|
|
| locally |
I teach students individually in my studio located in Middlebury, Vermont. I also teach individually via e-mail: if you've read into the site a bit and like the concepts just let me know and we can go further. This process is relatively simple compared to the information on the site: I typically explain how color makes light, how the putty medium can be used in a variety of ways, and that's enough.
If you are beginning, working first in black and white offers a very powerful tool for discovering a natural way of working with paint before tackling the complexity of color. You can look at one such exercise, exploring the optical properties of transparent, translucent, and opaque paint, here.
Anyone who has an enthusiasm for this type of work has something to offer, the issue is simply the development of appropriate skills. The first of these is drawing: the only pre-requisite required here. This enables me to concentrate on explaining solvent-free painting with traditional materials, handling those materials effectively, dynamic composition with lively paint-handling, and the logic of light as it relates to understanding color. What anyone then chooses to do with these basic but indispensable tools -- the art part -- is up to them. Teaching fee is 50.00 per hour. Please feel free to email me for more information about what I do and how I do it.
From 1993 to 2008 I taught oil painting in the community in Vermont. The following topics and thoughts came out of the varied aspects of this experience. If you are interested in the conception of painting presented below, you might take a look at Oil Painting Techniques and Materials by Harold Speed, the only beginning book I know of with a deeper attitude towards the process. If you've been painting a while, you might like a brief compendium I put together about sound practice.
|
|
| axioms |
There are no hard and fast rules in oil painting, but below are some guidelines which, once you learn them, will enable you to make up
your own system more effectively. Generally speaking, for alla prima or any given layer:
- Paint from warm to cool.
- Paint from thin to thick.
- Paint from lean to fat.
- Paint from loose to tight.
- Paint from big to small.
- Use the largest brushes possible.
- Avoid using white as long as possible in a given layer.
- Paint light not objects as long as possible.
- Establish a consistent light/shadow axis in color.
- Look for the vertical in the horizontal, and visa versa; the curve within the line.
- Remove paint as well as apply it.
- Train yourself to make detail as a last resort. Use a loaded brush for this so the detail is made with paint, not the brush.
- Cover the surface evenly, don't let a problem area distract you.
- In a given layer, don't do the same thing twice: make sure to vary the color as you develop it to maintain a lively surface.
- Look at the developing painting on the canvas as well as the subject matter. Real painting is a dialogue: your conscious agenda for the painting may not be where it wants to go. Allowing it to succeed on it's own terms might be both simpler and more interesting.
|
| beginning |
There are many different ways of considering oil painting as an aspect of life. As a student, perhaps the best is to view painting as a discipline through which you have an opportunity to learn endlessly on a number of different levels: about the craft, about the visual world, about yourself. This means emphasizing process for a given amount of time, not product. The more you are able to work with developing your process, the more tools and dimensions you'll be able to build into it. Once a number of different elements are active, your process will begin to take on a life of it's own. You begin to intuit the next step, know how to achieve that with the materials, and your painting begins to grow of it's own accord.
Realistic paintings in oil can be made countless different ways. A few rules need to be followed technically, and a method of translating light into color needs to be learned. The rest is about choices you make based on no one's opinion but your own. Personal opinion is typically based on feeling, and feeling tends to lie deep, not easy to describe in words. Yet expressing feeling truly is a very important part of our lives, perhaps the single most important key to actually living well. But feeling is often submerged by the demands and hectic pace of modern life. Commitment to a discipline is a great way to slowly turn this equation around, to begin to reclaim the original sanctity of our time and our fundamental cosmic right to be ourselves.
Time is a protean substance which is quite responsive to our preconceptions. If we think we don't have any time, magically, we don't. But it is also possible to create for oneself the expanded sense of time which is so evidently the foundation of much older painting. Begin by isolating some time, even a few hours, from external demands. Make this inviable, a pattern, and see how it feels.
Knowledge of who we are as individuals is crucial to making choices which are positive and fulfilling. Working with any material creatively - paint, clay, marble, wood, sound - is an excellent way to develop a sense of emotional integrity - an awareness of what makes us feel right. This process serves as a template to apply to other things we do: an infallible way to improve the quality of life.
So, inevitably as you work with oil paint, you'll learn about more than color and light. Sometimes students are discouraged by a perceived lack of "talent". It's true that some people are born with innate or unusual ability, but this doesn't always translate well into an ability to work, or an ability to tell the truth in painting. The concept of talent can also be a weapon in the hands of those who haven't tried and would rather you didn't either. But from a deeper perspective, it's much more important to learn to pay attention to what you're seeing on the one hand, and what you're feeling on the other. These two provide the dichotomy from which real painting naturally emerges.
