Oils Paints and Oil Painting
Artists’ oil colours are made by adding dry powder pigments with particular refined linseed oil until the substance reaches a stiff paste thickness then grinding it by harsh friction in steel roller mills. The consistency of the shade is essential. The usual standard is a smooth, buttery paste, and not stringy or long or tacky. When a more flowing or mobile aspect is required by the artist, a liquid painting medium such as pure gum turpentine needs to be stirred in with the concoction. To expediate drying, a siccative, or liquid drier, can be commonly used.
First-grade brushes are made in two types: red sable (using various members of the weasel family) and whitened hog bristles. Both are sold in in numbered sizes for any of four regular shapes: round (pointed), flat, bright (flat shape but shorter and less supple), and oval (flat shape but bluntly pointed). Red sable brushes are commonly preferred for a smoother, detailed style of technique. The painting knife, a finely tempered, limber version of the artist’s palette knife, is a common tool for applying oil colours in a robust way.
The generic support for oil painting is a canvas of pure European linen of stable close weave. The canvas is cut to the desired size and stretched over a frame, usually a wooden one, and then secured by tacks or, during the 20th century, by staples. If the artist needs to lessen the absorbency of the fabric itself and to achieve a glossy surface, a primer or ground is applied and allowed to dry before painting begins. The most usually found primers are gesso, rabbit-skin glue, and lead white. If density and a smooth texture are preferred to elasticity and texture, a wooden or processed paperboard panel, sized or primed, may be used. Many other supports, like paper and different textiles and metals, also have been used.
A polish of painting varnish is often set on to a finished oil painting to protect it and prevent atmospheric attacks, minor abrasions, and harmful accumulation of dirt. This film of varnish might be removed safely by experts using isopropyl alcohol and other common solvents. The painting varnish also sets the surface to a uniform lustre and brings the tonal depth and colour intensity really to the vibrancy initially formed by the artist in the wet paint. Some painters, in particular those who don’t favour deep, intense colouring, and prefer a mat, or lustreless, finish in their oil paintings.
Most oil paintings made prior to the 19th century were done in layers. The first was a blank, uniform field of thin paint known as a ground. The ground graduated the glare of the primer and formed a base of colour on which to start painting. The forms and figures in the painting were roughly blocked in from shades of white, along with gray or neutral green, red, or brown. The ultimate field of monochromatic light and dark were called the underpainting. Forms could then be further defined by using either paint or scumbles, which are irregular, thinly applied layers of opaque pigment that can create a whole lot of pictorial effects. At the last point, transparent layers of pure colour known as a glaze could be used to display luminosity, depth, and brilliance to the figures, and highlights could then be imparted with thick, textured patches of paint known as impastos.
Oil as a medium of painting is recorded circa the 11th century. The practice of easel painting with oil colours, however, resulted directly from 15th-century tempera-painting styles. Basic improvements in refining linseed oil and the availability of volatile solvents from 1400 coincided with a desire for a medium other than pure egg-yolk tempera, meeting the changing desires of the Renaissance (see tempera painting). At first, oil paints and varnishes were employed to glaze tempera panels that had been painted from the usual linear draftsmanship. The technically gleaming, gem-like portraits of the 15th-century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck, for example, were perfected with this new technique.
During the 16th century, oils flourished as the basic painting material in Venice. By the end of the century, Venetian painters were proficient in the use of the fundamental aspects of oil painting, particularly in using many layers of glaze. Canvas, after a long era of growth, topped wood panelling as the common support.
A 17th-century master of the oil technique was Velazquez, a Spanish artist in the Venetian tradition, whose remarkably economical but sure brushstrokes have frequently been copied, particularly in portraiture. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens influenced later painters in the way in which he loaded the light colours opaquely, to juxtapose his thin, transparent darks and shadows. The third great 17th-century master of oil painting was the Dutch painter Rembrandt. In his pieces, a single brushstroke can effectively depict form; cumulative strokes gave great textural depth, with a combination of the rough and the smooth, the thick and the thin. A system of loaded whites and transparent darks is fully enhanced by glazing, blendings, and highly controlled impastos.
Other particular influences on the techniques of easel painting are the smooth, thinly painted, deliberately planned, tight qualities. A great many admired works (e.g., like those of Johannes Vermeer) were crafted with smooth graduated blends of shades to cast shadowed forms and delicate colour variations.
The technical requirements of some schools of modern painting cannot be attained with traditional genres or techniques, however, and some abstract painters – as well as to some extent contemporary traditional style painters – have expressed a need for a wholly different plastic flow or viscosity that cannot be created with oil paint and its conventional additives. Some need a wider range of thick and thin applications and a more rapid rate of drying. Some artists mix coarsely grained materials with colours to create textures, some used oil paints in much heavier volume than ever before, and lots have turned to the use of acrylic paints, as they are more versatile and dry rapidly.
Interested in oil painting? For art supplies Brisbane, including canvas art supplies and artists supplies, visit or call the Discount Art Warehouse.
This entry was posted on Friday, October 29th, 2010 at 3:33 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.