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| shortlist |
A selection of materials and methods that I've found most useful, as well as some other benign thoughts. More detail and complexity in the longer text that follows. Anything about oil is now here.
Sun Oil: Without question the single most important thing you can get or make. The foundation for a great many mediums. A favorite of mine is based on Sun Oil and Spike Lavender mixed 1 to 1. This has an open time of about half an hour used thinly as a couch, can be adjusted to be tighter with less spike or longer with a bit of thinner oil or a bit of Burnt Plate Oil. Sun oil can also be thinned with raw oil and heated to make a variety of mediums in the "Oil of Delft" family. Expensive to buy, can be made easily in a sunny climate in the summer, but even in Vermont I can make something useful. The best sun oil is made from oil from which all the water-soluble fatty acid break has been removed. (The material marketed by Grumbacher as Sun Oil may have seen the sun at some point in it's process, but is essentially a mixture of much slower drying vacuum bodied oils as a single sniff will tell you).
Unsun Oil: This oil is thickened without heat on lead metal. It has working character very similar to sun oil, although it is not as sticky and has the potential, when using linseed oil, to dry very quickly, overnight. Can be used in all mediums the same way, although it also has some interesting characteristics of its own. Many permutations exist, based on several years of research. For more details on this process, go here.
Burnt Plate Oil: This is a modern version of the product, sold by Graphic Chemical, a vacuum-bodied linseed oil in which the volatile components are progressively driven off. Not really burned at all, this might be thought of as a more evolved version of Stand Oil. #5 is about as thick as Stand Oil, #7 is like cold molasses, but both of these are pale straw yellow in color and do not yellow on drying. They do take a while to dry and should be used in small amounts. They also give an unusual increase in paint film saturation.
Heat Bodied Oil: The oldest texts about oil painting all begin with heating the oil. This creates double carbon bonds among the tri-glycerides and results in an oil which dries more quickly and has a more resinous character. If the oil is actually fumed -- heated to the smoke point -- it will darken somewhat but this is of no consequence in practice, does create more leveling. Oil which is heated to a low temperature for a long time is also useful , makes great handmade paint. Many possibilities to explore here. Heat bodied oil is listed almost exclusively as the oil of Van Dyck in National Gallery Technical Bulletin Volume 20.
Putty Mediums: A huge family of mediums with wide-ranging characteristics based on the translucent and adhesive properties of calcium carbonate -- chalk, calcite, marble dust, precipitated chalk, whiting -- mixed with oil of
varying viscosities in various proportions. Can be made loose or tight, put in a jar or a tube, or can simply be done on the palette. Chalk has been found in the work of many older painters including Chardin,
Rembrandt, and Velásquez. Perhaps most importantly, enables traditional oil painting without using any solvent. For more detail on this family of mediums and their use, you can go here . The text handout for a workshop I give on these mediums, including various formulas, is here.
Fumed Silica Gel: A great alternative to the conservasionally challenged mastic gel mediums. A simple mixture of the oil of your choice and fumed silica forms a gel of the consistency of your choice. Can be used for expressive alla prima work or thinly over a developed underpainting. Fumed silica should be handled carefully wearing a respirator. Once in the oil, it is not a problem. The gel can be made in quantity and tubed or kept airtight in aluminum foil. Surprisingly versatile, but not the fastest drier. Should be made with pre-heated or otherwise pre-stabilized oil.
"Strassburg" Method: This is from a manuscript in Strassburg consulted by Eastlake, the method was written down in the 15th century but Eastlake feels it's language indicates an even earlier origin. This method involves adding a drop or two of varnish to the paint on the palette. When done in the period way with a cooked resin varnish such as sandarac, copal, and especially amber, the paint seizes, producing an innate facility of manipulation that is not part of the behavior of commercial tube paint. When done with handmade paint using a heat bodied oil -- the original method -- the results are even more dramatic. It is important to be discreet in the use of any hard resin varnish, as these are so strong -- compared to dammar -- that they are easily capable of producing a surface so glassy that it must be ground down to accept further paint.
Silver Fir: Of the quality soft resins, Silver Fir, or Olio di Abezzo, has been in the longest use over the centuries. This is also perhaps the single resinous material about which I have never read anything negative in an old or new text. Thick in it's natural state, best used thinned significantly, can be substituted for the more brittle dammar in a medium, dries with a slightly less glassy shine. Unlike it's relative Canada Balsam, dries reliably.
Egg Emulsion Mediums: Egg yolk is an extremely permanent natural organic emulsion which makes a medium which has a tendency to set quickly and typically dries overnight. An incredible variety of working characteristics can be achieved using an egg yolk as the basis for an emulsion medium. Working on panels, I've been able to explore a wide range of different formulas based on the standard proportion of one part "other" to one part yolk. Kurt Wehlte's excellent book -- see bibliography below -- contains a good discussion of this family of mediums. Not recommended, however, for work on unsupported canvas.
Titanium White: This modern pigment is about ten times more opaque than Flake White. As such, making subtle tones or values with titanium is about ten times more difficult. Add to this the fact that older painters often used a flake white -- lootwit -- which was further cut by a significant addition of chalk, and you can see why it was easier for them to produce a fully developed value scale with appropriate warm and cool emphasis. While there are modern painters who have adapted their style to working with titanium, beginning with strongly warm darks which can handle the subsequent strongly cool lights produced by titanium, this system cannot produce the older look. If you find yourself feeling that using white is "ruining" your paintings or is presenting the classic titanium chalky value syndrome, you might make a simple oil and marble dust putty, an un-paint of very little covering power, and begin using titanium which has been cut substantially with this.
Price: When something becomes a fine art material, the price tends to go up. Sometimes in a way that is acceptable, sometimes in a way that is egregious. I recently found whiting at 12.00 a pound on a major commercial website, plus shipping. Whiting is basic calcium carbonate, available at not much more than that for a 50 lb bag at a pottery supply outlet. I mention this because, in spite of the fact that progress has been made in the labeling of materials, the endless sense of the middleman that painters are simply pie-eyed idealists ripe for the plucking continues unabated into our time. Look around, there are always alternatives to the great shell game of the catalogs. And please consider making your own materials when possible, this isn't exactly rocket science.
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For more detail or comments
about anything here, please feel free to email me. I'm always more than
happy to exchange information with technically open-minded painters.
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| background |
Some formulas here are standard, most
are more OM in nature. The 17th century is the place where the craft reached its apogee for me, and experience long ago provided a healthy suspicion of modern developments such as alkyd medium, alkali refined linseed oil, and acrylic gesso. This research-by-doing began using Sir Charles Eastlake's "Materials and Methods" and
the De Mayerne manuscript as points of departure, but there are several assumptions and conclusions in both of these books that are coming under increasing pressure from the "hard"
information in the unique National Gallery yearly Technical Bulletins. In addition to the fascinating history of older paintings as seen through the eyes of the conservator, these include extensive pigment and paint film and medium analysis at what is often the molecular level. The strong technical suit of many of the National Gallery regular publications has also proven incredibly useful and more reliable than both the standard modern writing and the older sources. I've also worked with Dr. Leslie Carlyle's book about painting practice in 19th century
England, "The Artist's Assistant": wonderfully well-researched and
written, entertaining, but documenting a technical minefield of discredited later techniques that presentsis a kind of figure-ground puzzle: great information, sometimes straightforward, often in reverse. If you'd like to begin to read more about older methods and materials, there's unfortunately no simple place to start. However, I've put together a bibliography below of the books I've found helpful.
