Mastering fat-over-lean will take away the necessity for
varnishing and guarantee a protracted life on your work.
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| Ottawa Home, oil on canvas, out there, goes in my gallery this summer time. |
There are three elementary truths of oil portray, which
are:
- Massive shapes to small shapes
- Darks to lights
- Fats over lean
The primary one is extra about tips on how to suppose than in regards to the
technical facets of oil paint. The second is a response to white paint’s infinite
capacity to dilute darker shades. The third is absolutely essentially the most tough one to
grasp, and the one which has long-term archival implications.
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| Belfast Harbor, oil on canvas, out there, can be moving into my gallery this summer time. |
The enterprise of laying down paint is a craft, one which’s
been developed over millennia. It’s potential to take this craft to new locations,
however solely on a agency basis of method. That doesn’t imply that issues don’t
change; in the event that they didn’t, we’d all be nonetheless portray encaustic funerary
portraits a la the Romans. However there’s nonetheless broad
consensus on how oil paint is utilized.
Fats-over-lean developed to forestall two issues: sinking
coloration and cracking paint emulsion. The primary is that dullish gray movie that
develops over paint that’s overthinned with solvent. Cracking paint doesn’t
normally seem till after the artist is lifeless however is a significant subject in some masterpieces.
Some producers of alkyd mediums argue that the fat-over-lean
rule not applies. I take this with a grain of salt. It’s a well-known
argument to conservators now making an attempt to repair 20th century masterpieces
that had been painted with zinc oxide, as soon as thought-about an excellent substitute for lead white.
It takes time for issues to look in work, time that’s measured in
a long time, not years.
Fats over lean sounds easy, however the utility is difficult. By
‘fats’ we imply the medium—both commercially-mixed mediums or drying oils like
linseed, poppy or walnut. Keep in mind that the paint itself incorporates a few of this
medium as a binder, normally within the type of linseed oil. By ‘lean’ we imply the
pigment and a solvent, normally odorless mineral spirits (OMS), or, if there are
unreconstructed traditionalists on the market, turpentine.
The same old method to obtain that is by slicing the preliminary underpainting
layer with OMS. Because it evaporates, it leaves a skinny layer of paint on the
floor. As you develop extra layers, enhance the quantity of paint and,
finally, medium.
Drying oils don’t evaporate, they oxidize. Meaning they keep
there, bonded with oxygen, creating a brand new chemical construction on the floor of
the paint. This may be extraordinarily sturdy, when achieved on a correct lean base.
In plein air, this course of is normally in the reduction of to 2
or three steps: an underpainting reduce with OMS, a layer that’s pure paint, and
then presumably a element layer reduce with medium on the highest. Nevertheless, in additional
complicated work with extra layers, the shift from lean to fats will be extra
gradual.
Both approach, you need the underside layers to have extra OMS and
much less oil and the highest layers to have extra oil and, hopefully, no OMS in any respect.
One other method to get there—much less accepted—is to make use of solely
portray medium, beginning with nearly none within the backside layers and constructing
increasingly oil into the layers as you develop the portray. Nevertheless, the
overwhelming majority of painters begin with skinny underpainting as a method of sorting
out their concepts. For them, there’s little benefit to this methodology.
Many painters by no means use medium in any respect. I take advantage of little or no
myself. I like Grumbacher’s conventional
oil portray mediums (labeled I, II, and III), however the looser my methodology has
turn out to be, the much less I take advantage of in any respect. It’s nearly all the time simply refined
linseed oil, since I can fly with it.