Rembrandt was a Master of Dilatant Paint

Rembrandt probably never encountered a texture he couldn’t use. His paintings are filled with scallops, fringes, swirls, tails, strands, curls — a whole language of texture. We can reproduce some of these with modern paints, but others seem unattainable to us. These are Rembrandt’s wildest textures — hands that seem to be made of straw, flesh that looks more etched than painted, horsehair that looks combed off the canvas, foreheads made of wormwood.  My proposal is that these most mysterious textures belong to a class of paints that are virtually unknown to us, not because the secrecy of the guild system doomed them, but because they are inimical to modern paintmaking machinery. These are dilatant paints, forgotten because they ruin the three-roll paint milling machine. Paint exists on a spectrum of behavior, and our technology has cut off half that spectrum.

Thixotropic and Dilatant Paints

Physicists divide fluids into groups based on their response to applied force, specifically shear. (In paintmaking, mulling is a strong shear force and brushing is a weaker one).  Watery paints belong to Newtonian fluids, which are inert to shear. You can’t thicken watercolor by mulling it.  Non-Newtonian fluids have much more complex responses to shear force, and are divided into thixotropic and dilatant (with further divisions based on the time it takes the force to act, but for our purpose these two divisions suffice).  The study of these fluids is called rheology. 

Sinopia’s pb60 pigment – a wonderful color but use with caution

I tried to post this review of Sinopia’s Albrecht Blue on their website, with no luck (verification error that made no sense).  Sinopia has some very nice pigments, but they don’t seem to care much about safety issues. They typically don’t even list the color index number unless someone asks, and even then it can take multiple queries. Pigments are not safe to work with if you don’t know exactly what they are!

Here’s my review:

Sinopia’s Albrecht blue (pb60, ie indanthrone or anthraquinone blue) is a deep inky blue that is muted in mixes and tints in oil, a characteristic that makes it particularly useful in landscapes. It’s perfect for some moody sky and snow effects where ultramarine or phthalo blue would be too intense. In masstone, it makes a great starting color for a nocturnal scene. I also find it useful in tints as a bluish-gray neutralizer for skin tones in portraits. It’s a pigment that requires caution to prepare, though. Just opening up the jar sends an impressive puff of pigment into the air. While pb60 isn’t particularly toxic, micronized pigments should be treated as if they are because of their tendency to get into everything. I ended up mixing it with the same precautions I use for a cadmium. Because of this, I plan to use it only for mediums where a good quality tubed version isn’t available.

Review of M Harding Acrylic Primer

Michael Harding calls this a non-absorbent acrylic primer.  There is a common complaint among artists that acrylic primers cause sinking-in of oil paint, making it appear dull and less vibrant than paintings on oil primers.  Harding is taking this on. Is it just marketing?  Acrylic primers need good mechanical adhesion in order for oil paints to adhere, so they need a certain amount of tooth and texture from additives like calcium carbonate.   But too much texture will allow some of the oil to leach out, causing sinking-in.  I think Harding has actually found a good spot on this spectrum.

I made some test strips on pre-primed cotton canvas of one and two coats of Golden Gesso, Golden Hard Sandable Gesso, Harding primer, and Gamblin  oil ground.  I think Harding is closest in behavior to Golden Gesso. Both have good opacity, whiteness, brushability, and ability to lift oil paint back to canvas, especially with two coats.  Harding’s primer, however, feels toothier than Golden’s, and performs better on a water-drop test for paint adhesion. (Golden recommends this test for acrylic paints on acrylic primers — if a water drop beads up high rather than spreading out, the surface may have adhesion problems.  As far as I know this should indicate adhesion of oils as well. )

A surprising result in my test is the comparison to Gamblin oil ground. Oil paint on two coats of both Golden and Harding primers dried with more shine than on the oil ground.  Golden says that the best thing you can do to prevent sinking-in with any acrylic primers is to apply several thin coats, so I’m not sure Michael Harding has found a unique solution here, but it’s still impressive to see these acrylic primer performing well against an oil primer. If Harding can do this while providing more tooth than Golden, I’ll give them the edge.

