Page 4 - Mediums

When used in its most specific sense, the word “resin” is a hydrocarbon secretion of many plants, particularly coniferous trees. The resin produced by these plants is a viscous liquid composed mainly of volatile terpenes. Oleoresins are naturally occurring mixtures of oil and resin. Other resinous products in their natural condition are a mixture of gum or mucilaginous substances and are known as “gum resins.” Mastic gum is a good example of a gum resin...

Oleogel was featured in Rob Anderson’s Road Test column in the October 2013 issue of The Artist’s Magazine. Rob writes about Oleogel: “What exactly does adding Oleogel to paint do? Oleogel maintains the body of the paint—say goodbye, in other words, to drippy paint—at the same time it increases the paint’s transparency. The medium is versatile enough that it can be used for a thick impasto and also for glazing. The fact that this medium is this versatile is something I’ve never seen before. In my experience, a medium typically is only good for one thing, either glazing or helping to extend and thicken the paint, but not both. All in all, I had a very positive experience using Oleogel. The increase in fluidity and simultaneous control were wonderful surprises. I plan on continuing to use the medium, making it a part of my painting process.”...

I push Oleogel on all my friends, and I’ve even done time for selling it in a schoolyard. After using it regularly for the past year and a half, I’ve come up with various uses for it, and I thought I might share them. For those who haven’t come across this term before, “couche” is French for “paint layer,” and in the context of classical technique, a couche is a thin layer of oil that you spread over an area that you are about to work on, usually an area that you are going to bring to a finish with fine detail and blending. The oil makes the fresh paint flow onto the surface better (great if you’re working with tiny amounts of paint on little itty bitty brushes) and simultaneously saturates the old paint layer so that you can match your colours perfectly. Snort. As if anyone manages that...

The simplest way to create an impasto surface is to apply large amounts of paint, usually with a brush or palette knife. Commercial oil colors have a heavy consistency, which can be achieved by working directly from the tube and applying the colors in thick layers. Opacity and built-up texture are usually interrelated, with much of the thickest impasto consisting of solid and opaque pigments, such as lead white or titanium white. Passages of thickly applied paint can also be translucent, so extender pigments are chosen that supply both bulk and transparency...

Impasto is paint laid on a canvas or panel in quantities that make it stand out from the surface and is usually thick enough that brush or palette knife strokes are visible. The first known use of the word was in 1784, from the Italian impasto, the noun of the verb impastare, “to put in paste.” The heavy viscosity and slow drying time of oil paint make it a suitable medium for the impasto painting technique. Watercolor and tempera paint are not satisfactory for this technique because they lack these properties and do not form continuous films surrounding pigment particles...

We are often asked about the use of clove oil to retard the drying of oil paint. Like many others, you may have heard that it darkens upon exposure to light. Clove oil works well as a retarder, but there is a note of caution: over time (a long time), it does darken as it dries. It starts off light but can eventually turn black. This is over the years and depends on the amount of direct light. We recommend using slower drying oils to retard drying—walnut or modified oil—instead of adding clove directly to paint...