If a priming is faulty then your efforts to achieve desired artistic qualities may be constantly thwarted, and the survival of the work might be irreversibly impaired. Excessively slick or excessively suctive primings are uncomfortable to work on. A slick ground,...
Related Articles
4. Fat over Lean
This old maxim concisely expresses how, generally speaking, a successful and durable painting is developed. I say “generally” because there are instances of great painters bending this maxim to conspicuous effect, but nevertheless to ignore it is to court disaster. It...
5. Use Appropriate Thinners
This is merely a short but necessary clarification to the previous references to diluents. “Thinners”, as a term, covers both what is used to clean brushes, and what is used to dilute paint for artistic purposes. Whilst standard decorators’ quality White Spirit is...
6. Use Medium as a Help, not as a Panacea
A medium can be defined as a pre-mixed blend of a drying oil, possibly a resin, and possibly a turpentine vehicle, which is commonly added to the later layers of paint in a work, so as to facilitate handling, and/or enable transparency of layers, and/or increase the...
7. Slow Drying Paint
One can think of this as a particular application of the treatment of the flexibility/inflexibility rule given above. It is apparent to anyone using a variety of oil paints that, even in identical conditions, drying speeds will vary greatly between them. Burnt Umber...