Artists’ oil colours are created by stirring dry powder pigments with selected refined linseed oil until the mixture reaches a stiff paste consistency then grinding it by harsh friction in steel roller mills. The perfection of the colour is fundamental. The usual standard is a smooth, buttery paste, not stringy or long or tacky. When a transient or mobile element is required by the artist, a liquid painting medium such as pure gum turpentine has to be mixed with the mixture. If the artist needs to speed up drying, a siccative, or liquid drier, can be generally used.
Top-class brushes are produced in two styles: red sable (from various members of the weasel species) and whitened hog bristles. They both can be purchased in numbered sizes for the four regular shapes: round (pointed), flat, bright (flat but is shorter and less supple), and oval (flat but is bluntly pointed). Red sable brushes are commonly utilised for the smoother, less robust style of technique. The painting knife, a declicately tempered, skinny version of the palette knife, is a convenient utensil for applying oil colours in a robust style.
The standard support for oil painting is a canvas made from pure European linen of sturdy close weave. The canvas is cut to the required size and stretched over a frame, mostly wooden, and secured by tacks or, from the 20th century, by staples. If the artist desires to lessen the absorbency of the canvas fabric and to attain a glossy surface, a primer or ground should be applied and is allowed to dry first. The most typically employed primers for this are gesso, rabbit-skin glue, and lead white. If stiffness and consistency are preferred rather than elasticity and texture, a wooden or processed paperboard panel, sized or primed, should be employed. Lots of other supports, such as paper and differing textiles and metals, have been tried out.
A polish of picture varnish is often set on to a finished oil painting to protect it from atmospheric attacks, minor abrasions, or an injurious accumulation of dirt. This film of varnish could be taken off safely by experts who use isopropyl alcohol and such common solvents. Varnishing also takes the surface to a uniform lustre and sets the tonal depth and colour intensity basically to the vibrancy first formed by the artist in the wet paint. Some modern painters, particularly those who do not favour deep, intense colouring, and stay with a mat, or lustreless, finish in the paintings.
Many oil paintings from before the 19th century were done in layers. The first layer was a blank, uniform field of thin paint called a ground. The ground subdued the white glare of the primer and allowed a gentle base of colour on which to start painting. The forms and figures in the painting would be roughly blocked in from shades of white, and gray or neutral green, red, or brown. The eventuating field of monochromatic light and dark colours were called the underpainting. Forms could be given definition by using either ordinary paint or scumbles; irregular, thinly applied layers of opaque pigment that displaying a whole range of visual effects. At the final step, transparent layers of pure colour known as a glaze were used to display luminosity, depth, and brilliance to the shapes, and highlights could then be effected with thick, textured patches of paint called impastos.
Oil as a medium of painting is dated circa the 11th century. The method of easel painting with oil colours, however, stems directly from 15th-century tempera-painting techniques. Basic improvements in how to refine linseed oil and the availability of volatile solvents after 1400 coincided with a requirement for some medium other than pure egg-yolk tempera, to meet the contemporary desires of the Renaissance (see tempera painting). At first, oil paints and varnishes would be utilised to glaze tempera panelswhich had been painted with their typical linear draftsmanship. The technically brilliant, jewel-like paintings of the 15th-century Flemish artist Jan van Eyck, for example, were perfected in this new style.
In the 16th century, oils flourished as the fundamental painting material in Venice. From then, Venetian painters were proficient in the exploitation of the fundamental traits of oil painting, particularly in their employment of a number of layers of glazes. Canvas of linen, after a long period of growth, topped wood panels as the common support.
One of the 17th-century masters of the oil technique was Velazquez, a Spanish painter in the Venetian tradition, whose supremely economical but sure brushstrokes have often been adopted, notably in portraiture. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens challenged the norm in the style in which he loaded the light colours opaquely, juxtaposing his thin, transparent darks and shadows. Another great 17th-century master of oil painting was the Dutch painter Rembrandt. In his art, a single brushstroke can effectively depict form; cumulative strokes gave great textural depth, with a combination of the rough and the smooth, the thick and the thin. A technique of loaded whites and transparent darks was fully enhanced by glaze, blendings, and highly controlled impastos.
Other basic influences on the techniques of easel painting are the smooth, thinly painted, deliberately planned, tight styles. A great many admired works (e.g., like those of Johannes Vermeer) were crafted with smooth blends of colours to cast shadowed forms and delicate colour variations.
The technical requirements of some schools of modern painting cannot be achieved by traditional genres or techniques, however. Many abstract painters - including a few modern traditionally-geared painters - have expressed a desire for a plastic flow or viscosity that cannot be formed with oil paint and its conventional additives. Some need a larger range of thick or thin applications and a more expedient rate of drying. Some mixed coarsely grained substances with their colours to create new textures, some of them have used oil paints in much greater thicknesses than traditionally, and many have started using acrylic paints, because they are more versatile and dry rapidly.
Interested in oil painting? For art supplies Brisbane, including canvas art supplies and artists supplies, visit or call the Discount Art Warehouse.
