Unusual Art Materials and Ideas
“The painter who prepares his own materials knows them in a very different way from one who buys them ready made.”
Artists sometimes are fascinated by the search for a “Secret” that makes old master paintings last so long and look so great. One eighteenth century painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds, suggested the secret was a red oxide pigment named after the Turkish city Sinop. Reynolds believed that the secret pigment had …
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Working on a creative project up close, hour after hour, can make it difficult to get a fresh sense of how it looks – particularly the values and shapes. To solve this problem, it is possible to use various techniques to gain a new look at the art. Perhaps the …
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This idea was sent to us by a painter who solved a problem. The problem is that the caps on tubes of oil paint get locked onto the tubes when the paint around the top dries. Every artist has probably experienced this at one point or another. The paint may …
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Painting knives are certainly great tools for contemporary artists using impasto techniques. Some form of the painting knife has been in use for centuries. In painting frescos, artists used iron, wood, or bone trowels, as well as some form of a trimming knife or ivory stylus. The idea was to …
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During the 1800s, Plein Air painters were scattered throughout the country, from far west to the North Pole. Landscape painting had become the dominant genre in America, and Plein Air painters sought out the light and colors of nature, using the same oil paints they used in the studio. All …
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Around 1122 A.D., an author known as Theophilus wrote a manuscript called On Divers Arts, where he described the technique of Translucent Painting, sometimes called “Aureola”. In this technique, a wooden figure or object is created, and then a thin sheet of tin leaf, “not coated with gluten or …
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There is an old song from the 1940s titled When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again, sung by Merle Haggard, Elvis Presley and others. Of course, when blues start to shift their hue in a painting, it is not generally considered a good thing. Sometimes ultramarine blue and …
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There are accounts of John Singer Sargent being free in his use of turpentine, but there is no way his paintings were done with a liberal use of turpentine (as we know it) as his paintings are not streaky and are not falling off the canvas. Turpentine is not good …
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It is easy to take for granted the oils we use in painting. Most of us probably assume that linseed, safflower and walnut oils are simply what you get when you press the seeds and nuts of plants. We are unaware that our oils are highly refined using petroleum-based solvents, …
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