Artists’ oil colours are put together by combining dry powder pigments with special refined linseed oil to a stiff paste thickness and grinding it under strong friction in steel roller mills. The consistency of the hue is essential. The common standard is a smooth, buttery paste, not stringy or long or tacky. When a flowing or mobile style is desired by the artist, a liquid painting medium such as pure gum turpentine must be mixed with the concoction. To speed up drying, a siccative, or liquid drier, can be often used.
Top-grade brushes are produced in two kinds: red sable (using numerous members of weasel) and bleached hog bristles. They are produced in in numbered sizes for four regular shapes: round (pointed), flat, bright (flat but is shorter and not so supple), and oval (flat but bluntly pointed). Red sable brushes are generally used for a smoother, detailed kind of brushwork. The painting knife, a finely tempered, limber version of a artist’s palette knife, is a useful item for painting oil colours in a robust style.
The generic support for an oil painting is a canvas manufactured of pure European linen of sturdy close weave. This canvas is cut to the necessary size and stretched over a frame, often a wooden frame, and then secured by use of tacks or, since the 20th century, by use of staples. If the artist wants to lower the absorbency of the canvas fabric itself and create a glossy surface, a primer or ground is applied and is given time to dry before painting begins. The most often found primers are gesso, rabbit-skin glue, and lead white. If stiffness and a smooth texture are preferred over springiness and texture, a wooden or processed paperboard panel, sized or primed, might be used. Other supports, like paper and differing textiles and metals, have been tried.
A polish of paint varnish is usually applied to a finished oil painting to protect it and prevent atmospheric attacks, minor abrasions, and an injurious accumulation of dirt. This varnish could be taken off safely by experts with use of isopropyl alcohol and other ordinary solvents. The painting varnish also brings the surface to a full lustre and sets the depth of tone and colour intensity essentially to the look first seen by the artist in the wet paint. Some painters today, particularly those who do not favour deep, intense colouring, and keep a mat, or lustreless, finish in their oil paintings.
Most oil paintings from prior to the 19th century were done in layers. The first would be a blank, uniform field of thin paint known as a ground. The ground lessened the glare of the primer and provided a gentle colour on which to build images. The shapes and items in the painting were then roughly blocked in using shades of white, and gray or neutral green, red, or brown. The resulting field of monochromatic light and dark shades were termed the underpainting. Forms would then be further defined by using either the paint or scumbles; irregular, thinly applied layers of opaque pigment that can create a whole lot of visual effects. For the last point, transparent layers of pure colour known as glazes were applied to create luminosity, depth, and brilliance to the shapes, and highlights could then be effected with thick, textured patches of paint called impastos.
Oil as a painting medium is chronologised circa the 11th century. The technique of easel painting with oil colours, however, came directly from 15th-century tempera-painting techniques. Basic improvements in how to refine linseed oil and the availability of volatile solvents from 1400 coincided with a desire for mediums 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 panels that had been painted with the traditional linear draftsmanship. The technically gleaming, jewel-like works of the 15th-century Flemish artist Jan van Eyck, for example, were done in this new style.
During the 16th century, oil paint flourished as the fundamental painting material in Venice. From then, Venetian artists were proficient in the use of the basic traits of oil painting, especially in their application of a number of layers of glazes. Canvas of linen, after a long time of development, topped wooden panels as the common support.
A 17th-century master of the oil technique was Velazquez, a Spanish artist in the Venetian tradition, whose supremely economical but sure brushstrokes have often been emulated, especially in portraiture. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens challenged the norm in the way in which he loaded the light colours opaquely, to juxtapose his thin, transparent darks and shadows. The third remarkable 17th-century master of oil painting was the Dutch painter Rembrandt. In his work, a single brushstroke would effectively depict form; cumulative strokes created great textural depth, with a combination of the rough and the smooth, the thick and the thin. A field of loaded whites and transparent darks is further enhanced by glaze, blendings, and highly controlled impastos.
Other basic influences on the later techniques of easel painting are the smooth, thinly painted, deliberately planned, tight appearances. A great many admired works (e.g., like those of Johannes Vermeer) were formed with smooth blends of shades to cast shadowy forms and delicate colour variations.
The technical requirements of some schools of modern painting cannot be attained by traditional genres or techniques, however. Some abstract painters - including some modern traditionally-geared painters - have shown a need for a wholly different plastic flow or viscosity that cannot be had from oil paint and its conventional additives. Some require a larger variety of thick or thin applications and a expedient rate of drying. Some of them have mixed coarsely grained materials with the colours to create new textures, some apply oil paints in much greater thicknesses than traditionally, and a large part have turned to acrylic paints, as they are more versatile and dry speedily.
Interested in oil painting? For art supplies Brisbane, including canvas art supplies and artists supplies, visit or call the Discount Art Warehouse.
