.
DRIERS It is safest to avoid concentrated modern driers. Small amounts of mild traditional driers such as bone ash, or calcium carbonate, are safe. Leaded oil can be used in moderation following the protocols to avoid yellowing. Iron oxide pigments dry much faster than modern organic pigments.
PIGMENT CHOICE & METAL SOAP FORMATION Recent research has shown that, while metal soaps are to some extent inevitable, in large quantities they can lead to the deterioration of the paint film over very long periods of time. Metals most likely to generate soaps are: aluminum, manganese, copper, lead, and zinc, the most active of all. Metals least likely to generate soaps are: calcium, iron, chromium, titanium, and cobalt. The behavior of modern pigments has yet to be studied in relation to metal soaps.
WATER MEDIUMS AND TEMPERA Thin layers of these are helpful in the opening stages of an indirect system to develop the image quickly, and alter it reliably. These paints also help keep the structure of the colour organized, and, because they are leaner than oil paint, brighter over time.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF OIL In general, the stronger the film, the greater the tendency to yellow, and vice versa. Linseed oil makes the strongest film, but is also most subject to yellowing from darkness, humidity, and lower quality oil or processing. The expense of hemp oil makes it prohibitive for commercial paint, but hand-refined hemp oil yellows less
than linseed oil and still dries reasonably quickly. Walnut oil yellows less than hemp or linseed, but does not have as much personality. Hand-refined artisanal walnut oil does have somewhat more working character. Poppy or grapeseed oil yellow least, and dry most slowly. When autoxidized or heat-polymerized, these oils are helpful additions in small amounts to autoxidized hand refined linseed oil to minimize yellowing, or to a saturating final medium to extend its open time.
COMMERCIAL OIL It is always best to test commercial oil for yellowing – linseed oil especially, at least six months – as some are better than others. MAS cold-pressed linseed oil is typically not refined; this causes yellowing even though the oil is cold-pressed. Refined linseed oils typically dry with less yellowing, but all raw commercial oils take a long time to dry because of the way they have been processed. The notable exception is triple boiled oil, (TBO) but this needs to be used in very small amounts.
HAND REFINED OIL Beginning with cold-pressed unrefined oil, then refining it by hand, creates a more adhesive or elastic rheology naturally in the oil. The oil that responds the most to this is linseed oil, but the effect on other oils is also noticeable.
AGED OIL FOR HANDMADE PAINT When oil is aged in glass in the light it accepts far more pigment while making paint, and makes a far more elastic paint, and far more stable paint, than oil which is new.
PREHEATED OIL FOR HANDMADE PAINT Oil that is preheated for one hour at °C makes paint that is both short and dense compared to raw oil.
PREHEATED OIL FOR MEDIUMS Oil that is preheated for four hours at °C is a stable, but not thick or ‘fat’ medium base in general because the hydroperoxides in the oil have been both created and then eliminated by the heat. See section ... Preheating also removes oxidation byproducts in autoxidized oil, see the Olio d’Graves procedure, section ....
HEAT-POLYMERIZED OIL This process begins at -°C and makes the oil less yellowing, more saturating, quicker drying, and leveling. This type of oil aids in blending, cohesion, and drawing long flowing lines in the paint, and is a good stand oil replacement. Still, it is relatively fat and is best used judiciously in brighter colour schemes, or with sequestering agents.
AUTOXIDIZED OIL (STUDIO OIL) This process thickens the oil through exposure to oxygen. Commercial oils are somewhat leveling, though less than a heat polymerized oil. Hand-refined water- refined linseed oil becomes tight and resinous as it thickens, and dries very quickly. This type of oil tends towards a more broken surface, with the potential for various types of impasto. Oxidation byproducts can make this oil more prone to yellowing the thicker it becomes, but specific processing and handling methods help avoid this, see Minimizing Yellowing in Autoxidized Oil, section ....
SUN OIL Sun oil made from refined cold-pressed oil is an excellent handmade alternative to stand oil, and is also more reliably non-yellowing than autoxidized oils.
LEADED OIL While not necessary, lead salts provide a variety of gelatinous and syrupy densities to the oil and were intrinsic to certain older techniques. Always leave any precipitate in these oils undisturbed, and treat it as a toxic waste. The least toxic approach uses a tray made from lead itself. A simple alternative to leaded oil is a silica gel made with a slightly thicker oil mix.
CONDITIONING Mixing a specific ratio of medium to each colour before beginning creates even film tension and saturation. Indirect work is easier to view as the layers progress, and all work is more stable over time. Exact medium to paint proportions vary with use. Lean mediums can be used in larger proportions in thin opening layers, a rich saturating medium is best used in smaller proportions for alla prima or finishing.
