Page 18 - Artist Materials Advisor

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...

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...

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...

The revival of traditional art styles and techniques has burgeoned into a full-fledged Second Renaissance. And this re-awakening has sparked a renewed interest in the colors used by the great masters of the past. It was thus inevitable that someone would produce the traditional pigments in watercolors...

As a painter who began working about 43 years ago, I have been fascinated by the techniques of the great masters of painting. In the last 20 years, I have spent much time understanding their approach to painting, materials, and specific practice. I have spent much of my time in a relatively narrow area of study, although I have picked up little bits from the early Flemish painters to nineteenth-century Academy painting. However, my absolute concentration has been on those painters that moved me the most in face-to-face museum confrontations. They are Rubens, Velázquez, Titian, Leonardo and Rembrandt. Their technique seems to be shrouded in a great mystery, and while artists and educators have written about them over the last several hundred years, much of it is contradictory. There are a few exceptions, and the book published by Virgil Elliott entitled Traditional Oil Painting is a significant advance forward compared to most of what has been previously written on the subject...

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.”...

In the April 2006 issue of Watercolor Artist (formerly Watercolor Magic), Butch Krieger introduced Rublev Colours Watercolors to the magazine's readers in the article "Painting Flesh Tones with a Three Color Palette." The Rublev Colours Flesh Tint Palette is a triad of traditional earth pigments that many 18th- and 19th-century watercolorists used to mix their flesh tones...

Finding and collecting earth pigments can be both an exciting and rewarding endeavor. Collecting pigments from the earth can be done causally as you drive through the country or with much planning and preparation to identify and collect specific mineral pigment types. This is the first article in a series on finding, collecting, and preparing your earth pigments...

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...

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...