The quality of creative uncertainty also comes into play here. If the painter knows what an apple is, this confidence provides the primrose path to a bad apple painting. If the painter doesn't know what an apple is, this open-mindedness and presence in the moment creates a viable foundation for something real to occur.
Oil painting will adapt itself to your way of working readily when you have learned the fundamentals of the craft. The best overall advice is, above all, to learn to be yourself in your painting. Follow your instincts. This is what children do without thinking and it gives their work enormous power with a bare minimum of technical ability. Do what you want to do and make what you want to make. This is the fastest way to learn because it develops intuition. Intuition, given an opportunity, will lead you to some very interesting places: it's always a great joy to be surprised by who you really are.
Patience cannot be overemphasized in the learning process. If you have a particularly developed inner critic, send it on a long, restful sea voyage and be a happy, even mindless beginner. Often students expect to translate the elegance and subtlety of decades of experience as a verbal being to the visual realm overnight. This can be frustrating: the verbal realm is linear, while the relationship of color and light, though logical, is at least three dimensional, involving more when one factors in layers and time. The brain needs to alter the habitual linear mode and start working in spheres. This is great fun, and arguably a significant step towards using both halves of the brain together. But it can be a puzzle for a while, the world of color is more protean and less forgiving than the world of words. You also have the various physical permutations of paint, brushes, and canvas to learn. None of this can be rushed; there's too much, it gets too confusing. If you can take it slowly, and have fun while you are painting, you'll paint more often. And the more you paint, the faster you'll improve.
Mistakes are inevitable. Look on them as your co-pilot and develop confidence in your larger ability by correcting them. You don't need to always be careful, painting isn't diplomacy. Make bold mistakes, change them boldly: the painter who is concerned about "ruining" something quickly becomes cautious, a one way ticket to stasis. Forging ahead may create a mess for a while, but ultimately it creates the most desirable aspect a painting can have: confidence.
Learning to paint takes a while: Chardin said it takes thirty years, and he would be in a good position to comment. (We, on the other hand, turn out Masters of Fine Art in two years). In spite of everything you can read you will ultimately need to put together a process for yourself in order to continue to develop. This is always the make or break decision. You'll need to create a space where you can paint, a time when you can paint, and you'll need to paint regularly. By doing this you'll grow naturally and remain interested. People often think painting is about talent or depiction or the intellectual plat du jour in the great culture bistro. But painting is actually about showing up at the easel and seeing what happens; that simple commitment and its very complex results. There will be good days when you have magic hands, bad days when you make mush, and lots of days in between. But regardless, you clean up and start another day with more experience. This is painting, the rest is, ultimately, talking. Work regularly without judgment. Throw it all out as you go if you want to, but keep going. You'll learn a lot about painting, and you'll learn a lot about who you are, and the two in combination have a habit of making art.
|
| quality |
Often people who paint have collected a fascinating hodge-podge of tubes of color: inherited from a great aunt, or from a friend who was moving and got them from their great aunt, etc. These feature many types of student grade paint from the Sixties, and the kinds of earth colors that are used for house paint but not artist paint: typically opaque and lacking the inner chromatic life of genuine artist earth colors. There are also quirky mixed colors in abundance with now-quaint designer names, often alizarin crimson, prussian blue, maybe some old chrome yellow lemon, a smushed tube of Permalba white, burnt umber: hard as a rock. Sometimes there are some quality nice old colors mixed in, but not often, these have been used.
This gnarled and glutinous concatenation of chromatic land mines resides in a deceptively mellow old paint box, sometimes a tackle box or an old briefcase. There are various old brushes, good once, worn down, sometime well-cared for, more often in an advanced state of rigor mortis. An old bottle of Grumbacher medium, a few pencils and pieces of charcoal, a kneadable eraser like a large chunk of petrified drier-lint, and an old small jam jar full of turpentine residue from 1956.
When some poor teacher has the temerity, the utter cheek, to suggest that most of this lugubrious mess is useless, a wrinkled tube is uncapped and held aloft in passionate indignation: "Look! It's still good!"