The problems encountered in trying to sift the wheat from the chaff in this enterprise are complex. The modern, "scientific" approach looks for abstract perfection and rigidly insists on testing materials out of context when a painting is in fact a kind of living gestalt. The historical sources, on the other hand, have an inherent romance coupled with a total lack of anything even remotely approaching systemic order. The modern "alchemical" approach has discovered that the materials present many secrets to find, but that does not necessarily mean that they were ever actually in use: one point to keep in mind always about older painting practice is its perennial technical conservatism. This does not, however, mean that these more recent "secrets" are necessarily bad practice, or that they were never used. But there is an unfortunate tendency to look for one Holy Grail material or technique that will somehow sweep through centuries of practice in different climates and cultures and make it all sit down and behave. But, even once the older writers have been navigated, there is also disagreement among modern conservators about the validity of certain mediums, especially the complex, not to say notorious, mastic gel family.
However, in light of the most current research it does seem that most of the manipulation during the halcyon 17th Century was of the oil. While it is plausible that this research misses quite minute amounts of hard resin varnish, my own experience has been that the oil -- given an opportunity -- has much more to offer rheologically than is apparent from the superficial usage of modern painting practice. I've put a selection of systemic and more theoretical material along with detailed material process photos of the all-oil approach at living craft.
This concentrates on the system I've been working on since the winter of 2006. At this point I use no resins except in final varnishing. Solvent use is minimal as the brushes are kept in oil, washed in soap and water. All information related to the oil has been moved to just oil.
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| essence |
This research is not
about exactly reconstructing or emulating a particular method, but
about creating an analogous living process using older materials. I'm
interested in a craft that leads to the seamless fusion of intention,
process, and completion that is so obviously characteristic of the best
older painting. This means focusing on the spirit as well as the
letter of old practice. The letter is fascinating and important, but
the spirit interests me equally because I don't want to copy the old
but to make it new again: this is after all what was done in many ways
until modernism decreed the craft was an impediment to "creativity" and
tried to destroy it. In contrast, it has seemed best to study the
essence of true creativity in order to personally reformulate it
because someone else's genius can never be effectively copied. While
there are those who want to photocopy a given older painter's style to
the 21st Century this seems to lead inevitably to the
endless, bitter glass bead game about what someone did or didn't use
four or five centuries ago. I'm more
interested in developing an analogous facility with the materials of
art -- both tangible and otherwise. I'm not an authority, hopefully the
antithesis, and I'd urge you to look on this information in just that
light: one man's experience, a mere dust mote in the infinite crepuscular ray
of human endeavor. But if you're tired of the technical shell game in all its commercial varieties and can tolerate a tour of the labyrinth from a living painter's point of view, the following might be
interesting. I'm not a puritan, or a mad scientist, but have been very curious about what was lost and what in turn I might be able to find. So, as is always the case with anything real, the process is about puzzling it out bit by bit and doing what works best: the ubiquitous triumph of theory over practice in modern lifestops here. This puzzle evolves, and in fact has a life of its own. Which is interesting to live, observe, and document.
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This material has been assembled for the study and edification of professional painters who are aware of the potential hazards of traditional ingredients and processes. Great care has been taken to provide safe and adequate instructions for the many older recipes here but all responsibility for the execution of these instructions lies with the reader. Who has, on a number of occasions in the last few years, shown an unforeseeable and unfortunate tendency to "wing it" in ways that are unwise. Only undertake any traditional process after a thorough rehearsing of the procedure and with more than adequate personal safeguards. Think it through. Act methodically and very carefully.
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| bubble bubble |
12-09: A pdf file about refining organic, cold-pressed linseed oil is here. This is all text, no photos, for printing out.
A pdf file about solvent-free painting methods on this site is here.
The short list of preferred materials above has been expanded on a page called sound practice.
As of this point I'm still working with the putty medium, and a very simple version of it at that, have eliminated everything but chalk, oil, and a small amount of egg white. Most of the developments in 2009 were in the way color can be pre-mixed to allow a limited palette to intuitively offer more in the way of warm-cool, masjor-minor options. That information is on the page about color.
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| size |
Very standard: 3T rabbit skin glue to 2 cups water. For panels
hide glue is an okay substitute. Allow the glue to swell for several
hours. Heat gently to liquify, don't let it come even close to boiling,
use a water bath. Apply to panels to seal them, to linen or canvas on
stretchers or panels. Most authorities recommend sanding the first coat
and removing any slubs in the linen with a blade, then applying a
second coat. Robert Doak recommends a more minimal and absorbent sizing
and priming combination with the sealant provided by a tempera
underpainting. This approach is perhaps more relevant to canvas than
panel. This size will gel firmly at room temperature and should be kept
in the refrigerator for any kind of longevity in warm weather. If some
of it liquifies in the fridge pour off the liquid, rinse, and use
what's still a gel.
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| gesso |
You
can make many variations on this theme by capitalizing on the variety
of chalk, silica, and marble dust available through Kremer or other
sources. A chalk gesso can be silky, a marble dust gesso relatively
aggressive depending on the grind. If you're working with any kind of
thin layered technique and fine brushes these relatively small
differences in tooth can be dramatic. You can also decide how absorbent
to make your gesso by adding more water to your size solution: several
coats of very absorbent gesso on a panel will make straight paint stick
like mortar: very fun for energetic alla prima work, although the tone
lowers a bit. (If you don't want an absorbent surface, you can use an
isolating varnish, see below). A good practice with glue gesso is to
heat it gently in a water bath and to thin it a little as you build the
surface.
A non-absorbent but somewhat toothy formula
is: Add 1 cup water to 1 cup size, above, add 2 cups fine marble dust,
1 cup titanium white. (This can be made with less marble dust for finer linen. I've also substitutes cristobalite for half the marble dust with results I liked: please see inert additions, below.) Stir this minimally and gently to avoid
incorporating air into it which creates tiny bubbles that wreak havoc
on your priming by drying as little craters. Take these seriously, they
are a pain. Let it rest to allow any bubbles to escape. Gently apply
warm as above to your dried glue sized canvas or panel in thin coats
alternating direction. Careful about the heat: if you actually cook
this it thickens causing major difficulty. Make sure your coats are
thin or you'll have problems; add more water if need be. Pay attention
to pinholes, these are not that easy to fill once they dry and should
be brushed out gently as the coat dries: it doesn't take long. You can
build up coat after coat this way, sanding with fine paper or not
depending on your intended final surface and technique. It dries very
quickly so unless you're after random texture, several thin coats work
better.
