Oil Painting 101:

Tad Spurgeon

Fundamentals of the Craft

Copyright 2003 by Tad Spurgeon.

Please feel free to make non-profit copies of this material for educational purposes. For more information and unusual opinions, visit www.tadspurgeon.com

Contents
Introduction Process Authenticity Drawing Value Light Method Axioms Color Pigments Black & White Brushes Mediums Supports Grounds Solvents Varnishing Bibliography Suppliers

Introduction
I grew up with a man who was always telling me things I didn't understand: my grandfather. One day he told me about the bumblebee. He explained that the scientists had tested the bumblebee in a wind tunnel and had found out that the bumblebee was aerodynamically unstable. But, he continued, the bumblebee doesn't know this so it goes ahead and flies anyway. Now, I'm beginning with this story because most people who want to paint have a lot in common with the bumblebee, except that we tend to listen to the scientists and get confused about our native abilities. So, I won't be teaching you how to fly because you already know how. But I will be teaching you how to paint as well as I can. And somewhere along the way you'll hopefully find yourself airborne.

There are many different ways to make realistic paintings in oil. A great variety of materials are available from which to choose in terms of colors, mediums, brushes, and supports, and these can be further assembled in almost endless individual combinations. There are a few rules that need to be followed technically, and a method of translating light to color needs to be learned, but the rest is about the choices you make based on no one's opinion but your own. This opinion is typically based on feelings, and is often not easy to describe in words. Expressing feeling truly is a very important part of our lives which is often submerged by the hectic pace of modern life. Commitment to a discipline is a great way to turn this equation around, to begin to reclaim our time and our right to be ourselves. Knowledge of who we are as individuals is crucial to making choices which are positive and fulfilling. Working with any material creatively paint, clay, marble, wood, sound is an excellent way to develop a sense of emotional integrity what makes us feel right. This then serves as a template to apply to other things we do: an infallible way to improve the quality of life. So, inevitably as you do this work, you'll learn about more than color and light. Please don't feel that you have to be talented, this is an unfortunate myth perpetuated by cultural elitists. It's much more important to learn to pay attention to what you're seeing on the one hand, and what you're feeling on the other. The quality of creative uncertainty also comes into play: if you think you know what an apple is, this confidence is the primrose path to a very bad apple painting. If you know you don't know what an apple is, this open-mindedness creates a viable foundation for something real. Oil painting can be experienced on a number of different levels in a number of different ways: it will adapt itself to your way of working readily if you learn the fundamentals of the craft. The best overall advice I can give you is to learn to be yourself in your painting. Follow your instincts. Use your head, your heart, and your hands. This is what children do naturally and it gives their work enormous power with a minimum of technical ability. Do what you want to do and make what you want to make. Don't tolerate frustration, make changes. This is the fastest way to learn because it develops your intuition. Your intuition, given an opportunity, will lead you to some very interesting places. There's always great joy in being surprised by who you really are. Be patient with yourself in the learning process. Turn off your inner critic and be a happy beginner. Often students expect to translate the elegance and subtlety of decades of experience as a verbal being to the visual realm overnight but the two realms (verbal/visual) are very different. The verbal realm is linear and two dimensional, while the relationship of color and light, though logical,

is three dimensional. You also have the physical permutations of paint, brushes, and canvas to learn. Take it slowly, give it time, and have fun while you are painting. Then you'll paint more, and the more you paint, the better you'll get. Mistakes will happen. You'll make them all, hopefully. Accept this and develop confidence in your ability by correcting them. Don't be too careful, painting isn't diplomacy. Make bold mistakes, change them boldly. This creates the most desireable aspect a painting can have: confidence. Now I have to warn you about a certain pitfall. If you know how to draw or took a large number of art courses before other aspects of life intervened, what you will learn in the next few months will enable you to move forward rapidly from a technical point of view as a painter. Over the past decade of teaching this has happened many times, and it's very fun. However, this has often lead to a pre-mature involvement with the marketplace from the point of view of the process. This is a lot like the old story of the sorcerer's apprentice, who had only learned half the spell. If you have an interest in selling paintings please be circumspect, take your time and allow your process to grow without any form of external pressure until you understand not only painting, but the maintainance of a living process as well. This may take awhile but you'll endure the capricious nature of the marketplace much better as a result. What follows is a condensed version of a basic course in oil painting designed for people who want to be competent and have fun. It has no illustrations because I've experienced that the biggest obstacle most students have is the enculturated preponderence of their left brain's development. By addressing this part of the brain in it's own language words it quickly realizes it has no idea what's going on and decides after a certain period of hesitation it better learn because it doesn't like feeling so dumb. I've tried to focus on the essentials, hoping for enlightened simplicity. However there's always more so if you have further questions about methods or materials please ask them in class. There's also lots of information on my website (www.tadspurgeon.com) under the link to Craft. Painting is of course about more than the craft, and I'm happy to talk about that too. It seems fair to say that its possible to understand oneself and one's life on a number of different levels, and that painting will simply lead you wherever you want to go.