Perhaps this is simply a function of having taught in Vermont, fons et origo of self-righteous economy practiced as religious fanaticism. But, regardless of one's location, if this sounds familiar, keep that charismatic paint box by all means but seriously consider better quality materials to put in it. Painting time should be quality time, there's no point in fighting the profound limitations of cheap materials. Investing a bit in one's process pays off great dividends in terms of results. If a local art store has absurdly high prices, buy on-line. A plethora of colors or brushes is unnecessary, but what exists should be quality. This doesn't have to mean the most expensive.
|
| materials |
The modern art supply store, online or in person, has become a complex labyrinth of possibilities unheard of until recently, the proliferation of products and gadgets is often overwhelming. In some ways, this is marvelously inventive and democratic: there are no guild secrets, anyone can go in and purchase to their heart's content, become an artist. But, as with all forms of commercial razzle-dazzle, buyer anxiety lurks in the shadows. Does the painter really need all those colors, all those brushes, that easel that looks like something from a science fiction movie? A recent catalogue featured twenty-eight different brands of oil paint alone, many of them featuring over a hundred different colors. Is all this redundant variety necessary, or helpful? Merely picture the puzzled look on Rembrandt's face as he looks over the pages, wanders up and down the aisles.
Some of what is available is harmless and fun, but perhaps three-quarters of any given catalogue or store is unnecessary or even, as in the case of mediums, detrimental. Manufacturers can and do make spurious claims for materials, there are no rules here beyond stating the materials on the label accurately. Be forewarned when you see a commercial medium labeled "non-yellowing", or one which uses the name of an older painter.
To make a successful oil painting, very few materials are actually necessary:
Something to paint on: prepared paper, canvas, or panel.
A light source, preferably daylight from the north.
A place to hold the painting in progress: an easel, a wall.
Something to paint with: brushes, a painting knife.
Somewhere to put the paint: a palette of some kind.
The paint itself: a type of red, a type of yellow, a type of blue, and a type of white.
A way to thin and/or thicken the paint: the medium.
A way to clean up at the end: often solvent, but can be simply soap and water, a function of the medium, not the paint.
That's all. Most of what you actually do in oil painting involves manipulating the paint to the point where you like what you see. This requires understanding how color makes light and shadow, and much subsequent practice. In spite of the multitudinous forms of commercial creativity with the materials on offer, this process still cannot be purchased. It does, however, evolve naturally from consistent practice. This is much easier to achieve with wise materials choices than with enthusiastic ones.
|
| science? |
The role of science in accurately analyzing the suitability of fine art materials is usually either over- or under-stated. On the one hand painters have learned to be wary of the commercial fanfare attending the most recent development, but on the other there are painters who worship the supposedly hard facts which science, especially as interpreted by the manufacturers, willingly presents. However, any given experiment to determine how a material behaves occurs under highly specific conditions: the conditions of the material in practice may be very different.
It's important to gather as much information about materials as possible, and to do so from a source which is neutral - not typically from whoever is selling the product. As in other areas of life, science is often turned into pseudo-science by the marketplace, data can be arranged to prove anything. The importance of both the context in which the material is used and a developed sense of proportion cannot be overemphasized.
What we know about the behavior of modern materials over long periods of time is necessarily significantly less than what we know about older materials. Commerce often attempts to marginalize anything that can't be tubbed or tubed, and sold as democratically as possible. The complexity of this situation is always acknowledged by more responsible writers on materials, and is a good litmus test of a source to possibly trust.
Much of the modern writing on materials is from college professors, not working painters. The professor must formulate a simplified technical system for college students. An unfortunate side effect of this has been the marginalizing of the necessarily experimental nature of experience in favor of "the facts". The modern model all too often worships the commercial idol of convenience and uses science as a justification. The conclusions of this science, however, are radically oversimplified in terms of an actual painter's experience of the craft. The craft is much more diverse in its combination and manipulation of materials than the laboratory can comprehend. Science will never get to the point of testing materials in context, this would be incredibly complicated if even possible.
|
| simplicity |
Einstein said that things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. This is a wonderful guideline to apply to the painting process on both a technical level and in terms of execution. But if you've ever tried to do something simply, you know that this is actually quite complex. An incredible amount of hidden consideration and deliberation goes into streamlining any process effectively.
