Page 17 - George O'Hanlon
- - June 10, 2013 4126
How to make shell gold and apply shell gold to icons and paintings, and its use in icon paintings.
- - June 10, 2013 5425
An earth color palette, the core palette used by old masters, provides both important limitations and advantages. The most significant limitation is the number of hues available in very light and dark values at a high intensity (chromatic purity). Earth colors, because of their subtle nature and the harmony of their hues and relative values, can be used more spontaneously. Although the limitation mentioned, a great variety of color effects is nonetheless possible; a variety considered more than adequate by many of the greatest old masters, including the most famous colorists of the Renaissance.
- - June 10, 2013 1263
Dammar (or damar) or soft copal varnishes are soft, very flexible, and transparent but dry slowly. These varnishes have a bright appearance and a faint pale yellow color. The color may be varied from golden yellow to yellowish brown by gamboge, dragon's blood, and asphaltum.
- - June 10, 2013 1611
Since the 1970s, it has become difficult to buy lead white in linseed oil to prime canvases and panels. As a result, artists who wish to use oil priming for their supports usually must substitute other materials for the lead white in linseed oil. Read this article on preparing canvas and wood panels with lead white oil primer. Some manufacturers of artists' materials still sell lead white oil paint in cans and large-capacity tubes. It should be noted, however, that most, if not all, of these lead white artists' oil colors are ground in safflower oil or poppy seed oil and not in linseed oil.
- - June 10, 2013 1992
This tutorial describes how to prepare and apply a base for gilding and how to apply the gold leaf and burnish the gold. This tutorial includes working with dry powder or cone bole, such as Selhamin Poliment, or wet paste bole, such as Charbonnel Gilder's Clay Base.
- - June 10, 2013 1991
The Reeves brothers are credited with the invention of watercolor cakes. Since the introduction of watercolor cakes over 200 years ago, manufactured watercolor paint has changed how artists work. Artists no longer must laboriously grind pigment in gum water to make paint and tirelessly rub hard cakes to get color.
- - June 10, 2013 939
To painters, discussing mediums can be like a political debate. There are pro-Maroger, anti-Maroger, pro-natural resins, and anti-natural resins, as well as pro-alkyd and anti-alkyd proponents. The disputes are always about potential cracking, lack of adhesion, and yellowing. I have always been the curious type and have experimented with almost every medium that I could get my hands on. However, if you are new to painting, the best approach is to experiment with the paint right out of the tube so that you can understand and fully integrate into your procedure what the paint can do without additives.
- - June 09, 2013 6958
What are the differences between linseed oil and stand oil? How do these differences affect the properties of paint? The key differences result from two crucial physical properties of drying oils: the degree of polymerization and the acid value of the oil. These two properties are affected by the treatment of oil—typically heat—that changes one or both of them. Heat treatment of oil makes what is called “bodied” oil, which is the more accurate term for what many call “stand oil.”
- - June 09, 2013 2927
Beginning with this installment, this series of articles discusses the technique of making icons in abundant detail, from obtaining the wood for the painting panel to putting on the final picture varnish or olifa of icons. A guide to wood properties and selecting the optimal wood for painting panels. This is the first in a series of articles on painting icons, beginning with selecting the panel, preparing it for painting, and the painting technique. Although this series of articles applies specifically to the preparation and painting of icons, it has a wider application for preparing solid wood panels for painting.
- - June 09, 2013 441
Paint pigments are much more complex today than in past history. They are mixed with other materials or coated to give visual shifts or other active color effects. To gain an appreciation of color theory and the problems of color matching, it is essential to consider the physics of sight in some detail. Before continuing, though, some background knowledge is required.