Authenticity
A majority of students are interested in a quality in painting I call casual elegance. This quality -- spontaneous and effortless correctness coupled with just enough force is immensly attractive in oil paint but is very deceptive because it is neither easy nor simple, except to look at. It is in fact the result of effort so immense and relentless that it transcends itself: the circle arrives once again at the beginning. Another word for this quality would be authenticity: a big buzz word these days now that its so scarce. There is only one way to develop this quality reliably in paint: to work with the materials until, as with words in grade school, you develop your own style and handwriting, and to use these tools to tell the truth as you see it. All the gimmicks, systems, tricks and complex intellectual formulations designed to shortcut this process technically or otherwise will not make authentic work. They may make you topical, they may make you rich, they may even make you famous, but from the point of view of the deeper aspects of painting as a tool for the furthering of human awareness, they lead inevitably to the great abyss of formalism: style without content. O painter, beware!

Process
Learning to paint takes a while: I can give you a jump start in a course like this and you can go further with the books in the bibliography but you will ultimately need to put together a process for yourself in order to continue to develop. This is the make or break decision. You'll need to create a space where you can paint, create a time when you can paint, and you'll need to paint regularly. If you do this, you'll grow naturally and remain interested. People think painting is about talent or depiction or the intellectual plat du jour in the great cultural bistro, but painting is about showing up at the easel and seeing what happens; that simple commitment and its very complex results. There will be good days when you have magic hands, bad days when you just make mush, and lots of days inbetween, but regardless, you clean your brushes and start over again. This is painting, the rest is, ultimately, talking. The best thing is to just work regularly without judgement. Try to understand the issues, but keep your inner critic on the back burner. Throw it all out as you go if you want, but keep going. You'll learn a lot about painting, and you'll learn a lot about who you are, and the two in combination have a habit of making art. But it can't happen if you don't show up for work.

Drawing
If you want to paint in oil, there's no escape from drawing. The more you draw, the better your painting will become. This isn't just the gnat's eye at a hundred paces kind of drawing, it's any kind of drawing. Drawing helps you to learn what's really there, not just what your brain thinks is there. To draw effectively you have to learn to look differently. Drawing develops hand-eye coordination and a feeling for composition and value. While some people are naturally good at drawing, drawing skills are easy for anyone to acquire through practice. Without them, all the effort and talent in the world will still produce paintings that have a kind of internal mushiness. Have you seen any paintings like this? Painters learn two kinds of drawing, realistic and personal. The realistic style comes first and the personal style is a later development, similar to the development of your own handwriting. Realistic drawing used to be taught as a kind of iron discipline but what I'd recommend is that you work both ways in order to keep them both fresh. If you feel your drawing skills could be better the best thing to do is integrate drawing into your painting practice so that when you run into a problem you simply start drawing in order to solve it. Make sketches of an idea, keep a notebook of ideas, make full size drawings before making a painting. Your graphical handwriting will develop, and with it the personality of your brush strokes. Drawing can be about detail, but learning to develop a lively compositional structure is just as important for painting.

Value
When we talk about the value scale we mean the various increments between the darkest dark and the brightest bright in a painting. Learning to see value means learning to see the relative lightness or darkness of an area rather than it's actual color. This is important because it allows you to interpret a painting first in monochrome rather than trying to juggle composition, value, and color all at once. Value scales can be long or short, attenuated or compressed. This quality is called relative contrast. If a value scale is long but also compressed, you have a painting with high contrast. If a value scale is both short and stretched, you have a painting with low contrast. Value is a kind of

visual accordion that you learn to play, pushing and pulling the brights and darks around until you have what you want. Older painters often exploited the dramatic potential of value to make their limited palettes feel more colorful. Impressionists, on the other hand, often compressed the value scale in order to use more color effectively. Typically, a painting will lead with value or color but not both.