CHALK, CALCITE, AND MARBLE DUST The natural calcium carbonates are stable general purpose tighteners of the paint in small amounts. Avoid manmade, precipitated chalk unless tested for yellowing in oil.
PUTTY MEDIUMS Stable and adaptable medium for lively or broken surfaces based on oil and stone dust. These mediums benefit from sequestering for brighter modern colour schemes.
FUSED DAMAR, BEESWAX, AND OIL MEDIUMS Reliable, sequestering and solvent-free medium approach that is highly adaptable for a variety of smooth or broken surfaces.
SILICA GEL Fumed silica and oil create a reliable gel medium approach in terms of long-term stability. Amounts must be monitored, or used in conjunction with chalk, to avoid yellowing, especially using linseed oil.
HIGH OIL-PHASE EMULSIONS Small amounts of ingredients such as hide glue, egg white, starch, or methyl cellulose, can be used in a medium on to tighten the paint for thin opening layers on canvas or panel . Larger amounts, including egg yolk, can be used on panels for tempera grassa. An expressive, solvent-free, stable, and adaptable medium approach.
SEQUESTERING AGENTS These ingredients help a layer of oil paint dry ‘up,’ and remain bright over time. Egg yolk is highly reliable, but must be used on panels. All resins are sequestering, but darken over time and need to be used in small amounts, avoiding or minimizing solvent. Beeswax is sequestering, and is used at -% of the paint film generally. Starch and methyl cellulose are moderately sequestering, and can be used in small amounts – less than % – on stretched canvas, slightly more on panels.
THIXOTROPIC SEIZURE Thixotropy is created by all water-based additions in minute amounts, highly autoxidized leaded oil (ecks), highly autoxidized S&S linseed oil, and minute amounts of concentrated spirit copal or sandarac added to any thicker oil. A thick silica gel, putty, or combination adds thixotropy in a more mobile or moderate way.
COUCHES A very thin layer of oil or medium can be applied to a panel to modify the behavior of the paint to come. Typically used to increase movement and expressiveness, a tighter couch can also make a broken surface. Couch formulas must be related to the medium in the paint itself, and used as thinly, and as leanly, as possible. In a system based on hand-refined oil, repeated indirect couches do not crack, but may well dry down over time due to excessive richness in the paint film. The point where this occurs will vary, but, in an indirect system, it is safest to reserve couch use for the last layer.
REMOVAL & GRINDING BACK Indirect work can benefit from removing paint to keep early layers thin and graphic. Removal in alla prima work can add spontaneity, or lighten a middle layer in indirect work. On panels, paint can be ground back after it has dried, but it is simpler to paint thin and lean as long as necessary.
MATCHING CHROMA, COLOUR CONVENTION, & TECHNIQUE It is important to match the medium to the palette, the colour convention, and the technique. Work done in oil alone in a lower chroma palette in the white light- brown shadow convention – a system common to many well-known older painters – is far more forgiving in terms of masking any darkening of the medium over time than work done in bright modern pigments used the same way. Similarly, the figurative style of Lucien Freud emphasizes cool colour and a lighter value structure. While a reverse of the th century approach, this is also a style that minimizes the perception of any yellowing in the medium. At the other end of the chroma spectrum, work done in bright modern pigments may benefit from a sequestering agent in the medium, to use walnut or poppy oil unless the linseed oil is aged and tested, and typically needs to be more cautious both with the saturation of an alla prima medium, and in terms of the fat over lean progression of indirect layers.
MINIMUM FUNCTIONAL SATURATION The tendency of the oil medium to dry down over time, especially if linseed oil is used in an uncontrolled climate, can be addressed many ways, see sections ...- . All of these approaches are beneficial, but they can accidentally be short-circuited by oversaturation from too much polymerized oil, either in a single alla prima layer, or in indirect layers that are too fat to begin with, or end up too fat at the end. As such, it is important to think in terms of designing any system with minimum functional saturation to keep the work at its brightest over time. There are no specific rules here, because of the many other factors involved. The sequestering agents, hand-refined aged oil, small additions of autoxidized poppy or walnut oil, handmade heat polymerized oil instead of stand oil, etcetera, all add up to a situation with more latitude. Still, it is always wisest in oil not to confuse latitude with license.
OIL AS A TEMPORARY FINAL COAT Hand-refined linseed oil becomes less yellowing with age, and with additions of walnut oil (-%) or poppy oil (-%). This type of oil, pre-heated, as in the : procedure or slightly heat-polymerized, as in the :, procedure, then possibly slightly autoxidized, is thinned with Shellsol T or other quality mineral spirits to saturate a matte alla prima or indirect painting reliably as a final layer. The oil appears to be in the paint, not on top of it, giving this technique a different look than a varnish. Tests are recommended to make sure the oil is non-yellowing. See the details in section ...