Like life, painting has an alarming tendency to grow more complex, a tendency that can result in a process that leads, not to completion, but to more complexity. Although it is often tempting to try out new materials by adding them into an existing mix, it is wiser to experiment with them separately at first. The execution of an oil painting in successive layers can become a rabbit warren from which one never really emerges unless a specific system is imposed. As a result, painters will sometimes come to the conclusion that a painting should be completed in one sitting. If enough experience is behind this decision, it can be valid. However, rules have a tendency to bind the process, even the rule that it should always be spontaneous. More moderately, Van Dyck outlined a system comprised of three stages. Whatever type of complexity you find attractive, try to become aware of it and periodically ask what end it is serving in the work. The answer is almost always that less is more.
|
| synthesis |
In classical philosophy the interaction of opposites - thesis and antithesis - in a dialectic leads to the creation of something new, a synthesis. A dialectic is not an argument, but an exploration, a search for the truth. And true synthesis is not a compromise, or an artificial substitute for the original, but the result of finding the aspects of truth in conflicting positions and reconciling them in a new position. What on earth does this have to do with painting? It is an incredibly useful tool for defining, analyzing, and finding solutions for the various issues encountered in the process.
If we have black and white as thesis and antithesis, the midpoint on the line, the compromise, is gray. Neither black nor white are thrilled with gray. But synthesis involves introducing the next dimension, in this case, color. Both black and white can see that color offers distinct new possibilities. The symbol for synthesis as an active principle is the equilateral triangle: the tension of the two points of the base being resolved by the new idea at the apex.
Using paint to make a realistic image on a flat surface, the warm and cool aspects of color act as thesis and antithesis. When these are combined together in the correct way by the painter, something new emerges, the convincing illusion of light and depth.
Older painters knew that the equation through which color is processed to depict dimension is essentially abstract. They were not copying the colors that they saw specifically, one by one, but following the values and warm/cool relationships accurately. Following this method, actual or local color becomes less important because there is an overall sense of harmony coming from the light/shadow axis of the situation. Certain painters even de-emphasized color in favor of mood with limited palettes: well known examples would be Velázquez and Rembrandt in the 17th Century, Hammershoi and Whistler in the 19th Century.
If you know how to draw, and then learn how to manipulate values and the warm/cool shift in three primaries and white, you will soon be able to paint accurately and with an increasing amount of that most desirable quality, confidence. There are many different levels of this awareness, the process becomes deeper and more subtle the more it is pursued. But the fundamental principles, once grasped, remain constant. When a color is off, it is always a matter of lighter/darker, and/or warmer/cooler.
The idea of working consciously with opposites comes into play in other aspects of painting as well: high or low contrast, hard or soft edges, vivid or muted color, smooth or broken surface. If you work with your process from this perspective, looking at your work in terms of what might happen in the way of movement in a given area, you'll be able to speed up your evolution as a painter significantly, riding on an endless möbius which has two sides but no ending. The more you begin to see the potential for change, the more change can happen effortlessly, as a given.
|
| balance |
Real painting is a universal educational exercise. The painter's awareness grows, this awareness is offered to the viewer via the painting. Due to the nature of the visible as an analogue for the invisible, this is often an incredibly subtle process. One could say that a late Chardin still life contained a coffee pot, a few small onions, a glass of water, and a sprig of something green: an herb? But this misses the entire point of what the painting means, which could be discussed until the coming millennium.
Real painting involves balancing three different elements both at the physical and at the conceptual level. The illusion of light and dimension is achieved physically with paint through the balanced interaction of red, yellow, and blue. Conceptually, painting involves balancing the elements of idea, feeling, and execution: the head, heart, and hands of the famous St. Francis quote. We are all different by deep design, and the history of painting illustrates many different ways of balancing both these triads. Without physical balance, there is no sense of light or depth. Without conceptual balance, there is no growth for the painter, nothing deeper on offer for the viewer.
|
| authenticity |
Students are often interested in a quality in painting that might be called casual elegance. This quality -- spontaneous and effortless correctness somehow coupled with just enough force -- is immensely attractive in oil paint. It looks easy, it looks simple. But it is in fact the result of effort so immense and relentless that it transcends itself: the circle arrives once again at the beginning. Another word for this quality would be authenticity: a word increasingly heard now that it's on the verge of extinction. There is only one way to develop authenticity reliably in paint: to work with the materials until, as with words in grade school, you develop your own style and handwriting, and to use these tools to tell the truth as you see it. This requires patience, vigilance, and commitment. All the systems, tricks, gimmicks, and complex formulations designed to shortcut this process technically or via intellectual sleight-of-hand will not make authentic work: this is an immutable cosmic law. These alternative approaches may result in esteem, wealth, international fame, even a large museum in Pittsburgh, but from the point of view of the deeper aspects of painting as a tool for the furthering of human awareness, they lead inevitably to the great abyss of formalism: style without content.
|
| an art history of one’s own |
Although real painting is fundamentally a response to life, it's also inevitably a response to painting. One of the unfortunate consequences of the revolution begun by Monet has been an emphasis on the New at the expense of any sense of ethical or aesthetic continuity. Modern theory has vigorously tried to cut off the past, creating the odd, vacuous originality of much recent painting: yes, you've never seen anything like it, but did you ever want to in the first place? Whoever formulated the idea that variety is the spice of life never envisioned the relentless addictive reductionism of modernity.