Light
Realistic painting relies on a convincing depiction of light. Any scene involving light and shadow in color can be rendered with an equilateral triangle of three colors; usually but not always red, yellow, and blue. This is because, regardless of the local colors of given objects a green tree, a yellow lemon the light has a certain color and the shadows contain (not are) the opposite color. So, simplistically, yellow light creates shadows containing purple, blue light creates shadows containing orange, etc. all around the color wheel. (Please note that this is more complex in practice because shadows are absorbent: both the above color often the sky and the color of the object casting the shadow are part of a shadow's formula.) In every case, one point of the light-shadow axis is a primary color, the other is a secondary color, composed of two primaries. Even if you're painting a still life of all white objects, you'll need a red, yellow and blue to render them three dimensionally. A simple way of saying this is that opposition (two colors 180 degrees apart) creates dimension (the illusion of depth). This is the optical fact exploited first by impressionism and then taken to an extreme by pointallism. The color wheel is divided down the middle vertically at neutral yellow and neutral purple, the orange and red half being called warm, and the blue and green half being called cool. These terms, however, are relative: scarlet being a warmer red (closer to orange) than crimson (closer to blue). In painting, light and dimension are created by a warm-cool opposition. If the light is cool, the shadows are warm, and if the light is warm, the shadows are cool. Consistency and accuracy here will take you a long way. That is, a typical painting has one color of light and one corresponding color integrating all the shadows. While many people have been taught in school that black and white are not colors, as painters we cannot afford this level of intellectual sophistication.

While there are small variations within the range of pigments available, both black and white behave as shades of blue. When you add white to a color to make it lighter, you are also making it cooler. White elevates value at the expense of chroma. Light never does anything illogical; if it did our lives would be chaotic if not impossible. You will always be able to figure out what going on in a given situation using the information given above. At first this process can be difficult or confusing because so much of our thinking is linear or two dimensional and color is three dimensional,, but once you get the hang of it it's straightforward because it's always logical. Many times students find the onset of three dimensional thought to be a very interesting experience.

Method
Because the root motivation behind painting is intuitive, right-brain, and non- or extra-logical, it's important to balance this with a logical method. This balance allows for predictable results: which leads to assurance, which leads to creative freedom, which leads to more assurance, etc.. I'll present a method I use that has been around for centuries, but it doesn't matter what you do as long as you have a method that observes the rules of the craft on the one hand and the logic of light on the other. A painting goes through six discreet stages on the road to completion. They're a constant that you can apply when wondering where you are or what wants to happen next. They are: 1. Composition: This is the initial placement of line to delineate space. It can be a drawing in charcoal or other pencil-like medium but it can also be done in paint with a small brush. Many people rush through this stage through anxiety and/or enthusiasm but if the initial composition isn't right, an immense amount of effort will be required later will save the painting. Most people want an element of spontaniety in their work. The key to this is confidence. Once you have an idea of what you're doing with paint, the key to confidence is a composition you KNOW will work. If you have doubt about a composition, execute it in monochrome black and white in any medium, at scale or half-scale. Small thumbnail sketches are also good but will often have an element of charm which is very difficult to reproduce in a larger format. They can help explore an idea, but they can also fool you into thinking you know more about a situation than you really do. 2. Value: Once the space has been carved up by lines, it is then filled in with a monochrome value scale from dark to light. This initial color is often warm such as burnt siena but could be cool if the painting is ultimately destined

3.

4.

5.

6.

to be quite warm. The values from dark to light are blocked in with a degree of detail that is appropriate to the method. Renaissance painters such as Leonardo executed very detailed underpaintings which were then glazed over with thin transparent layers of pigment: you can see a Leonardo underpainting in several unfinished paintings. Painters like Vermeer and Rembrandt executed underpaintings that were relatively abstract in comparison: just the biggest masses were blocked in and the edges were left out of focus on purpose. Most people work with this second type of underpainting but it is very important using this method to MAKE SURE you've got the composition you want (or are very close) before proceeding. This is a good place to stop a painting session if you're doing something new or are in any way doubtful. Light: In the next stage you augment the monochrome value structure by introducing light in the form of red, yellow, and blue. It's important to learn not to see identity apples, bowls, trees, clouds but to see light and shadow. When working with burnt siena as the first color a red you would then introduce a blue such as ultramarine to the darks and a yellow such as ochre or raw siena to the lights. If you are working in layers this is another good place to stop and let the painting dry. Local Color: The next stage involves the use of white and the development of the actual colors in the painting using the full palette of colors selected. This stage is a bit jarring at first because all the subtle harmony created by three low chroma transparent colors is instantly disturbed. The best way to adjust to this is to learn to use white slowly and incrementally, so that all the transparence of the underpainting isn't instantly obliterated. Older painters used lead white, which has much more transparence than titanium white. If you're concerned about the toxicity of lead, try zinc white. Some companies are now making a combination zinc and titanium as well. (Titanium white has a high hiding power, which means that the number of possible mixing increments between translucent and opaque is considerably reduced compared to a more translucent white). Mood: After the local color is developed a painting typically needs to be toned down a bit chromatically to feel cohesive and give a convincing sense of time and place. This usually involves restating the shadows and blending the midtones while leaving the higher values clean. (Steps four and five are often repeated several times before a painting is finished, either in the same session or in sucessive ones). Completion: This is the point at which relevant details are put into the painting, as well as the all-important element of casual elegance. In working from warm to cool you often need to brighten the high end of the value scale a final time. When you reach the point where light, color, and mood are correct, it's surprising how little is necessary in the way of detail to finish the