If you have a lot of trouble with sinking-in, my experience painting with plastisols might be of interest. Plastisols use a synthetic oil that is thinner and more penetrating than linseed oil, so leaching of the oil can be a problem.  The best acrylic primer I have found for that is Fredrix. It performs a lot better than Harding, Golden or Liquitex, yet does okay on a water-droplet test. The pre-primed Fredrix canvases like their Universal also perform the same way.

In conclusion, I think the Harding primer is a good addition to the list of acrylic primers, particularly because it appears to have quite good adhesion while maintaining liftability and a smooth brush feel. The only negative I might mention is that the jar feels like it may not close very securely.  I will probably tape it shut or transfer to another container if I am going to be leaving it for awhile.

Some dry pigments from Kremer, Earth Pigments, Guerra Pigments and others

I’ll post these in the hope they might help someone make dry pigment decisions and save some money. They’re not great swatches or scans, but it’s hard to find any dry pigment references on the web.  These are in linseed oil or Genesis heat set oils, which have the same color result as linseed (but tend to hide rheology so none is noted on those swatches).  In practice, I find I only use a moderate selection of these regularly. I bought them when I was studying paint rheology.  It’s fun to have them around though; I feel like I have an alchemist’s lab.

Legend:

EP = Earth Pigments
Kr = Kremer (a lot of these are from their 25th anniversary set)
NP = Natural Pigments
GP = Guerra Pigments
DS = Daniel Smith, no longer available except on ebay
Gamb = Gamblin
Sch = Schmincke (just py153)
PP = Permanent Pigments (no longer available, these are really old!)

Long refers to ropy, stringy paint rheology
CS is dilatant (cornstarch) rheology

Column 1 – Earth Pigments turquoise green, Earth Pigments French pale green, Earth Pigments Cyprus Umber Dark, Earth Pigments dark yellow ocher, Earth Pigments colonial yellow ocher, Earth Pigments natural sienna, Earth Pigments colonial raw sienna, Earth Pigments amber ocher dunkel.

Review of Kremer’s 30th anniversary blue pigment assortment in oil paint

There’s an excellent review on the internet of these pigments used in watercolor, but I couldn’t find one about oil paints.

I bought this set to get a chance to try some of the historical pigments like smalt and azurite, and to explore the differences among ultramarine blue variants and cobalt variants without buying a lot of pigments. I got the set on one of Kremer’s fairly rare sales (around Memorial Day and Thanksgiving); get on their mailing list to be notified when that happens.  All in all, it was worth it, and it includes a few awesome expensive bonus pigments.  By the way, if you are starting out with pigments, I’d recommend the 25th anniversary set. It’s a great selection of modern and earth pigments across the color wheel.

My quick summary is:

• Don’t sweat which of these ultramarine blues you buy — the differences are too subtle to matter much in practice. There are certainly slight differences, but I suspect they will be hard to see in most painting situations.
• The cobalts and ceruleans on the other hand show distinct differences in color and value that might justify buying several, and also have interesting rheology that is almost never seen in tubes.
• Hand-mixed cobalt violets are stunning — much better than tubed versions I have, which seem full of fillers.  Cobalt violets are pretty expensive, but not as expensive as buying high quality tubes, which I have seen at $90.
• For color alone, I think the historical pigments like azurite, lapis lazuli, and smalt have been replaced for good reasons in oil painting. (Watercolor is a different story.)  Their muted masstone and dullness in tints and mixes hardly justify their expense when good alternatives are available. On the other hand, mineral  colors can be quite interesting for  unique optics in glazing and surfaces. My view of these pigments is changing since I have tried making paint all the way from rock and earth.  I reluctantly admit that we may be losing something by not grinding rocks ourselves for certain effects, but I don’t think very many artists want to go there. I think these Kremer pigments may only get you part of the way to the real interest of hand-ground pigments, though. I’m thinking if I buy more, I will look for coarsely ground pigment, and use a mortar and pestle to do the rest.