Variations here are extensive. If you build
up a thick enough layer on a panel you can incise it or carve it to an
extent in relief like Charles Pendergrast: this should be a relatively
glue rich gesso. Gesso is not usually recommended for unsupported
canvas because it's not flexible, but it has been found on some of the
oldest paintings analyzed by the National Gallery in London: often just
one very thin coat. For canvas you can experiment with more titanium
than stone dust, or see the oil gesso recipes below which were designed
for canvas: these are slightly less brilliant, not much. You can apply
a thin isolating varnish or use the absorbency in the initial layer of
paint but the latter will create some lowering of tone as the oil goes
into the ground. If you want to burnish the gesso (on panel) so it
shines don't dilute the size above and use all chalk instead of marble
dust. An absorbent formula is: 1 cup glue, 2.5 cup water, 2 cups fine
marble dust, 1 cup chalk, 1 cup titanium white: I use this on panels
with some sanding/burnishing at the end. You can also substitute marble
dust for the chalk or use fumed silica (which has replaced the no
longer available quartz dust). Both give a toothier or more aggressive
surface. What works best will depend on how you paint and what you want
from the surface. If you're just getting used to this go slowly and
make small batches: if you gesso two dozen giant panels with a certain
formula, you might not like how it behaves. (Another suggestion from
humbling experience: be careful about changing too many things at once
in a formula or you won't be able to interpret the changes accurately
in application).
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| oil gesso |
There
are many recipe variations on the idea of emulsifying some oil into a
glue gesso to create a more flexible and less absorbent surface. This
is the traditional gesso most often recommended for use on unsupported
canvas. I've found that adding a small amount of oil creates a material
which has more of a gelatinous body similar to acrylic gesso and can be
used to create slightly textured surfaces by dragging, pouncing,
sponging, etc. However, this material does yellow somewhat.
The proportion is: 12 oz. of gesso with 2 oz. of oil added: I use 1 oz.
of fumed (thickened) oil and 1 oz. of Eminent Oil, see recipe below.
(This proportion, 1 to 6, is much less than the usual proportion
recommended for unsupported canvas. On the other hand, many older
paintings were made on unsupported canvas with a thin coat of
traditional gesso alone over the sizing). The oil goes in easiest if
the gesso is semi-gelled, i.e. not warm enough to use. Add the oil bit
by bit and stir, this will cause the gesso to thicken or seize. Then
heat gently in hot water and use. This can also be used as a final coat
over traditional gesso.
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| gesso modo mio |
Another
oil-glue emulsion gesso. I developed it for use on paper, but it would
works fine on linen over panel. The paper -- I use Tiepolo -- is given
a coat of size. After the size dries, coat it with this gesso: 7/8 cup
size, 1 3/4 cup water, 1 cup titanium white, 2 cups marble dust, 2 oz.
oil. For this I used 1oz. walnut and 1oz. Eminent Oil. The gesso is
thin when warm and the oil doesn't emulsify until the gesso begins to
cool. Just be patient and do other stuff. When you stir the gesso and
the oil stays in suspension -- doesn't float to the top -- that's when
you can use it. Its a bit thick, so the idea is to brush it out very
well, as the oil in the gesso allows it to do so and the marble dust
allows it to hold a very fine texture. This will take straight paint
very nicely for hours with no additional medium or manipulation,
without having the unforgiving grab of an absorbent all-glue gesso. The
image, a copy of Corot's Crecy en Brie Road (10.5 x
14 inches ) was made in one sitting with no medium on this ground.
(I'll work on it some more, of course!)
No.2: This variation substitutes fumed oil or stand oil for half the
oil amount above and as a result creates more textural possibilities.
Its also trickier to work with, the gelatinous quality makes it easy to
create accidental bare spots on paper. You can also make this gesso by
adding lukewarm glue to the dry ingredients, then the oil, then adding
COLD water to make. This will help avoid having to wait for it to cool
down enough for the oil to remain in
suspension.
No.3: This is for canvas or
linen mounted on stretchers and uses a total of 6 oz. of oil; I used 2
parts Eminent Oil to 1 part thickened walnut oil. This proportion is
still significantly less than the 50% of oil in standard recipes. After
preparing and curing, I was able to roll this linen at a diameter of
two inches or so without it cracking. When folded over itself hard, it
cracks.
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| panels: glue gesso |
I
use 3/4 inch cabinet grade plywood finished in maple or birch, with as
many internal layers as I can get. This works for panels up to say 18 x
24 inches: after that I use 1/4 inch plywood and cradle it with strips
of the plywood. If you can find the good mahogany plywood you can use
that too. Other surfaces are fine they just cost more. The Baltic birch
plywood is great. Sand the corners and the edges of the best surface
and apply a warm and very generous coat of the glue above to the top
and sides, it needs to be thick on top so the linen can be burnished
flat in the end.. Let dry. If you want to be fancy you can shellac the
back of the panel. Now cut your linen large enough to wrap the edges
over the panel and staple to the back. Cut out the corners leaving
about 1/4 inch overlap. Staple the linen to the panel, not at all
tight, working from the middle of each edge towards the corners and
folding the corners over neatly. If your linen is wrinkled you can
spray it now with a little water and it'll shrink flat so you can see
if it's tight enough. It doesn't have to be tight at this point, just
even. Apply another generous coat of very warm glue to this panel so
that the glue soaks through and bonds the linen to the panel. Get the
edges. Burnish this hard with a tool like a bone folder while it is wet
to bond the linen to the panel evenly and smooth the surface. This is a
little segreto. Burnish again or sand lightly when
dry and remove any imperfections with a very sharp blade. Add one more
thin coat of glue if you've sanded, let dry. Now brush on two or three
thin coats of traditional gesso, alternating brushing direction and
allowing to dry between coats. If you use gesso modo mio above, you can
use two well-brushed coats.
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| pre-gessoed linen |
Sometimes
its good to have pre-prepared linen: the composition can be adjusted if
the edges are expandable. You can stretch the linen, size it, gesso it
when dry, then cut it off into the pieces you need. I've also stretched
the linen not too tightly over a piece of plywood covered with plastic
-- a cut open garbage can liner, taped tight -- then sized it and
gessoed it when dry. This takes a little longer as the glue can only
evaporate in one direction, and it sometimes bubbles a bit, but these
go away. The thing I've liked about this method is the ability to
burnish the linen when the size is applied so that I've got a more
regular surface. There's still plenty of texture and the glue gesso
recipes here are quite grippy, but the first paint is easier to apply
and there aren't all those funny high specks that have to be sanded or
burnished down.
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| panels: lead ground |
A
lead ground has great working qualities. Once you've put the glue on
the panels above you can go directly to white lead or you can put a
coat of glue gesso on and then go to lead. If you use lead over the
glue try applying it the traditional way with a spatula not a brush.