painting. If you want to work in a more detailed way, try moving towards the detail incrementally as you execute steps 4 and 5 in successive layers. Whatever the smallest elements are, they only want to be done once. It's very easy for them to become fussy looking or overworked otherwise.

There are many different painting methods, but they fall into three main categories: painting from warm and dark towards light and cool, painting from cool and light towards dark and warm, and a third method which combines the two. We'll work with the first method, which is adaptable to both spontaneous and indirect painting. The following description illustrates the above steps in practice in a single painting session. This method builds from simple towards complex, and doesn't use a detailed under-drawing. The detail is done once, while the painting is being finished. The basic composition is established in large, out of focus shapes which are then developed further. In order to do this, though, you'll need to learn to see mass the bulk of a shape and value it's relative lightness or darkness. This type of seeing is kind of abstract: you're not looking for identity or detail, but the basics. What's the shape? How dark is it relative to the other elements in the painting? The painting is begun with a warm wash, not too much turpentine or medium, but enough to create movement. Earth colors like raw sienna, burnt sienna or venetian red are traditional imprimatura colors, or you can mix a brownish orange from brighter colors with no white. Use the wash in lighter values first, then darken it down as you feel more sure of the composition. Go as far in developing the value scale as you need to to feel confident that you have a good painting on its way, but use large brushes and stay away from detail. Once you feel good about the monochrome underpainting, begin to darken the darkest darks further, using blue or a neutral dark paint made up of red yellow and blue. Don't worry about the local colors -- the yellow lemon, the green tree that comes later. Complete a pass around the painting this way adjusting the composition. It will feel too warm and too dark: that's good. It won't have any detail: that's good too. It will seem, well, almost abstract... Now begin to work with the local colors: the green of the tree and the yellow of the lemon. Keep working from dark to light. Try to stay away from white as long as possible. Continue to add color and adjust until the painting

seems not only too dark and too warm, but too colorful as well. Don't worry, that's good. At this point begin to introduce white into the higher values. Notice how white makes the color disappear. See how much of the value scale you can keep white away from: the more you can make value with color, the more luminous your painting will be. (This of course doesn't apply to very high key subjects like snow or clouds, but the theory's the same). Make a conscious decision about the light/shadow axis: which one is warm, which one is cool. If you teach yourself to consciously choose this axis, you'll find a cohesive feeling this day, this time -- is much easier to develop. Color interest can be added incrementally later to an already established mood. If for some unaccountable reason it looks like it's not going the way you want it to, take a palette knife or a few large clean brushes older brushes are good for this and begin to remove paint. Sometimes rarely -- this will complete a painting, but mostly it simplifies matters and offers a different way to go forward again. If at this point you still feel a certain nagging disatisfaction you can take off as much paint as possible and go back to the composition. Either continue work on it the next day while it's still a bit tacky, or wait a week or two until it's really dry.

Axioms
There are no hard and fast rules in oil painting, but there are some strong guidelines which, once you learn them, enable you to make up your own system. So, generally speaking: Paint from warm to cool. Paint from thin to thick. Paint from lean to fat. Paint from loose to tight. Paint from big to small. Use the largest brushes possible.

Avoid using white as long as possible in a given layer. Paint light not objects as long as possible. Establish a consistent light/shadow axis. Remove paint as well as apply it. Look at the developing painting on the canvas as well as the subject matter. Your agenda for the painting may not be where it wants to go. Allowing it to succeed on it's own terms might be simpler and more interesting.

