Page 9 - Artist Materials Advisor

Learn how to prepare and apply gesso for wood panels with detailed instructions on priming, applying fabric cover, and polishing for a perfect finish. Discover the best techniques here.

An irregular sheen on an oil painting often produces a patchy gloss after applying the varnish. This article considers how to fix this on an existing painting and how to avoid it in the future. “Sinking in” is a common phenomenon among oil painters and is one of the most frequent issues encountered while teaching artists in my Painting Best Practices workshop. The causes of sinking in can be reduced to a few causes examined in this article.

Concerns about the toxicity of artists' materials have renewed interest in natural materials for painting. Oil painting has long been associated with health hazards due to using solvents in painting and cleaning. Much attention lately is given to lavender or spike oil as a healthier alternative to solvents. However, many are confused by the names and even more by the non-toxic claims made.

Dramatic changes in the techniques and materials used by artists began to occur in the latter half of the eighteenth century as the binding media was given much more attention than in previous centuries. This is related to the rising professional status of artists and the formation of academies for training artists, especially in Britain. Rather than using well-tested and reliable methods and materials based on studio practice and apprenticeship, artists began trying out new processes. This, in turn, is related to the vain search for the ‘lost secrets of the masters that led to even more experimentation and scandals, such as that experienced by the Royal Academy of Arts and its president, Benjamin West, at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Painting Best Practices Workout is the latest technical workshop on artists' materials and best painting practices. This six-day course provides hands-on learning on preparing supports for painting, making and applying grounds, paint making, pigments, and selecting and applying varnishes. All materials for the Workout are provided with the tuition.

During the first decade of the 20th century, a startling phenomenon was witnessed in exhibitions of oil paintings throughout France: “at retrospective exhibitions of art, many modern pictures which on their first appearance were greatly admired for their brilliance and freshness, seemed so darkened and tarnished as to be hardly recognizable.” The author links the reason for this phenomenon to the practice of oiling out and the application of retouch varnish. In the first part article of a series, James Robinson exposes this faulty practice and shows how it developed as a remediation of sinking in from the 18th century to the present.

Making stack process flake white (or lead white made according to the "old Dutch method") is time-consuming and prone to variations in the resulting pigment. These variations are not surprising and were well known from literature and historical documents of the process by manufacturers of lead white. It was a major issue of the process that manufacturers dealt with in various ways. This article describes the reasons for the variations and how these may be useful to artists.

Natural iron oxide pigments, or iron oxide earth pigments collectively referred to as iron oxides, comprise both oxides and oxide hydroxides of iron. Hematite (α-Fe2O₃) is the most common iron oxide in red earth pigments, and the iron oxide hydroxide goethite (α-FeOOH) is the most frequently found iron compound in yellow earth pigments. Umbers are brown earth pigments containing both oxides of iron and manganese.

Oil paint is a slow-drying paint consisting of pigment particles suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by adding a solvent, such as turpentine or mineral spirits (white spirits), and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the dried film. In this article, you will find complete descriptions of oil painting mediums or additives (or, as we prefer to call them, "amendments") made by Natural Pigments. These amendments are designed to alter the consistency of oil paint in novel ways, different from the varnishes introduced into everyday use during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Studies of the reaction of painting supports, oils, and pigments to changes in the environment during the past hundred years make it possible to understand the behavior of paintings. Modern commercial oil paints present new issues to conservators as they observe defects in paint films caused by new pigments and additives used in their formulations.