Wait at least a week between coats and then at least two weeks before
painting on it. Longer is better; some people wait
much longer in order to be sure the ground is truly dry. For a leaner coating you can thin the
lead a bit with turpentine and then add marble dust to bring the
consistency back. I've used one coat of this lean lead over glue gesso
with good results. White lead is toxic, please use all normal safety
precautions when dealing with it. I'd also have to say that, if you're
persnickety about brilliance, I have noticed a certain lowering of tone
with a white lead ground. I'd call it artistic rather than defective,
but its there. At this point, given a preference for panels and the
fact that the gesso ground precedes the white lead ground historically,
I'm using various gesso grounds exclusively. Don't have to wait.
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| paint |
Paint
can be made using a glass or stone muller on a glass or stone surface,
both must be roughened with silicon carbide grit, 100 works well.
Marble is too soft to use but you can find harder imported "marble"
tile that's 12x12: the reverse of the polished side works well. The
traditional stone in Italy was porphyry, an often purplish igneous rock
also used for paving, but what this was and is may well be different as
porphyry is a textural designation now: there are many types. The idea
in making paint is to fuse the identity of pigment and oil via shearing
action; you don't need to press down, just swirl, this will be aerobic
enough. Some pigments require extensive grinding to lower the particle
size and bring out the color: earth pigments especially. Manufactured
mineral pigments and organic pigments tend to work best simply mixed
with a spatula: ultramarine, vermilion and cobalt blue would be
examples. Some pigments -- vine black, viridian -- are harder to get
into oil. Pigments which are good driers like cobalt should be mixed in
smaller amounts. You'll find many pigments available which the
manufacturers haven't tubed: the famous Kremer Cobalt Blue Pale and RGH
Trans Mars Maroon among them. There are also many historical pigments
becoming available, both earths and manufactured. Pigments can also be
mixed: I find myself doing this often with a blue for landscape. With
earth colors, I'd advise a certain caution in terms of quantity, as
there are lots of second rate pigments out there. Its getting better,
the Rublev/Natural Pigments line is generally very high quality, as is
the Williamsburg line of Italian Earths although these are way too
costly, with Kremer get small amounts or a color chart: Limonite may be
the lightest yellow ochre but not in oil. My benchmarks here are the
Blockx and Maimeri Puro earths; mostly Blockx but Maimeri makes a
wonderful Raw Sienna, Light and Dark. Bit by bit I've been able to
duplicate the warm, rich hues of these earths, sometimes with a small
enhancement from a transparent Mars color. I tend to use walnut oil
that's been heated to around 250 Farenheit for two or three days to make paint,
but have slightly thicker -- six days -- oil available. I'm doing some
research now using the completely colorless sunflower oil for blues and
whites.
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| tube paint |
Handmade
paint made with cold-pressed, self-refined oil is naturally long, tube paint made from alkalai-refined, hot-pressed oil is
naturally short. This is because of the stabilizers and additives --
such as aluminum stearate, derived from animal fat -- used to make sure
the paint made with raw oil will remain bound, giving it a greasy, mayonnaise-like
character. Handmade paint also dries more quickly than tube paint: the
last thing a manufacturer wants is limited shelf-life. The slickness of
tube paint can to some extent be overcome when necessary by various
combinations of OM materials in a medium. The various Groves mediums
are all designed with enough resin strength to do this easily. In
making mediums myself, I've been most successful using various hard
resin and leaded oil combinations, various putties made from leaded oil and stone dust, as well as the egg emulsions,
although the latter needs to be used on a panel. For broken
applications, the oil would be in the form of sun oil, thickened
Eminent oil, or a combination. For smooth ones, in the form of Eminent
Oil mixed with some slightly heat bodied oil.
So, while tube paint offers many conveniences, the most
fundamental decision about the medium, the oil, has been made based on
factors that relate more to the mass mind and convenience than to the
development of the most responsive material under the brush. This
became really apparent to me when I began making paint with oil that
had been slightly heat-bodied as in many of the oldest recipes. Paint
made this way is the exact opposite of modern tube
paint: it is slumpy, resistant, elastic, stringy, and, once thinned for
working, holds its place tightly on the canvas. Whether this is better
or not depends of course on what one is involved with in terms of technique: in my
system it became apparent right away that paint made with heat-bodied
oil was many times more responsive to a hard resin varnish than tube
paint, enabling much less resin to accomplish the same task. It also responds favorably to the more recent stone dust putty mediums I've been working with. So, for
smooth surface styles, tube paint doesn't present drawbacks
technically that can't be overcome, but for a broken surface style it might be worth making more of your own paint.
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| inert additions |
There
are several inert substances that have been added to paint
historically, most commonly ground leaded glass and calcite, although
chalk and ground quartz have been used as well. Quartz, leaded glass, and calcite
are translucent but not transparent, they don't add sparkle. Used with commercial paint,
all these in moderation help to counteract its mayonnaise-like
slickness. Leaded glass has gotten lots of recent press, and
has a decided siccative quality: Eastlake mentions its
use by the Venetians. Not that fine, I've found it most applicable to underpaintings,
giving the paint a definite tooth for the next layer, and as part of an impasto medium for broken surfaces. Kremer has
a quartz variety called cristobalite which makes a very
interesting paste when mixed with oil, rheologically complex, sort of
like what cornstarch does in water. I've found small additions of this
helpful in increasing movement while maintaining density, also very useful in underpainting.
For an expansion of this information into the realm of putty mediums, please go to living craft.
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| putty mediums |
Beginning in the winter of 2007, based on information in "Rembrandt: Art in the Making" by the National Gallery staff, I began to work exclusively with a putty medium made from various combinations of oil and stone dust. This proved to be a path out of the technical labyrinth. The associated information is too long for this page and has moved to living craft and the putty medium.
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| fumed silica gel |
 When oil is combined with industrial fumed silica it forms a gel. Various viscosities of oil can be used and various ultimate viscosities of gel can be achieved. Works well for both lively alla prima work and as a couch in later layers in more formal painting. The key here is knowing the behavior of your oils well and using as little of this medium as will do the job effectively. Vastly preferable to the fragile mastic gel mediums, can be made to perform in a similar way. Fumed silica is very light and needs to be handled with care using a respirator. The gel can be made in bulk and stored in tubes or wrapped airtight in aluminum foil. If you get into this, try some small studies and tests first to get an idea of how it handles before making larger amounts.
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| white fir |
This
is a material similar in consistence to Canada Balsam, available from
Kremer Pigments. It doesn't smell as nice, but it performs better. It dries, always.