Color
Color has great emotional appeal and we tend to have an overwhelming interest in it, often at the expense of other aspects of a painting that are equally or more important to it's success. As a painter you need to use color, not be used by it. Just as the choice of 128 cereals doesn't in itself improve the quality of breakfast, the choice of 128 colors doesn't improve painting. The paint companies have created an unfortunate trap that leads people to believe that the answer is in some tube they don't have yet: purple madder alizarin, oh my! The answer is actually in finding colors which you like that relate well together. Most of Monet's paintings, for example, were made with five colors and white. By all means explore all the colors that you want to, but remember that the more colors a painting contains, the more difficult it is to achieve harmony and a believable sense of time and place. Specialized or boutique colors have a tendency to compound this issue, especially for beginners. I've often seen paintings with so much unbroken color that they seem to be flying apart: the bright colors compete with one another in a kind of beauty contest and the composition loses. The real art of color usage isn't in merciless chroma but in mixing across the color wheel to create a functional natural harmony. Copying a Monet or a Bonnard is a good way to learn an advanced version of this. The visual sensation of brilliant chroma is created by the existence of brighter colors within a more neutral context. As you'll see in class, an immense number of colors can be made with three primaries that are in balance; i.e. as close as possible to 120 degrees apart on the color wheel. Secondary colors can be mixed on the palette before beginning. The great thing about a palette like this is the way harmony and

dimension simply fall into place while you work. As you develop try the idea of a palette composed of two triangles. One can be warm primaries, the other cool. One could be primaries, the other secondaries. One could be earth colors, the other modern colors. Start with one triangle and work the other in. This will help you explore color in a systematic way. Almost all colors available now are lightfast or nearly so: manufacturers all have a code for this on the side of the tube. Please get the best paint you can and don't get colors that are mixtures, especially those involving white. Holbein paint is available locally at Black Horse very reasonably. The best earth pigments are made by Blockx, Maimeri, and Williamsburg. If you like using earth pigments these will make a difference. I'm often asked about the best paint manufacturer but this depends very much on what you're doing. I've ended up using principally Blockx and Maimeri.

Pigments
Compared to painters of the Renaissance we have available an extraordinary number of beautiful and permanent pigments. The problem here is in choosing wisely. Manufacturers make this job more difficult by producing colors that are mixtures of several pigments and colors that have inscrutable or romantic names. All of this is a kind of retail shell game designed to get you to buy too much paint, confusing everything so much that you buy more! While there are no bad colors just awkward contexts, some colors are more user friendly than others, especially for realistic work. Thanks to the efforts of the ASTM, there are guidelines now for labeling paint. So, a little research on the sides of those tubes will tell you what's really going on inside them. Some manufacturers play a further game by listing the pigment by its code (PY1 PG 28, etc.), but there's always some piece of literatureon hand that tells you what's really in there. At first this may be a bit like a chemistry lesson but you'll keeping seeing the same arcane words and learn what works for you and what doesn't. The following is a fundamental listing; please ask me if you have questions about a specific pigment.

Cold Yellow: Avoid cadmium lemon, use any of the standard primary
yellows (arilyde pigment), which are also transparent. There's also a very cool bismuth yellow and a nickel titanium yellow(not as bright, more sulphury), both of which are opaque. This is also a position for yellow ochre.

Warm Yellow: These can also be arilyde or a pigment called

benzimidazo. There's a Quinacradone gold that's lovely. A good quality Raw Siena also works in this position.

Cold Red: Please don't use alizarin crimson here as it's not permanent.
Anthraquinone crimson is an amazing permanent pigment. Quinacradone is more famous for its magenta but is made in a crimson as well. Quinacradone red is the rose red. Pyrol reds (such as Blockx Crimson Lake) are also excellent. This is also a place for Mars Red, an iron based permanent earth pigment.

Warm Red: Avoid napthol reds for realistic painting. Also avoid
cadmium pigments (cadmium red light) unless really excellent quality. The best modern scarlet is a pyrol pigment: they come with various exotic names so look on the side of the tube or in the literature. For earth pigments here you could use Venetian Red or English Red Light, both iron based and permanent.

Cold Blue: Phthalo blue is standard here but extremely strong.

Ultramarine light is the coolest ultramarine. Indanthrone blue is an interesting permanent modern pigment, a bit like indigo as the name suggests. Manganese blue is another wonderful cool blue. Cobalt is a fascinating pigment, the lighter shades are on the cool side. Avoid Prussian Blue for a while.

Warm Blue: French Ultramarine is the standard warm blue, the darker
high quality cobalts also tend to be warm.

Green: Phthalo green is the modern standard but like the blue is very
powerful, can take over. Viridian is the Monet green but needs to be high quality. Cobalt greens had a great vogue in the earlier 20th Century, they're expensive. Green earth varies from one manufacturer to the other, as does sap green, which is now made with a permanent pigment. Chrome oxide green is a strong dark sage green that's often overlooked but useful in more realistic landscape work.

Purple: Dioxizine violet is the modern standard. Manganese violet is

less vibrant, comes in warm and cool shades. Cobalt violet is lovely but expensive. Mars violet is an iron based permanent earth color, very cool and strong.

Orange: Cadmium orange has a unique quality. There are also several
modern orange pigments with unique characteristics for specific subjects.