Lukas Berlin Quick-drying Medium #3 and Lukas Egg Tempera Medium #6

Lukas Berlin quick-drying medium #3

Medium #3 is an acrylic medium designed to work with Lukas Berlin water mixable oil (WMO) paints.  Lukas Berlin, Holbein Duo Aqua and Weber WOil are three WMO  brands that advertise that their paints can be mixed with acrylics to make a stable oil/polymer emulsion.  I have made several paintings using this combination and find that it behaves much like other emulsion paints such as oil/egg tempera, oil/casein, and oil/methylcellulose, which have a long history and good durability.  Emulsion paints lend themselves to broken color and drybrush techniques.  I find they have unique working properties and a satin beauty of their own.  Oil/acrylic has one distinct advantage over the others: a wide range of readily available and convenient mediums that dry perfectly clear.

Becoming an artist rather than an art student

Advice from Harvey Dunn, via James Gurney:

“When I was out in Chicago recently, I went into a class, a sort of a club where seven or eight men were painting and doing good student work. Some of them had been studying for forty years thinking that someday they’d become artists. You will never become an artist until you think you are one. Up to that time you are just a student and I think everyone here would rather be a poor artist than a good student.”

“There are hundreds of excellent draftsmen in the country. You’ve never heard of them and you never will. They are content to do nothing but demonstrate their facility for drawing. They have nothing to say. The only thing that will see you through this business is the first idea and urge you had when you came to school. All the training, drawing, composition, ‘isms’, and laws of painting will only be just so many obstacles to trip over.”

“By experience I’ve found that no amount of training and study will do it. It’s that first impulse that will drive you through. So hark back to what you are. Go down in your cellar and see what you can find, then take what is yours, that which you have found, and base your pictures on it. Be yourself. When a man has found out what he always wanted to do, and he’s driven by an idea, he can’t help but put down something pictorial.”

“Life is short. Get going now and do something important. This is your Life’s work. Think of that. You are going to spend every day of your life painting. Don’t waste any of that valuable time. A man who has an idea and paints it, knows whether or not he has or has not failed. He does not have to ask anyone. When a man asks me that, I wonder if anything is going on inside him. Only the man with the idea knows how he has succeeded or failed.”

Review of some Vasari oil paints in earth colors: Make your own paint or buy the best?

Vasari is often described as the Cadillac of oil paints. I’ve held off a long time on buying any since I tend to be too precious with oil paint even when it’s cheap, but some dry pigments that I really like from Earthpigments.com are now available in oils in the Vasari line, and I was interested to compare my handmade paint to commercial equivalents.  I waited for their earth sale, but still paid $11 to $21 per tube.   The tubes came in a fancy box with faux-suede lining, alongside a tote bag with Vasari logo. This is boutique paint!

I have a lot of dry pigments, and often make my own paints, though I do this much more often with an odd medium called plastisol (with a very fine oil that makes paint easily) than with oil paint.   When I do make my own oils, I mix small batches and use them in one day, which allows me to forego additives needed to stabilize tube paints. I mix the paint very thoroughly, but I often don’t mull it.  It would take half of my painting session to mull several colors and clean up.  Where are those apprentices when you need them?!!  I follow Sinopia’s advice that  you should mull if you plan to tube, but otherwise can just mix.   So my comparisons to Vasari are done with oil paint that is very fresh but not mulled to be extremely smooth.

I had expected  that Vasari would be clearly superior to my own paint, but in some ways, for my purposes (emphasis on that), I didn’t find it so.  That’s not to say these aren’t great paints and beautiful colors, but handmade paints are dramatically less expensive and in some cases even better for what I want.  Where mulling matters for color intensity, Vasari definitely wins, but the color difference is pretty subtle and often lost in mixes, and I could always break out the muller and get close.  Vasari also wins for a very smooth consistency that textures very nicely. But my homemade paint shows some interesting rheology that is missing in Vasari.