This is the Olio d'Abezzo extolled endlessly by Eastlake, and everyone who has ever written about it. I use it in
mediums diluted with two parts turpentine by warming the resin first in
a waterbath until its quite liquid. A thin coat of this is dry to the
touch in a few hours under almost all conditions. Eastlake quotes
several older Italian writers who say to use this as a final varnish,
but he also quotes de Mayerne quoting Rubens to the effect that some
thickened oil should be added. In any event, a material with centuries
of use that dries reliably. Of all the resins, the one with the best old and new reputation. Canada Balsam is fine too if you are close enough to a source with good turn-around and use it quickly.
|
| isolating varnish |
An
isolating varnish is used to seal an absorbent ground so that it won't
become yellowed over time by the oil in the paint. They're also used
between layers in thin painting techniques as the simplest form of couch to create depth and help
maintain tonal discretion. Because of the high solvent content, they
also supply some bite and provide a degree of tack as the solvent
evaporates. Strasbourg (Silver Fir) Turpentine
works well here diluted 1 to 4 with turpentine or spike. Apply thinly,
make sure your underlayer is dry. N.B. -- This technique is a little
controversial with purists because you end up violating the fat over
lean principle: these resin layers are lean over paint which is fat,
and there will be different coefficients of shrinkage for these layers
over time. Not sure if I buy this since the varnish layer is incredibly
thin. Also, spike has more bite than turpentine into the underlayer,
helpful when dealing with a hard resin in that layer, otherwise,
possibly too much otherwise.
|
| fir medium |
A basic smooth painting medium using the ingredients I've found most reliable. The stock solution of this is: 4 parts Fir 1:2 with turpentine, 1 part turpentine, 1 part Sun Walnut Oil, 1 part Eminent Oil. At 20 ml each, this fits into a standard amber glass vitamin bottle. Mix ingredients and place in a waterbath, cap on bottle loosely, bring to a boil for ten minutes. This proportion allows a reasonable amount of fusion and is dry in a moderate layer the next day. Can be further thinned with Fir 1:2 for more hold, or more thickened oil in later layers for more fusion. Can also be used as a couch. Can be made without Eminent Oil, but the Eminent Oil gives it a special quality.
|
| Roberson-type Mediums |
This
was used by the Pre-Raphaelites, purchased from the London colorman.
The formula was a secret but was discovered with Roberson's papers
after his death. It's a mastic gel with the addition of copal, (not
unique for the period, my first guess at Constable's medium) and can be
used both for tight and looser painting; holds a good edge but the edge
also moves well, sets progressively as the turpentine evaporates from
the mastic. The proportion is 2 parts double mastic (1 part resin, 2
parts turpentine, best dissolved without heat), one part drying
(leaded) oil, one part drying (leaded) copal, and 1/8 part spike
lavender. Roberson made a large batch and whipped it for a long period
of time to create as much connection between the ingredients as he
could without heating, which would darken the mastic. I've made
variations of this using thicker and thinner Eminent Oil, and
substituting amber for the copal: they gel slightly differently, the
more lead, the thicker the oil/hard resin varnish, the firmer the gel,
but all are facile, easy to use, and make brilliant paint sealed in
resin. Taking a closer look at the various Roberson formulas, I'd say
his version had a lot more lead in it than any I've made. According to
the Tate book on the Pre-Raphaelites, this medium doesn't degrade or
yellow: it was also used by Lord Leighton, arguably one of the more
fastidious painters ever. So, if you're making a Maroger-type medium,
this is an easy development that offers the added protection of a hard
resin varnish and can be used both in a careful or more abandoned
manner. My feeling is that this should be used sparingly, on panels, and with the understanding that it will yellow over time. However, especially when used in a freer manner, it is quite charismatic.
|
| amber |
Amber, the mature resin from trees that grew 20 million years ago and more, has always had an enthusiastic following: the Phoenicians traded Baltic amber jewelry throughout the Mediterranean during their heyday, it's discussed by several Roman writers and Eastlake goes into great detail about the history of both the word and the substance. Amber varnish has also developed a kind of mystical-mythical reputation, in part because of the singular price of the singular material put out by Blockx, in part because of the 19th century amber revival begun by Eastlake and Merimee, and in part because of the high regard deMayerne shows for the material: in spite of the fact that Van Dyck didn't like it. Gentileschi reported to deMayerne that he used amber, but the conservators at the Getty have found that, at least on their painting, this was in fact copal. Both Eastlake and Merimee conclude that a hard resin varnish is an important aspect of the lasting quality of older painting, but more recent conservation studies have found that older -- 15th to 17th century -- painters principally used oil. There are those who dispute these findings. However, my work with the materials has suggested that oil may well be capable of any effect that a resin can accomplish provided the paint is made with semi-heat bodied oil. Where does this leave amber varnish? I'm not sure: perhaps at some point it will show up in an older painting made in Northern Europe, but at this point it seems likely that copal and sandarac varnishes may well have been marketed as amber: unless you have used all three for some time, it is hard to tell the difference between them, and the copal or sandarac could be made lighter because of their lower melting points: another selling point. While there are many recipes for amber varnish in deMayerne and many of the older sources, there are very few confirmed examples so far from conservation. This means that most of the amber trail is literary, which is another puzzle since its documentation is so extensive.
There are many ingenious ways in which amber has been treated in an attempt to get a lighter material. The light colored Blockx material is almost undoubtedly made by alcohol extraction, a time consuming process which is in the deMayerne manuscript: I've made
this, it took weeks and consumed copious quantities of pure alcohol but
it worked. (The more recent Blockx amber medium, which is darker, is
probably made using the traditional cooked oil method). It's worth
noting though, as Eastlake remarks, that this lighter material does not
contain all the resin nor any polymerized oil and, while clear, would
not be as tenacious as the original material described in so many old
recipes. Mrs. Merrifield discusses several long-cook methods used to make a lighter varnish, my experiments in this realm have suggested that the longer the amber and oil are cooked at a low temperature, the easier the end result will be to achieve and the lighter the final product. Several modern painters have reconstructed a procedure from that produces the darker material that is less expensive than the Blockx material. This darkness is of little consequence in practice because of the very small amount of amber required to radically change the quality of the paint's
working character: it's rheology. This is an important point if you've used dammar or
any other soft resin varnish: much less amber is needed and in fact is
required. The unique power of the aged resin creates
a kind of gelled or immobile quality which is not sticky. This can be
enhanced by the use of litharge as a drier in the accompanying oil
creating a stiff gel from paint or to use as a medium.
The simplest method of working with
amber is to mix a few drops with tube paint on the palette, this
addition of a small amount of varnish to each color on the palette goes
back at least to the Strassberg manuscript quoted in Eastlake:
14th-15th century: see below. The addition of a very small amount of sun oil and/or balsam
produces a thixotropic gel which allows painting successive layers over
one another in one sitting. With this paint it is possible to lay a
white line over a wet black ground. A great deal of quality research on
amber varnish is available at the websites of two people who make it
commercially, Donald Fels and James
Groves. Fels is specifically interested in promoting the
technique of Rubens. I have to admit that, in spite of my respect for
Fels' research and scholarship, this is not where my interest lies:
Rubens, for all his extrordinary technical virtuosity, seems more of an
athlete than a philosopher. Perhaps this is an instance of the
perennial struggle between the extrovert and the introvert in the arts,
betrween the internal and external. Fel's book, however, does contain a
translation of the deMayerne manuscript and many very cogent
observations and recipes. If you want to make your own amber, this is a
good place to start reading, although Groves does not agree that the
double cook method outlined by Fels produces a better product. At this
point, having tried the method outlined by Fels and a straight
single-oil method, I prefer the single oil method: the varnish may be
slightly darker, but its thixotropic quality is far
greater, and I use it in very small amounts.