Black & White

These two pigments formed the backbone of Old Master painting, but need some explanation. The white used in older painting or in modern painting that is technically serious is lead white, which has optical and physical properties that are unique. While the toxicity level of lead is relatively low, the problems caused by it's use in interior housepaint have made people wary of using it, especially in environments containing small children. It is, however, crucial for painting in older styles and techniques. (My opinion). There are two generally available alternative whites, titanium and zinc. Titanium is very opaque and zinc is even more transparent than lead. It's probably best to begin with titanium but if you're interested in the subtle tonality of a long value scale you may want to get zinc too. You can use them separately or mix them on the palette in a way you like. Black has developed an unfortunate reputation as a bad color, principally due to Monet's reaction against it. Older painting, however, ( and many of his contemporaries) used black in creative and dramatic ways. The black I've had the most success with is Blockx vine black, so called because the charcoal was originally made from grapevines. This is a somewhat transparent blue black which can be warmed with any of the transparent earth colors. For a dense Manhattan black, try Mars black.

Brushes

Brushes, like color, have become bewildering in their variety. Here again the most important thing is to experiment a bit until you discover what works for the way you paint. Bristle brushes are relatively stiff and can push lots of paint around. They can be made softer by keeping them in oil as the old painters did. They come in four shapes: rounds, flats, filberts (a pointed flat) and brights (a short flat). Flats and brights are good for architecture and geometry, most other painting can be done with rounds and filberts. The best bristle brushes still have the natural flags split ends of the bristles and can do very subtle work. Bristle brushes wear significantly over time but an old brush can be very useful. If kept in oil it will have a long soft point for detail. If allowed to dry out, it will be a good tool for removing paint. Finer work can be done with soft hair brushes: sable, kevrin, mongoose, badger, as well as with synthetic brushes which are getting better all the time. The soft hair brushes are fragile and relatively expensive, but like all natural tools they have unique abilities. The synthetics come in degrees from stiffer to finer. I tend to use larger synthetic brushes and some smaller soft hair brushes. The numbering system of bristle and hair brushes is different, the bristle brush of the same number being significantly larger than the sable or other soft hair version. Brushes have a tendency to be badly treated, resulting in stiffness, dryness, and a limited range of possibilities. Please don't leave your brushes sitting in the charismatic coffee can full of solvent for weeks at a time: this is just bad craft. Smaller brushes should be cleaned without being left to sit with their bristles in solvent. For larger brushes, wipe them well, give a brief cleaning in solvent, then store them in painting quality oil safflower works best for this. At the end of the day wipe off the excess oil, rinse again briefly in solvent, and wash them in olive oil soap or at least Murphy's Oil soap. The better care you take of your brushes the more they will reward you with increased performance.

Mediums
Oil painting mediums are a complex subject which is really outside the scope of this course. Mediums don't solve any fundamental issues and can in

fact make your painting life much more technical and alchemical than it needs to be: voice of grim experience here.. At best a medium will enhance or augment your natural painting technique but you need to find out what this is first. However, if you know what you want to do ask me about a medium and I'll tell you some possibilities. What follows is a very general outline of modern medium usage. (In older painting techniques the situation is very different: please ask me about this if you're interested). In oil painting, something has to create an element of stickiness or friction to balance the inherent movement in the paint. In older paintings this element was the ground, which was made absorbent so that the first layers of paint stuck like mortar and were always lean because the oil in them was being absorbed by the layer beneath. An absorbent ground on a panel is no problem , but an absorbent ground on canvas becomes more complex from the point of view of understanding the physical properties of the materials involved. Painters moved from the chalk and glue gesso of the Renaissance to a ground of white lead over glue priming. The drawback of this system is that each canvas needs to be prepared individually: many of the cracks you see in 19th century paintings are actually cracks in the ground which was in most cases pre-prepared on a roll. This process of evolution-devolution has led to painters working on an acrylic gesso ground. This is readily applied and non-toxic, but the product tends to dry with a high gloss, making the paint slide mercilessly. This can be remedied to a certain extent by adding marble dust or chalk to the gesso, or using a canvas with a pronounced tooth. It can also be remedied by using a sticky medium, such as one made with a resin like dammar. People work very differently: how much stickiness you want and where you want it the ground or the medium is something you want to tune to your natural way of working. The fundamental rule in using mediums is to paint fat over lean. This means keeping the initial layers of the painting thin and avoiding mediums with extra oil until the painting is in the home stretch. (This has to do with the fact that linseed oil dries over a long period of time and shrinks as it dries: the more oil, the more shrinkage. If underlayers are shrinking significantly the paint on top will be pulled apart and crack). On the other hand, if you're planning on completing the painting in one layer, you can use a rich medium from beginning to end, and this can be fun. A small amount of any medium will alter the working characteristics of oil paint significantly. Because the paint itself is made with oil, it's usually best

