Page 25 - Artist Materials Advisor

The lead white pigment used in lead white artists' oil paint (often called flake white) is a modern process of lead white with fine particle size. What is the difference between modern lead white in today's artist colors and flake white used by the old masters and artists before the 20th century...

What are your thoughts on best practices for oiling out between layers and when the painting is finished? What oil do you suggest? What about varnishing instead...

Jacques Maroger claims that Rubens limited his colors to little more than brown, black, white, and red. He states, “But from a distance, one has the illusion of perceiving blues, greens, violets... The greatest colorists have always obtained the maximum brilliance and vibration with a minimum of colors.” We examine the palette Rubens used throughout his career in the 17th century...

Well, I have been busy recently making paint. I obtained one of the Paint Making kits and read the paint-making instructions in the catalog. After obtaining a dust mask, and a pair of suitable gloves, I began by making a slurry of silicon carbide and grinding that for a while with the muller on the piece of glass included in the kit. It didn't take nearly as long nor as much silicone carbide as I thought it would before the entire piece of glass was nice and frosted...

We examine the nine colors on the palette of the Venetian Renaissance master Tiziano Vecellio (better known as Titian), as recorded by his pupil, Giacomo Palma...

What's the difference between full-hard, half-hard, and dead-soft silverpoint? This article discusses the difference in the metal points...

A discussion about making vermilion oil paint among artists...

George O'Hanlon

I find it interesting that anyone today who understands even a fraction about making oil paint would recommend cold-pressed linseed oil for making oil colors. I know it is recommended in some of the artist's manuals, but it seems to me these authors never really understood the reasons why or simply copied what others had told them.

Why do we suppose the Old Masters went through such great lengths to "clean" or process their oils before using it in paint? Simply because they wanted to rid their cold-pressed drying oil of foots and other impurities, which cause problems in the dried paint film, such as yellowing.

Refined oils made by industry today are excellent products, and they do not have the faults of cold-pressed products. For example, I have samples of every type of drying oil (linseed, tung, walnut, sunflower, hempseed, poppy, high linoleic safflower oil, etc.) available in North America (and some from Asia and Europe). I can tell you that there...