Groves has a more omnivorous
technical approach: a well-read working painter, he has
created a variety of mediums based on research
into original documents. Please pay close
attention to Grove's instructions as they are accurate! The
techniques of modern oil painting are not applicable to
painting with amber, a different mind-set has to be developed. It's
not that it's slower or hard to work with, just different on a
number of levels. For example, amber develops very deep saturation in
the darks, resulting in a different inherent value scale from the same
pigments used without amber. The overall look is more subtle than any
other medium and somehow a bit mysterious. There are those who think amber is specious or a kind of
fetish, one runs across various snide remarks, perhaps directed at the
Blockx cult. I don't think it's
crucial for making art and may or may not be part of older painting practice, but it's a powerful tool: Eastlake
concludes that amber or copal are responsible for the good condition of
many old paintings by locking out humidity and oxygen, and by keeping
the whites from transparentizing in oil. This conclusion is disputed on several levels at this point, and amber as a final varnish has been superseded unless the painter is opting for a specific mellowing of tone. But, once again, please
remember that it's not dammar, you don't need or want to
use a lot. When used as a medium, ten percent amber is fine, with a little more in the final
layer. The Groves site offers further information about amber.
|
| copal |
Copal varnish is usually composed of
rendered copal heated with oil and then thinned with turpentine. It can also be made by directly heating the powdered resin in oil until it dissolves, but this method is darker unless laboratory type equipment and methods are used. There are many types of copal from many locations
with different names, ages, and melting points. I've
made copal varnish from a relatively soft or young copal, Manila Copal,
but even this dissolved finally at over 500F, so its quite tough and
an interesting alternative to dammar, mastic, etc., although it does have a bit of color. Copal is more brilliant than amber and dries more quickly. It isn't quite as tough but isn't quite as dark either. It played a significant role in 19th century painting mediums and very possibly much earlier. James Groves has put up very detailed information about
the family of copal resins and their history in painting mediums here.
My feeling is that this is a quality material for the Strassburg Method outlined below with the understanding that some yellowing of the varnish is inevitable over time.
|
| sandarac |
The sandarac varnish made by dissolving the resin in hot oil is a material with a long history according to Eastlake. Of the hard-resin varnishes I made, this became my favorite by far because of it's working qualities: quick setting, quick and reliable to dry. However, it's dangerous to make and, like all resins dissolved in oil, will yellow over time. Another way of using sandarac is as a spirit varnish. The National Gallery found a sandarac spirit varnish on a Durer in their collection, and and it's also alluded to by Leonardo in his notebooks. Sandarac dissolves in spike lavender. I put about 1 part sandarac tears to 3 parts spike lavender in an amber glass bottle and shake it for the first few days, then stir it up sometimes as well. This takes a few weeks, cannot be accelerated by low heat or waterbath as the sandarac just turns into a gluey mass. A better method would involve keeping the sandarac in constant motion until it dissolved, or adding small pebbles or glass beads in an amount that would keep the dissolving sandarac from turning into a mass, but the more primitive way works too. As a final varnish it is quite thin, and dries in about four hours. A couple coats may be needed.
|
| strassburg method |
On
page 130 of "Methods and Materials", see bibliography below, Eastlake
gives an extensive quote from a fifteenth century manuscript from the
library of Strassburg, Germany. The instructions are to boil the oil
with driers and then use it to make paint, which is to be ground
thickly, then made thinner with oil. The paint is then modified on the
palette with a small quantity of varnish. I've adapted this method as
follows: the paint is made with 72 hour oil, no additional driers, and
tubed. A small amount of amber varnish or other resin is added to the paint on the
palette, causing the paint to seize: one drop per 1/4 teaspoon of paint
does this. Amber is not added to the white, see below. The paint is
then thinned with solvent for opening layers, then a bit of Eminent
Oil, then a bit of Eminent oil and sun oil, etc., moving progressively
from lean to fat.
|
| sanding |
A technique recommended by a surprising number of different sources is
to sand your painting between layers. This is very helpful and
sometimes crucial when working with the hard resin varnishes. And while
it's not as easy to do on unsupported canvas it can be done safely if
you think about it a bit. The technique is to oil the work lightly,
then go over it with a piece of 400 or 600 wet/dry sandpaper on a flat
block of wood. You'll get a messy slurry, which you wipe off with a
clean rag. Then go over the surface with some turpentine on a rag
to clean it. The resulting surface is very paint-receptive.
|
| egg |
In
his excellent general manual The Materials and Techniques of
Painting Kurt Wehlte gives the best description I've read of
the chemistry of emusion mediums, and if you've been doing much
technical reading you know that there's often a protein spike in those
spectrographic analyses of Rembrandt paint layers indicating the
presence of egg in the paint. You can emulsify a whole egg before using
it or just use the yolk. A general proportion when beginning with the
yolk is one part yolk, half part oil, half part resin, beginning with
the oily part. A bit more of each can be worked in, its best with room
temperature organic yolks. A good way to make small amounts of emulsion
is to shake them up hard in a small glass bottle.
|
| egg yolk and white |
A small amount of egg yolk added to lead white paint made with a slightly heat bodied oil will seize very tightly. For a complete illustration of this process, please go here
and scroll down a bit.
|
| resin-egg emulsions |
This
is more a family of mediums than just one. This type of tempera grassa medium is versatile and permanent on panel but was not used in older painting: the evidence seems to be that, while egg tempera and oil were mixed in thin layers in paintings during the transitional period, very little if any tempera grassa was used. Both oils and resins can be
emulsified with egg yolk, so the combinations are endless. One feature
of most of these combinations is a quick set and relatively fast drying
time, creating an ability to do a great deal in an initial sitting.
They can also be engineered to be many levels of gloss from dead flat
to saturated to reasonably shiny. One potential minus is the need to
work a medium like this on a panel, as egg ultimately dries quite hard
and inflexible. The usual proportion for a medium like this is one part
egg yolk to one part other ingredients, but by using amber and
combining in a specific order, more "other" can be achieved. An example
recipe would be: To two parts egg yolk add two parts Eminent Oil, stir
or shake to emulsify. Then add 2 parts isolating varnish -- I use
balsam or fir, cut with three parts turpentine -- and emulsify. Then
add 3/4 part amber varnish, stir, it will seize. This should be further
thinned with turpentine as needed, in the beginning of the painting
especially. Slightly more resin and oil could be added towards the end of the work.