to start the painting with a medium that's lean, not fat: that is, no additional oil. This can simply be turpentine. Paintings made with just turpentine tend to have a look which is either honest and workmanlike or dull and boring, depending on your point of view. (A good way of working with straight paint is to put a great deal on a textured or absorbent ground. This will be tarry the next day but not dry and can be worked into again very effectively). Introducing a medium with gloss such as dammar or one of the alkyd mediums such as Liquin will create more transparency and finish. All these different materials impart different working characteristics to the paint, and this is what you want to pay attention to. If you want paint which becomes tacky quickly and can be painted over several times in one sitting, you might like working with dammar. If you want more of an open time and less stickiness you might like Liquin or any of the family of alkyd mediums, some of which come in a gel format for thicker work. There are several wax mediums such as Dorland's which combine resins like dammar with beeswax; these produce a less glossy surface and can do significant impasto -- thick paint without cracking. There are many different quality mediums sold in good art supply stores: they are usually designed either to paint thickly or to paint thinly. There are also still some materials sold such as Meglip or Maroger Medium that are known to produce faulty results over time: a good rule of thumb technically is to keep it as simple as you can and use what the older painters used. If you want to know more about a specific product or material please ask me. Also, don't use driers or a siccative medium. It's also possible to make your own mediums. Here's an example of what can happen with three readily available ingredients: dammar, stand oil, and beeswax. The painting begun with a thin dammar solution could simply be completed with the same medium: the paint would be thin, glossy, and relatively transparent with little fusion at the edges. For faster set more body and less gloss beeswax can be dissolved in turpentine and added to the dammar. As the painting comes close to being finished a small amount of stand oil could be added linseed oil which has been thickened to increase the open time allowing for a more finished surface, more blending. A standard formula here is three parts turpentine to two parts dammar with 5-10% wax (thick dammar, like cream) to one part stand oil. More oil could be added to the final coat for a greater open time. The addition of beeswax also helps the paint layer to set quickly, and to be more stable and less brittle over time. A medium I've used often is a mixture of 6 parts thick homemade dammar, two arts beeswax, and one part stand oil. Mix together and heat gently until the wax dissolves.

This will be a soft gel with a soft final gloss and can be cut further with turpentine in the early stages. The small percentage of stand oil is acceptable because stand oil is more dimensionally stable than linseed oil. Because it is so inert, it is best to either use beeswax all through a painting or not at all. Wax can also be dissolved in turpentine and used as a medium in any proportion. If you want to use lots of wax, panels are a better bet for the longevity of your work.

Solvents
There's been lots of alarmism recently about solvents. This has created greater awareness but has also created a set of products with somewhat spurious marketing auras. For example, d-Limonene, the citrus peel thinner, is not only natural, it is THE MOST powerful marketed solvent and therefore the most potentially toxic. There are no safe solvents: a solvent which was safe wouldn't be a solvent. The important thing here is to use solvents sparingly and wisely; that is, with lots of ventilation. One thing I've noticed is that different people are sensitive to different solvents. If you use turpentine use artist grade which still smells like pine trees, not the hardware store variety, which doesn't. I use turpentine to paint with and clean brushes briefly in citrus thinner.

Supports
Paintings were originally done on wooden panels; canvas came in later as the size of paintings increased and the weight and technical aspects of the panel became problematic. You can still paint on wooden panels if you want to using Masonite or cabinet grade birch or maple plywood: _ inch is fine for smaller paintings. Panels can take much more abuse than unsupported canvas and can be given a variety of surface textures and characteristics. There are several companies now making panels commercially. Generally speaking the better materials have a dull not shiny surface. If you want to paint on canvas you can purchase it in bulk from many mail order supply houses and stretch it yourself before priming it. Stretching is simplified by working from the middle of each side towards the corners and simply stapling to the back. You can use canvas pliers to pull the canvas tight but this often results in a warped canvas if it's even 18 x 24. Get it tight, not too tight, with no wrinkles. The gesso will tighten it further. Another option here is to purchase a quality preprimed canvas such as Claessens or Artfix. These can

be painted on as is and then either stretched or mounted on panel. There are also commercial panels covered with canvas. Cotton canvas is significantly cheaper than linen, and is very affordable in bulk at a place like Utrecht. Quality linen has a great texture; linen primed with white lead is a very pleasant surface to work on once you've painted for a while. Hemp canvas is a traditional material which is also sometimes available. Commercial materials offer expediency but it's also true that generic materials tend to produce generic results. People often try to overcome this by bravura paint handling but there's only so far you can go with any particular gimmick. If you're interested in the craft of painting many interesting things can be built into your process by making the panel or canvas yourself.