By contrast, painters are often interested in the past and in the very meaningful response-to-life of other painters: it's a rare kind of professional continuity and perhaps makes painters feel less isolated by their unique but perennial issue: how to improve. While certain aspects of older painting are of the period, many more are universal. And while there have been countless amazing painters over the centuries, not everybody who's well-known makes sense to a given personality. So an individual painter's art history becomes quite personal. These painters act as internal aunts and uncles, offering helpful if sometimes conflicting advise from their experience.
A large part of the original painter's education as an apprentice was assimilating the master's style. Early in his career, Raphael painted in a manner similar to his teacher, Perugino. As he continued on, his own style naturally emerged. Today, we are told early and often not to copy, but to be original. But oil painters have learned through copying for centuries, and this is still a remarkably valuable tool for learning. Attempting to re-create a painting will always be a much deeper experience than looking at it. Copying is especially valuable for painters interested in the realistic depiction of light. This has been done in a variety of ways by different cultures and times. Learning a few of these methods from favorite painters can be a great aid in comprehending the logic of light as applied to color.
|
| the möbius of observation |
Painting from life relies on looking at things closely for a long period of time. You would think this would be boring but an interesting phenomenon occurs during this process: the more you look, the more you see. Any object observed at first is very different from the one seen after an hour. At first the mind rebels, "Why are we staring at this zucchini?" But once the first level is past, trust in the process begins and further levels can be explored.
Imagine the process of drawing the outline of an apple from life with a pencil. At first it is drawn lightly, then one begins to correct what's been drawn. At first it's frustrating: one quickly realizes that the original outline is wrong. But this frustration is the energy that will then be used to correct the situation. Bit by bit, it gets better. Bit by bit, one sees more of the subtleties and intricacies of the outline. It's round, yes, but not like a circle is round, there's more. But is there any flat place? Are there any concave places? This is the beginning of Nature's great lesson. But this inherent cosmic profundity is hidden from anyone in a hurry: an apple, in this case, is just an apple. To understand even something as conceptually simple as the outline of an apple, we need to slow down and pay attention in a different way. These things we see are more than their consensus identity.
This leads to an interesting paradox: the complexity of simplicity. This seems to occur because, when we create a pause in the action, our consciousness stops ranging around on the surface and begins to settle down. As it settles, it goes deeper. How deep does it go? There are plateaus, but then, as in quantum mechanics, a sudden shift occurs and one finds oneself somewhere new. The observation exercise in painting something simple like an apple can be a great exercise in developing patience, waiting for the next level. When is it merely rendition? At what point does it become art? Does this transition occur through more complexity, more simplicity, or a combination of both that was unavailable prior to prolonged observation?
A fascinating reciprocity comes into play. As we observe it, the apple we see changes, but so, necessarily, do we.
|
| success |
Opinion tends to be firmly divided about whether success is an internal or an external commodity. For a painter, it seems there has to be an ongoing balance of both. Its unwise to create a situation in which the work must be sold and soon to eat or pay the rent; its equally unwise to attempt to tailor the work to the aesthetic proclivities of a gallery or subculture. Given the classical and perennialist foundation that the arts should stand for and augment all that is best in humankind, (with which many persons of the modernist persuasion of course do not agree) there are two important things for a painter. First, to create time. There are many levels of this and it is possible to get completely out of the modern hyperversion of time. Without this older sense of spaciousness and endlessness, painting becomes constrained by artificial parameters and deadlines. The second is to paint from the distilled truth of one's experience. Paintings which embody truth succeed because they operate as generators and amplifiers of truth within the visual world. Seeing a true painting, the viewer is reminded of their own truth, and puzzles out a complex relationship with the truth of the painter. This is why museum-goers will stand motionless in front of paintings for a long time. They're not just looking out, they're looking in as well.