|
| heat-enhanced emulsions |
Another
way of making an egg emulsion medium involves combining all the "other
ingredients", heating ten minutes in a boiling water bath, and then
whisking this right away into the egg yolk, the method used to make a zabaglione. This creates different
handling characteristics than cold emulsifying, is fluffier but also
more firmly bound, and enables even more volume of "other" to be
incorporated without breaking the emulsion: about 4 to 1. In this case,
I leave out any spike or turpentine, so that the hot fluid added to the
egg yolk is as viscous as it can be. The yolks should still be room
temperature, add the hot fluid slowly at first. I've made versions of
this with various proportions of amber, Eminent Oil, and
fir fused into oil as the "other", and it seems like a technical
step forward from the cold method above although involving another
level of effort. If you've worked with egg emulsions and like them
you'll enjoy this method, just don't spoon it on top of alpine
strawberries for dessert. On the plus side, I've been able to store
this type of medium over several months in a tube. It can be used as an
initial addition to tube paint on the palette with wide latitude. I'd
again stess that this type of medium, while in my view incredibly
permanent, needs to be used on panels because its ultimate hardness is
also inflexible. It can be given a variety of different personalities
depending on the proportion and identity of resinous and oily
components.
|
| white |
It's simple to make your own white with lead carbonate and oil; it
doesn't need to be ground and becomes "paint" pretty much instantly
just by mixing on a piece of glass with a knife. You then have control
over what oil, how much, how dry to make it, what else to add. If
you're interested in 17th century technique you can try experimenting
with additions of calcite for transparency, or ground leaded glass to
get the famous Rembrandt drizzle effect. A formula I've used for a more
transparent veiling or finishing white is 2 parts lead carbonate, 1
part calcite, and 1 part zinc white. However, zinc white does become brittle and should only be used on panels. In a careful layered system --
Perugino, Raphael -- the texture or viscosity of the white isn't a
factor, but in the later Flemish system -- Rubens, Rembrandt -- or in
the unique system of Velazquez, the rheology of the white paint becomes
focal. The white of older painting is white lead made by the stack
process, this contained mostly lead carbonate, some lead hydroxide, and
a small amount of lead acetate. The relative opacity and rheology of
this paint could also be varied by additions of inert ingredients such
as calcite, marble dust, leaded glass, silica, and mica. Each
ingredient imparts specific characteristics to the paint: leaded glass
has a tendency to make the paint more elastic or stringy, mica makes it
more slippery, silica and the calcium minerals tend to make it denser
and more adhesive. In the 19th century, lead white was available with
several different proportions of marble dust added, resulting in more
transparency and more adhesion as the proportion of calcium increased.
In the area of developing a specific
texture and personal handling characteristics,an amazing amount can be
done with white. There are many interesting varieties of white that can
be made with zinc oxide as an addition to lead carbonate. But the
whites I've made most are based on the addition of ground leaded glass
to lead carbonate and heat-bodied oil, and the addition of marble dust
to lead carbonate and heat-bodied oil. A very small amount of ground
leaded glass will create a more mobile and stringy paint. Marble dust,
or calcite, acts more as an adhesive or immobilizer. In one system
that's evolved, these whites are used as is on the palette, while the
other paints are modified with a bit of hard-resin varnish -- usually
amber -- and a bit of thickened oil. While the whites has a viscous
mobility in its original state, any contact with amber makes it set
firmly, allowing for a significant amount of broken-surface development
in a given layer, including a thin glaze over dense paint which has set
but isn't yet dry. (Please note that lead carbonate is TOXIC when
ingested or inhaled and take all standard appropriate precautions when
using this material: wear a particle mask, wear gloves, wash well
before eating, observe rigorous studio hygiene for rags and any stray
pigment. By far the greatest functional danger of lead poisoning occurs
with small children in old houses, but repeated exposure to small
amounts of lead can also lead to poisoning).
|
| a different white |
An
experiment with the technique of coating pigment particles with protein
to protect them from the oil. This technique has been re-pioneered
by Michael
Price in a very interesting article available on his site.
Donald Fels, referencing this technique in his great "Lost Secrets of
Flemish Painting", points out that an addition of a binder may well
have been part of the cones in which lead white was sold to hold down
its toxic dust. Adding these pieces of information to the consistent
presence of egg in Rembrandt's impasto, I thought it would be worth a
try.
First, I washed the lead carbonate three times,
removed the dense foam each time, and then added a solution of one egg
yolk to six ounces of water. Let this settle thoroughly, decanted the
solution off, and spread the paste in the sun on glass to dry. This was
loosely bound, but quite friable. When ground with unrefined walnut
oil, this paint exhibited completely different characteristcs than any
lead white I've ever used or made. It was short, light, and facile, not
dense, or sticky. It had no ropiness yet had body and made texture well
with or without amber and a bit of thickened oil. In the parlance of my
former profession, it held stiff peaks. And of course, the pigment is
protected from the oil by the coating of yolk so it will not
transparentize over time.
I can't say whether this
was an historical material of course, but it would have been very easy
to grind pigment with a bit of glue or egg to guarentee its long-term
opacity. (And anybody who thinks they weren't that smart or subtle
hasn't been chasing them for very long). Perhaps most importantly from
the point of view of this sort of right brain research, (I ordered an
electron microscope but it hasn't come yet), it is easy and fun to work
with.
So if you try this please observe all the
precautions necessary when dealing with a TOXIC substance like lead
carbonate. The particular dust hazard here is in the first wetting of
the pigment which should be done gently wearing a mask.
|
|
|
| additions & revisions |
Updated amber-egg emulsion recipe, 6-20-05. Again,
6-25-05.
7-9-05. Added swish, a medium that does just
that.
7-12-05. Added directions for sanding
paintings between
layers.
8-12-05. Added a recipe for a different kind
of flake white.
9-11-05. Added eminent oil, a drying
oil based on a recipe from Eastlake.
10-01-05. Added
isolating varnish, updated egg-amber emulsion.
10-28-05.
Updated amber-naise.
10-30-05. Added oil
gesso.
12-06-05 Added gesso modo mio.
12-20-05 Updated gesso modo
mio.
5-13-06 Added heat-enhanced emulsion.
5-14-06 Revised and updated the page. It is
hopefully more cogent now.
7-2-06 Added tube paint, revised paint.
9-4-06 Added Studio Oil,
White Fir.
9-7-06 Added 48 hour
oil.
11-19-06 Added Roberson's-type
medium.
1-12-07: Added bibliography, out of print,
sources, drying oils overview, old and in the way, painting oil,
strassburg method, leaded glass impasto medium. Revised white,
tube paint, rewrote paint.
1-19-07: Didn't save the last set of revisions properly and lost the whole text: oy. Have put it back up with many deletions and revisions.
1-20-07: Lots more revising and updating.
1-31-07: Added fir medium.
2-19-07: Added pigments, added egg yolk with white, moved all theory, grousing, and systemic stuff about the oil only system here
.
6-24-07: Added more information to the paragraph on oil. Added sandarac.
8-5-07: Added spike-sun, revised Eminent Oil directions.
10-3-07: Added burnt plate oil.
10-12-07: Added Sun-Spike #4. Added more on putty mediums here
.
3-30-08: Added fumed silica gel, refining linseed oil.
7-25-08: Revised oil.
9-20-08: Revised page, moved all oil related text to just oil.
12-10-09: Fixed all links broken by site upgrade, updated bubble bubble section.
|
|
| bibliography |
Methods and Materials of Painting - Sir
Charles Eastlake
Originally published in 1847, this is a great if complex book.
