Page 11 - George O'Hanlon

The final step in cleaning a painting is by methods using water.  Water is more invasive than dusting and dry cleaning, but is effective in removing contaminants that adhere to the painting’s surface.

This three-day workshop will give you the skills to complete fresco painting for walls and portable panels. The course begins with hands-on instruction on applying plaster. Using a prototype, you draw and paint the cartoon, transfer it to the plaster and begin painting the image. At the end of this workshop, you will complete a portable fresco to take home with you.

Rublev Colours lead whites are made with basic lead carbonate (made according to modern processes) ground in oil without additives (such as stearates, a common pigment stabilizer found in all other commercial brands) to alter the characteristics of the pigment. As a result, you get a higher pigment volume concentration (PVC) than other brands of lead white (flake white). This means most brands of flake white in oversized tubes do not weigh nearly as much as Rublev Colours lead white in our standard 50-milliliter tube. Yet, Rublev Colours Lead White is not overly stiff and mixes well with all other oil colors.

Panel discussion examines painting materials and artistic practice through the ages with a special focus on oil painting. The discussion includes thirty-minute lectures by Brian Baade and Kristen deGehtaldi, painting conservators from the Winterthur/University of Delaware, and George O'Hanlon, technical director of Natural Pigments.

This is a tutorial on preparing the grinding tools and dispersing pigments into the water to make your water-based paint. This technique can be used to prepare dispersions of pigment in water to be mixed with gum arabic solution for watercolors, egg yolk for egg tempera, casein solution for casein paint, animal glue for distemper, and use in fresco painting. The same technique can be used to disperse pigments in preparation for making pastels and pigment sticks.

Resins-based paint mediums consist of resin, such as dammar or mastic, dissolved in a solvent and combined with oil used in megilp, Maroger, and other popular oil painting mediums. Oleoresimus mediums became popular in the nineteenth century. This article examines the advantages, if any, and problems associated with using oleoresinous mediums in oil painting.

Oil paint darkens and becomes increasingly translucent as it ages. These changes may cause visible disfigurement of paintings, and although the phenomenon has been extensively studied, the causes are not definitely known at present. This article presents evidence that demonstrates how improper technique and materials in the ground layer can lead to ruined paintings.

A two-day Master Class will be offered by the J. Paul Getty Museum Department of Education and taught by artist Sylvana Barrett on Medieval and Renaissance gilding techniques as practiced by Manuscript Illuminators. Gilded embellishments in texts have an ancient history stretching back into antiquity. Elaborate techniques developed during the Medieval Period became the standards by which gilding is judged today.

Polimeni—also known as bole—is a clay-like substance used as a gilding base. It is applied to a prepared surface, usually gesso or chalk ground. Gold or silver leaf is then applied over this base. The poliment enhances the tone and luster of the gold during the polishing/burnishing process.

The palette described by Roger de Piles in his seventeenth-century painting manual, Les Elémens de Peinture Pratique, describes a pigment in French, brun rouge. What is brun rouge? Are there modern substitutes? It is easy to mimic a hue with a combination of pigments, but much more difficult to imitate the undertones and nearly impossible its consistency in paint. The latter can only be done successfully using the same pigment, at least as far as we can determine from literary sources.