The world is especially in need of amplified personal truth because there is so much amplified consensus falsehood at this point provided by institutions, the various bigs, and their subsidiary media. Humanity needs creativity to grow and solve its many problems. Creativity does not function in an atmosphere of deception and falsehood, the faculty shuts down without trust, cosmic law. But very few people have devolved beyond the buoyant sense of purpose created by an aesthetic encounter with truth. These feelings create their own internal ripples and can go quite deep. This seems like an honorable activity to engage in: instead of combating negativity on its own negative terms, it is neutralized by its opposite. So, instead of defining success as a long list of shows or awards or galleries, I'd define it as living and painting the truth on the one hand, and surviving on the other. These concepts are in many ways opposites, and when they are brought into close contact with one another, great energy and numerous avenues of possibility are created.
If you know how to draw or took a large number of art courses before other aspects of life intervened, this may enable you to move forward rapidly from a technical point of view as a painter. However, this may also lead to a premature involvement with the marketplace from the point of view of the process. If you have an interest in ultimately selling paintings it's wise to be circumspect, take your time, and allow your process to grow without any form of external pressure until you understand not only painting, but how to maintain the growth of your process as well. This may take awhile, but you'll endure the inevitably capricious nature of the marketplace much better as a result. It is becoming increasingly difficult for anything positive artistically - that is, helpful to the development of humanity -- to come from marketplace-driven work.
|
| the craft of living |
One could say that life is joyous. And this would be true. But incomplete.
One could counter that life is a struggle. And this would also be true. But also incomplete.
If one says life is both joyous and a struggle, this is more complete. But it contains an unsettling paradox. How can opposites be true at once? Yet, anyone who has lived life knows that this particular paradox is simply the beginning of what life has on offer in this department. As soon as there is light, there are shadows.
In life, one quickly becomes aware that what worked in one situation might not work in another one, that solutions to life's problems are both contextual and relative. One grows to realize that life, as we live it, provides a mirror in which we can see what we need to learn.
But we must first be willing to look in that mirror, to see how we cause our own effect. This is the beginning of wisdom, the craft of living responsibly.
What does this have to do with painting? Absolutely nothing. At least, as painting is taught now. And that is most unfortunate, because one's painting and one's life are inseparable.
Painting has the potential to be a profound analogue of the living process. As late as the 19th Century this was widely understood. But the understanding of painting, like the understanding of life, has devolved. Both are generally denied their more meaningful aspects by material empiricism, with its emphasis on frantic but meaningless acquisition.
But still, real life, and real painting, go on. It is comforting to think that the most concerted effort over the last century has not been able to stop either one. And, as always, participating in either or both is as simple as looking in the mirror. A process which slowly but surely alters one's awareness in the profoundest way imaginable.
But fascinatingly, until one begins and develops this process, it does not exist. The ultimately personal nature of reality, the way life conforms to individual efforts and expectations, is at the root of our perennial inability to understand one another: although perhaps side by side, we can literally live in different worlds. The unity we imperfectly seek will ultimately be achieved by acknowledging the cosmic origin, the cosmic necessity, of our intense diversity. But that's going to take a while still. So, in the meantime, here's wishing you wisdom, creativity, and the serious fun they establish in one's world.
|
| solvent-free painting |
The materials research of the last decade has resulted in a group of mediums which allow for solvent free painting using traditional oil paint. One of these is derived from traditional painting, and is composed of pre-heated oil and a variety of calcium carbonate. Well known painters who used something similar include Rembrandt and Velasquez. The other is a family of mediums derived from fumed silica, which, when combined with oil, makes a gel. The techniques section of the site contains lots of information about these mediums, scroll down for Living Craft and The Putty Medium, but I'm also happy to explain and demonstrate them to working painters in person. To download a Pdf file about these methods, click here. Please also feel free to email me about this with questions or for more details.
|
| e-questions, e-answers |
I'm always happy to receive e-mail questions about the craft from interested painters. A great deal of less-than-accurate information has been promulgated in the last 50 years in books by a group of painting professors who attempted to define oil painting without much understanding or awareness of older methods and practices. Modern conservation research, the National Gallery Technical Bulletins are a great example, has given us a much clearer picture of how older paintings really were made. Still, many crippling pre-conceptions remain within mainstream practice. This is not to say that modern method is in some way wrong, or can't make art, but it has always been designed to work for college students, and is severely limited in terms of its definition of the craft, the condensed version of a great novel. The older craft began with the oil and most of it is virtually inaccessible via modern materials and rules. What is "scientific" and "true" to the modern method would make almost no sense to a practicing 17th Century painter. The easiest way to gain access to a working conception of the 17th Century craft is to read the De Mayerne Manuscript (Sloane 2052). This has recently been translated into English and is available within "Lost Secrets of Flemish Painting" by Donald Fels.
|
|
|
The process and the pea.