XPR: I got new paints today!
Stephen Morgana
related to art, XPR: ;-)
I got a box full of oil paints delivered to my house today! I opened
each one up, smelled them, touched them, admired their color on my
fingers. (a little cadmium on the skin cant hurt can it?) I cant wait
to paint with them, but I still only have watercolor brushes, and I
need to get turps and oil. I already know what my first oil painting
is going to look like, I dreamed about it in detail one night. Its
going to be a night scene of a shore line with moonlight and dramatic
clouds, very blue and dark with glints of white on the water and clouds.
Thats all, I've got to go now and squeeze some colors out onto my
palette and see how they mix...
--
Stephen
http://homepages.go.com/~scm2000
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Erik A. Mattila
I thought I would mention something - concerning your interest in color.
If you are really, really inclined to be precise with color, you'll find
different characteristics with different brands.
In the early sixties I was taking classes at San Francisco City College
under the direction of an Art Department chair who was a color, shape,
composition dictator. (We all hated it, of course). The assignments were
given in numbers -- numbers for hue, value, chroma, and numbers for
compositions, and even numbers for 'quality of shape' ("Q Factor" it was
called). He had every student pruchase an explicit brand of opaque water
color - actually a pretty good line of 'poster paint' (and I can't remember
the brand name.) At any rate, the generic 'red' of this paint was not a
'true red' (and here we get into color physics) so we had to add a precise
amount of 'blue' to it to make it a 'true red' as far as the director's
criteria was concerned. It was aggrivating. When he graded the
assignments, he had a rubber-stamp form with all the numerical elements
listed, i.e. 'hue, value, chroma, Q factor, composition 1, 2, & 3 etc, and
then he would give you a numerical evaluation of each category, and if it
added up to a hundred, you got an "A." Oh, I forgot, he also had aesthetic
numbers, like 'tactile' and 'kenetic' and 'MHTM" (Man's Inhumanity to Man).
Anyway, the point was that every brand has different mixing
characteristics. I used to by primary and secondary colors and mix
everything, so I was always running into problems with this. Eventually I
lost interest in mixing colors with any degree of precision, and got more
interested in using various pigments on their own individual merits. I do
think, however, that it is a good idea to learn how to mix colors. A good
exercise, if you are interested in precision mixing, is to purchase a paint
company's color charts/mixing chart. (Liquitex has wa dynomite one for it's
acrylic line). It doesn't matter if it's oil or whatever. Just pick out a
color and say "I'm going to mix that" and see how close you can come. You
get into some areas where the human eye's ability to distinguish hue, value
and chroma is very challenged, but involvement with this kind of exercise
heightens one's perception of color.
Have fun with your paint.
Erik
Paul Mesken
<scm...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>I propose a new subcategory of X: that is for pointles ramblings
>related to art, XPR: ;-)
>
>I got a box full of oil paints delivered to my house today! I opened
>each one up, smelled them, touched them, admired their color on my
>fingers. (a little cadmium on the skin cant hurt can it?) I cant wait
>to paint with them, but I still only have watercolor brushes, and I
>need to get turps and oil. I already know what my first oil painting
>is going to look like, I dreamed about it in detail one night. Its
>going to be a night scene of a shore line with moonlight and dramatic
>clouds, very blue and dark with glints of white on the water and clouds.
>
>Thats all, I've got to go now and squeeze some colors out onto my
>palette and see how they mix...
Ah yes! I still remember getting a full palet delivered of oils. The
first thing I did was line them up and just look at all those shiny
tubes (30 in a row) :-)
Go easy on the turp. I started out with acrylics (with loads of water)
and when I went over to oil I initially didn't change technique, using
the turp where I used water with acrylics. It might work on paper but
it runs all over creation on anyting else and it doesn't stay properly
fixed at the surface. I only use a little bit for the initial sketch
and the "color layout" where I bind the large areas with a single
color. BTW you could also do the underpainting in acrylics.
Oh yeah: get _loads_ of bristles. If you have good quality paint then
you will notice that the more chromatic colors (cadmiums for example)
won't leave your brush even after drowning it in turpentine (BTW you
should first wipe them off as good as possible with some rags and
stuff). Unlike watercolors you should have bristles reserved for
certain colors. New bristles should be heavily washed to get rid of
the unavoidable loose hairs. Good bristles are "bushy" at their tops
since good hog hair has split ends, holds more paint.
And _never_ use pencils to make your sketch, the darn stuff just moves
up through the paint no matter how you fixed it. Charcoal is good
(after fixating it ofcourse unless you want to do special effects),
doing the sketch in heavily dilluted paint (burnt umber for instance)
is even better.
You can use watercolor brushes for oil painting as well (BTW after
that they shouldn't be used for watercolor paintings again, the hairs
will be eternally greasy). I use a lot of sables (watercolor versions,
short handle, more hairs) and they work like a charm as long as the
paint is dilluted with enough medium or turpentine.
Alison A Raimes
deja.com> writes
>I propose a new subcategory of X: that is for pointles ramblings
>related to art, XPR: ;-)
God now I am *really* confused ....
>
>I got a box full of oil paints delivered to my house today! I opened
>each one up, smelled them, touched them, admired their color on my
>fingers. (a little cadmium on the skin cant hurt can it?) I cant wait
>to paint with them, but I still only have watercolor brushes, and I
>need to get turps and oil. I already know what my first oil painting
>is going to look like, I dreamed about it in detail one night. Its
>going to be a night scene of a shore line with moonlight and dramatic
>clouds, very blue and dark with glints of white on the water and clouds.
>
Now you are talking ! forget South Park - all the fun you need in life
is in those tubes.
>Thats all, I've got to go now and squeeze some colors out onto my
>palette and see how they mix...
>
Experiment, experiment, experiment .. and make notes along the way. And
let us know ... we expect updates on the site !
--
Alison