Grounds
If you get involved in making your own supports you'll also be priming the panel or canvas and giving it a ground on which to paint. There are many different types of ground historically but they come in two basic categories: oil and water based. (There are also emulsion grounds as there are emulsion paints: for more on this see the Kurt Wehlte book in the Bibliography). The simplest water based ground is an acrylic gesso. This can be thinned somewhat and used in two coats. Typically this surface is quite glossyand slippery; the slide can be cut using chalk or marble dust. The traditional gesso ground is made with rabbit skin glue. The canvas is first sized with warm glue solution and allowed to dry. This is sanded lightly, then another coat of glue is applied. Then a warm solution of glue mixed with white pigment, chalk and sometimes marble dust is applied, usually in several coats, alternating direction. This gesso can be made absorbent by minimizing the amount of glue. An absorbent ground is one to which the paint sticks quite well because the oil is being absorbed in the first layer. These grounds are most safely used on rigid supports like panels or a canvas covered panel. Golden makes an absorbent acrylic gesso, which can be used over a thin coat of regular gesso or acrylic medium. Work with either acrylic or glue for a given panel, not both. The traditional lead white ground is white lead mixed with a percentage of chalk or marble dust and thinned to the consistency of cream. This is applied over two coats of rabbit skin size on linen. Two coats are used: wait at least a week between coats and four weeks before painting. White lead is toxic internally; especially for smaller children. Please respect this material if you

choose to use it. It's a great surface to paint on. If you would like more information on preparing your own ground please ask me: there are many ways to go about it. The books by Gottsegen and Wehlte also contain good information; Wehlte in much more detail.

Varnishing
Varnishing is the traditional way to complete a painting by applying a transparent coating that protects the layers underneath and gives the painting a uniform surface. Many different natural resins have been used historically as varnish such as amber, sandarac, mastic, and copal. The most recent addition is dammar. These resins are typically mixed with a certain amount of thickened oil and possibly some balsam in a variety of recipes: see the Bibliography for more. There are also several quality synthetic resins now available such as the ketones and B-72. While varnish was traditionally hand-applied, in some cases literally, many varieties now come in a spray can. Like many modern innovations in oil painting, this can quickly lead to disaster if used without circumspection. Read the instructions carefully, use with plenty of ventilation but no drafts, and try the product on a test piece first. Varnish is typically glossy but doesn't have to be. If you are using a medium with resin and/or stand oil a final varnish may not be necessary. If you want a softer or less glossy surface a small amount of beeswax can be added to the varnish by heating them gently together: electric heat, no flames! Beeswax or a commercial wax medium can be used as a thin final coating which is then buffed when dry. When in doubt, this is a good solution as it is easily reversible and looks good on a variety of surfaces.

Bibliography
Oil Painting Techniques and Materials Harold Speed
The only book I've ever found that actually explains the fundamental aspects of realistic painting from a relatively enlightened point of view. Highly recommended.

The Painter's Handbook Mark David Gottsegen

A good basic how-to guide that's readily available. A bit academic sometimes but sound and full of quality information about materials.

The Materials and Techniques of Painting Kurt Wehlte

This was out of print for a long time but has been published again by Kremer Pigments. A great general guide to all kinds of painting techniques and materials that's well organized, well written, profoundly researched, and very open minded.

Painters On Painting Eric Protter

A collection of writings by painters over the centuries, ranging from wise to bombastic. Fascinating and very well chosen.

The Craftsman's Handbook Cennino Cennini

Written in Florence in the 15th Century, this is a good introduction to Renaissance attitudes about art and craftsmanship. It's not that useful, really, but Cennini is a character. I often just read it as an antidote to the modern world.

Suppliers
Here are a few places to work with, all of whom have websites:

Utrecht good prices, good basics, especially brushes andcanvas. Daniel Smith expensive, great catalog, groovy West Coast
ambience.

Jerry's Artarama great prices, chaotic catalog. They carry

it all, from best to worst.

The Italian Art Store high quality materials, fast shipping. Kremer Pigments A great source for raw materials and
books. If the romance of the craft calls, this is the place to go. Get their print catalog as their website is a bit complex to deal with. They're in Manhattan and often pretty busy so its a good idea to get organized about what you want before calling.

Black Horse In Burlington, Holbein products very cheap.

The Holbein Killington bristle brushes are hard to beat.