The premium paints I’ve tried –Vasari, M. Harding, Blockx and Blue Ridge– manage a very pleasing brushability while holding texture from brushstrokes without slumping. They create organic edges without blobs when a brush is dragged through thicker paint. They don’t resist the brush or pull against it. They have a long character that is much more like handmade paint than most brands. (We are all familiar with short paint, since most tubed paint is short. It breaks off quickly and stops when you lift the brush. Long paint is the opposite, more mobile and tending to continue moving a bit when you lift the brush; some even pulls out into strands.) The four premium brands I have tried are on they looser end of the scale, allowing them to be used without solvents or mediums if desired, but they are not runny (like Sennelier in some tubes I have). The tactile experience of painting matters to me, and these are really nice!  I like Vasari and Blue Ridge best for the way they hold texture and edges, and the way they look when dry (fairly even, satin sheen in the paints I have, without a jarring difference between thick and thin areas). But Blockx has a very appealing silky feel that probably comes from the poppy oil. In thin paint, I’d probably prefer to paint with it just for the feeling.  (I have a limited number of tubes, so I don’t know if these observations hold through the complete lines.)

Once you try something like Vasari, you may find less expensive tube paints a bit disappointing, but it depends very much on how you paint.  Mid-range artist quality paints may have perfectly good pigments and colors, but at somewhat reduced strength that can work just fine in many situations.  When it comes to  texture and feel, they often compare less favorably. Heavier use of fillers and additives like aluminum stearate results in paints that may hold brushstrokes  but lack sensual brushability and tend to be quite short, even waxy. With a few exceptions, in my experience, handmade paints are the only thing that can really compete with premium paints in this area. One of the great advantages of handmade paint is its tendency to be longer than tube paint and brushable, yet adjustable to hold texture when you want it.  Of course, every painter’s process is different, and something one of us finds desirable is the opposite for another. If you like the textures you get with a stiffer, shorter paint, these are probably not for you. 

First look at a batch of Kremer pigments

Nothing gets my heart going like a new batch of pigments!  Here’s the list and initial thoughts.

Pigments (these are all in the right column of the swatches):

Genesis heat set paints and the world of polymer clay

I did 20 or so paintings with Genesis heat set paints several years ago. They offer some compelling advantages. These really are not gimmicks!

• Paint stays open indefinitely until heat set.
• Indirect techniques and multiple glazes are possible without long waiting periods.
• Mediums dry without yellowing, at least in the years I have had my paintings. As with acrylics, mediums can be used for translucent effects that would have oil painters wallowing in problems with linseed oil yellowing.
• Brushes can be set aside for days without cleaning. You can really just walk away from your painting and come back to it days later. The biggest problem is that paint mixes last so long that they can gather dust.
• Genesis can match oil paint for color density, especially compared to paints like Golden Open and Atelier Interactive, which are often portrayed as oil substitutes.

But, Genesis also has distressing disadvantages:

• A very narrow range of mediums with very limited behavior, and no way to overcome the ever-present thixotropy without weakening the paint.
• Tendency to thicken dramatically on the palette and canvas over time (that’s thixotropy).
• A small range of surfaces that the paint is reliably compatible with, unless you gesso it yourself. Many acrylic-pre-primed surfaces are too absorbent and suck the plasticizer out of the paint. I believe the plasticizer can even soften some acrylic gessos, which can border on disastrous. I find Fredrix gesso (and Fredrix pre-primed canvas) the best for a smooth, slick feel, and Golden gesso is useful for more brush drag.  Amaco also recommends Pro Art gesso.
• Difficulties with heating arrangements, especially with large canvases. Only ovens are really sound, in my opinion; the heat gun is too hard to use long enough and evenly.  I invested a fair amount of money in the Genesis oven, and can still only go to 24 x 24 inches. If you don’t want to buy that, make your own heat box, or use your kitchen oven (I sure wouldn’t do that), you will be limited to small sizes up to 12″ x 12″ that fit in a convection oven.

I eventually set them aside, but I recently pulled them out and did a few more paintings. The  problems remain (even with new thick medium and a few new colors that I bought to see if they have changed anything), but I stumbled upon some intriguing possibilities of combining them with products from the polymer clay world (Update: and mediums from the world of plastisol screen printing, which I finally tried. I’ve reviewed a few below).