Like many of you I sometimes find myself noodling certain paintings for some time. Eventually it’s going to turn into a painting. Other times it just going to end up a used canvas or panel.
Spending too much time isn’t always a bad thing though. At least if you’re able to recognize when to walk away, finished or unfinished. What I find myself doing is thinking about the process and all of the rules in our world. The art world. Think about it. “Don’t use Alizarin Crimson” PR83. You will hear that it isn’t light fast and that it will fade after time. Especially if you use it in light glazes, which it is so wonderful for. Originally Alizarin was a replacement for Rose Madder, another old masters color. Primarily because Rose Madder wasn’t light fast either. Nowadays there are several replacements for Alizarin which offer extended lightfastness but most don’t match the color and texture of the original product.
”Don’t use black.” It’s a dead color. And can add a chalkiness to your painting. Hmm, titanium white can do the same thing. I believe blacks have their place. It just isn’t in the shadows. Mars Black can be used as a substitute for blue. In fact in many instances black and blue are used to paint “the dead layer” in paintings, especially figurative. Chromatic black is a very nice black, even though it has very low tinting strength which is also what makes it a great black to use. It’s also transparent which means it works well as a glaze. It gets its transparency from its base colors of Quinacridone red and Phthalo Emerald which are both transparent. Personally if I’m shying away from blacks, I like mixing my own. Either with Veridian and Alizarin Crimson or Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber (another no, no in some circles). Both mixes allow you to go more cool or more warm in your black.
Speaking of Burnt Umber, there are quite a few schools of painting etiquette that tell you to stay away from Umbers. I’m pretty sure that Rembrandt and a few others would like to chime in on this. I tend to stay away from Raw Umber. It’s a pretty gray color that doesn’t add much to the way I paint. Some of the objections to umbers is they dry too fast. They also have a tendency to dull out when dry. You can mix your own browns using the primary colors. All true but it’s a lot easier grabbing some Burnt Umber on the palette knife and moving on, rather than mixing three colors and tinting back and forth to get the right depth of the brown your looking at. You can warm, cool or deaden umbers quite easily. Using the right medium you can also lessen the dullness at dry as well. Nothing has changed all that much. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries synthetics started to be developed. Still most of the pigments are either from earth, umbers, ochres, sienna etc. or metals, cadmium’s and in some cases rocks (still earth). Ultramarine Blue is probably the most well known color, originally mined from Lapis Lazuli in Afghanistan it was the most expensive color and generally the most expensive mineral period. Even more than gold. Because of this, it was also the first pigment to be synthesized. Even then it wasn’t until 1894 or so when the Societé d’Encouragement offered a reward for the first person to find a substitute for the original pigment.
White is another one of those pigments that have a lot of rules attached. Many painters, including me will try to stay away from adding white to the mix until necessary. You don’t need it in the underpainting. Try rubbing out instead. Use yellow to lighten if possible. Most whites, especially Titanium are opaque and immediately removes the transparent undertones of your painting. Of course there are exceptions, including Lead White and Zinc White. Flake White is a substitute for the old Lead White. In most case’s titanium is a fine white with high tinting strength, as well as a medium drying time. A paint that you don’t hear much about and can be hard to find is Flemish White. A paint that was popular with Rubens and many of his crowd. It’s a sticky high tint white that is quite good for putting that highlight on a spot. While it used to contain lead, most brands have removed the lead and are using lead sulfate. Only use paints such as this if you’re a professional. It is a great paint to have in your tool box though.
A lot of what you use is based on how you use it. How do you start an oil painting. Some just start blocking in. Others use charcoal or another dry medium to draw the shapes. Then there are those that draw with paint. I’m generally one of those using either burnt sienna and ultramarine or a burnt umber & ultra marine.
If you think about it, artists have most always have been portrayed as independent, sometimes obnoxious people. “Dammed what others think” but the truth is most artists belong to some circle and follow the rules. Edgy is a word that the media likes to use. Try as I might, I can’t find a Campbells soup can as “edgy.” Throughout history all of those free-thinking artists fell lockstep into the current trends and were appalled when someone chose to buck the system. It happened with impressionism, realism, modern art and almost every day in figurative. A lot of it has to do with the art collectors or patrons. In many cases they controlled the purse strings and therefore controlled the subject. Nowadays you have social media which in many ways controls the art as well. Oh no! I didn’t get a bunch of likes on Instagram!! What’s wrong with it? Better yet, you have Instagram or other media companies removing your posting because they “didn’t follow the community standards.”
Painters or artists in general have always led a wretched life of trying to please the powerful, yet still driven by their ideas and craft.
Do you follow the rules? Do you have the odacity to use black or Alizarin or some other banned combination in your work? Don’t you use a limited palette???