Oils Paints and Oil Painting
Artists’ oil colours are created by adding dry powder pigments with special refined linseed oil until it reaches a stiff paste thickness and then grinding it under powerful friction in steel roller mills. The consistency of the hue is essential. The common feel is a smooth, buttery paste, rather than stringy or long or tacky. When a more flowing or mobile element is needed by the artist, a liquid painting medium like pure gum turpentine has to be stirred in with the mixture. To accelerate drying, a siccative, or liquid drier, should be usually used.
First-rate brushes are made in two styles: red sable (with hair from varying members of the weasel species) and chemically whitened hog bristles. They are made in in numbered sizes for each of four regular shapes: round (pointed), flat, bright (flat shape but shorter and not as supple), and oval (flat shape but is bluntly pointed). Red sable brushes are generally utilised for a smoother, detailed type of technique. The painting knife, a finely tempered, skinny version of the artist’s palette knife, is a common method for applying oil colours in a robust manner.
The generic support for an oil painting is a canvas from pure European linen of stable close weave. This canvas is cut to the desired size and cast over a frame, mostly wooden, to which it is secured with tacks or, in the 20th century, by staples. If the artist needs to reduce the absorbency of the fabric itself and to attain a glossy surface, a primer or ground should be applied and is left to dry prior to painting. The most typically seen primers for this are gesso, rabbit-skin glue, and lead white. If rigidity and a smooth texture are preferred over elasticity and texture, a wooden or processed paperboard panel, sized or primed, might be employed. A number of other supports, for example paper and various textiles and metals, also have been tried out.
A finish of varnish is often put on to a completed oil painting to prevent any atmospheric attacks, minor abrasions, or an injurious accumulation of dirt. This painting varnish may be taken off without damage by experts with use of isopropyl alcohol and other ordinary solvents. The varnish also brings the surface to a full lustre and sets the tonal depth and colour intensity virtually to the appearance initially formed by the artist in the paint. Some painters today, particularly those who don’t favour deep, intense colouring, keeping a mat, or lustreless, finish in oil paintings.
Many oil paintings from before the 19th century were built up in layers. The first layer was a blank, uniform field of thin paint known as a ground. The ground subdued the gleam of the primer and established a gentle base on which to apply the oil paint. The forms and objects in the painting were roughly blocked in from shades of white, as well as gray or neutral green, red, or brown. The ultimate masses of monochromatic colours were termed the underpainting. Forms could then be given definition using either solid paint or scumbles; irregular, thinly applied layers of opaque pigment that creates a variety of visual effects. At the last step, transparent layers of pure colour known as glazes could be utilised to create luminosity, depth, and brilliance to the shapes, and highlights could then be imparted with thick, textured patches of paint called impastos.
Oil as a medium of painting is dated as early as the 11th century. The practice of easel painting with oil colours, however, stems directly from 15th-century tempera-painting methods. Essential improvements in the refining of linseed oil and the availability of volatile solvents post 1400 coincided with a need for some medium other than pure egg-yolk tempera, in meeting the changing needs of the Renaissance (see tempera painting). Initially, oil paints and varnishes were employed to glaze tempera panelswhich had been painted from a typical linear draftsmanship. The technically vibrant, gem-like works of the 15th-century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck, for example, were finished in this new style.
During the 16th century, oil colour became firmly established as the basic painting material in Venice. By the end of the century, Venetian artists had grown proficient in the exploitation of the fundamental traits of oil painting, especially in using multiple layers of glazes. Canvas, after a long period of development, topped wood panelling as the most popular support.
A 17th-century master of the oil technique was Velazquez, a Spanish artist in the Venetian tradition, whose remarkably economical but certain brushstrokes have often been adopted, notably in portraiture. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens influenced later painters in the manner in which he loaded light colours opaquely, to juxtapose the thin, transparent darks and shadows. Another great 17th-century master of oil painting was the Dutch painter Rembrandt. In his works, a single brushstroke could effectively depict form; cumulative strokes created great textural depth, combining the rough and the smooth, the thick and the thin. A system of loaded whites and transparent darks is fully enhanced by glazing, blendings, and highly controlled impastos.
Other particular influences on the techniques of later easel painting are the smooth, thinly painted, deliberately planned, tight styles. A great many admired works (e.g., those from Johannes Vermeer) were formed with smooth blends of shades to create subtle forms and delicate colour variations.
The technical requirements of some schools of modern painting cannot be attained with traditional genres and techniques, however, and many abstract painters – as well as some contemporary traditionally-geared painters – have shown a need for a totally different plastic flow or viscosity that cannot be had with oil paint and its conventional additives. Some want a wider variation of thick and thin applications and a quicker rate of drying. Some artists mixed coarsely grained substances with their colours to create new textures, some artists apply oil paints in greater thicknesses than ever before, and many have favoured acrylic paints, as they are more versatile and dry faster.
Interested in oil painting? For art supplies Brisbane, including canvas art supplies and artists supplies, visit or call the Discount Art Warehouse.