Eastlake was a painter, restorer, president of the Royal Academy, and
first director of England's National Gallery: in the first page of his
introduction he states that his aim is to help create methods of
painting which are more durable based on the older systems. Full of
anecdotes, technical innuendo, and well-chosen excerpts from the De
Mayerne and other older recipe manuscripts, this book is crucial for
anyone who wants to understand what became lost, why it became
important, and how it began to be discovered once again: in the deepest
sense, it is about the once and future truth of painting. Sir Charles was not right about everything, and many living scholars seem a little too overjoyed to point this out, but he did take on a colossal task (which no one since has ever even attempted) with very little in the way of scientific method, and came out with a book that has, my opinion, a great deal to offer the painter with an interest in the historical materials and techniques puzzle. Eastlake's
style of prose and organization may take some getting used to: it's
strangely oblique: the more important the point, the less the build-up.
Technically, Eastlake hands out much more in the way of concepts and
hints than actual recipes, perhaps because Merimee's book had recently
been translated into English and was quite popular. Also, Eastlake is speaking to an audience
whose sense of painting is different than ours: while he might seem to
ramble or be inconclusive, he is just pointing out the many options
that modern authors like Ralph Mayer wish would go away. The more I
read this, the more it makes sense and has proved helpful,
but it's taken a few years to penetrate. Interestingly, De Mayerne's
approach is much more direct and "modern" in comparison: he simply
records what he heard, what he did, and whether it
worked..
Medieval and
Renaissance Treatises on the Art of Painting - Mrs. Mary P.
Merrifield
Published originally in 1849, Mrs. Merrifield is easier to
navigate than Eastlake, and is again actively involved in going back in
time to recover pieces of the puzzle. The book begins with a three
hundred page catalogue of materials and technical information, much of
which was gathered from current Italian sources and is Italian and full
of contradictory bravado to the point of comedy, but the pages of Mrs.
Merrifield's own observations at the end of this section are quite
cogent and perceptive. The subsequent manuscripts are tenth to
seventeenth century and contain endless recipes in the old manner --
which often assumes that you already know exactly what you're doing -
much of the content of which is actually related to arts other than
painting. But, in each of them -- the Bolognese Manuscript (fifteenth
century), the Marciana Manuscript (sixteenth century), Paduan Manuscript
(seventeenth century), and Brussels Manuscript (1635, by Le Brun) --
there are some good recipes to note, especially recipes for varnish.
Along with Eastlake, Mrs. Merrifield is very interested in painting
systems, drying oils, and amber varnish. Not the most condensed
practical book, requires lots of patient perusing, but an important
part of the story whose historical sources confirm the main tenets of
the system.
National
Gallery Technical Bulletins -
Various
Published
yearly, featuring articles by the conservation staff at London's
National Gallery, these are full of very hard and detailed information.
Highly recommended if you find an article about a painter, period, or
school of interest.
James C. Groves Website: www.jamescgroves.com
A very helpful set of
texts about older materials and methods can be found here composed by
painter and materials researcher Jim Groves. You'll need to look for
further links at the bottom of pages. See the link in Sources,
below.
Rembrandt: The
Painter at Work - Ernst Van de
Wetering
An example of
modern art historical scholarship at its crusty best. Van de Wetering
uses scientific and historical research to gently debunk lots of
romantic speculation and develop a compelling model for how older
painters actually operated. The reader is led subtly
to how Rembrandt thought, and how this process was enacted in painting
during the various phases of his development. Although the external
emphasis is on analysis, I found this book very helpful technically. As
a painter you'll need to read between the scholarly
lines.
Lost Secrets of
Flemish Painting - Donald Fels
This book includes two parts: Fels own system and
recommendations with regard to old master painting and the first full
English translation of the very important De Mayerne manuscript (1620)
in the British Museum. Fels produces the Alchemist line of painting
mediums and presents many very useful observations about older
techniques, as well as many quality technical tips for painters. From
my perspective his system correctly intuits many specific technical
processes and is very in tune with the alchemical mind-set of older
painters. There are lots of quality recipes; the commentary seems a bit
academic but it's logical and meaningful. If you want to paint like
Rubens, say, or Van Dyck, the system is concise and accurate. At the
same time, it's necessary for this knowledge to be applied by living
painters in new and original ways, rather than having it presented as a
de facto solution: the "new Bible" to quote painter Frank Mason on the jacket.
The Fels system, for example, does not address any of the concepts
inherent in the techniques of Chardin, Velasquez, or the later
Rembrandt. This is fine in theory because of the title of the book, but
once you get into the text the term "old masters" is used to describe
one thing and one thing only: the Flemish painters who painted the way
Fels has reconstructed. So to me this is the same old, age old problem
of someone telling painters how to paint and backing themselves up with
a particular big name from the past. The ironic thing about all this is
that this book contains some very high quality information for working
painters but by very conciously donning the starched ruff and velvet
doublet it's liable to put a lot of less conciously conservative
readers off.
The De Mayerne manuscript, on the other hand, is an immense
jumbled goldmine for anyone interested in old techniques. This book is
ALIVE. The actual formulas range from somewhat loony to really
important, but I've found the mindset of another time to be very
helpful: these guys were very hands-on and very curious in an
alchemical way: if it didn't work, they tried again! (On the other
hand, I see DeMayerne's domestic staff as in a state of permanent
chaos). Fels points out that to paint like a 17th century painter you
have to be able to think like one. Short of setting the Wayback for the
year 1620, this is the answer. If you've read Eastlake and want more,
at least get this from the library for a
bit.
The Artist's
Assistant - Leslie Carlyle
This is a doctoral dissertation on the materials and
methods of 19th century painting in England as seen through catalogues
such as Windsor and Newton, inventories of famous colormen like
Roberson, and excerpts from many 19th century English painting manuals.
What emerges is an intriguing picture of a culture trying to develop a
better way to paint without very certain underpinnings. Dozens of
different recipes for meglip, drying oils, and asphaltum are
documented: all of course highly discredited materials at this point.
As this is a research project everything is simply documented: as a
painter you are on your own about whether any formula is viable. I
mention this because this book is perhaps being marketed as something
that it's not. On its own terms it's wonderful, but the essential empathy for painting as a vocation that is a major part of
Eastlake or Van deWetering's Rembrandt book is less in evidence. The
complex story of amber varnish is marginalized: while the De
Mayerne manuscript is mentioned, it is never in connection with amber,
for which the manuscript contains many references and half a dozen
recipes, and Eastlake is given responsibility for creating the amber revival, when Merimee came to the same conclusions and was much more popular as a text. From my perspective this book is fascinating historically as a
testament to what happens when the sorcerer's apprentice is in charge
of the spell. I recommend it as a source of history and further
research into period authors such as Field and Merimee but not as a
source for formulas unless you have been navigating these waters for
quite some time.
The Materials and Techniques of Painting-Kurt Wehlte.
To me the best single resource available on the craft of painting, written from a perspective that is both scholarly and accessible, but singularly lacking in the type of material De Mayerne and Eastlake worked with. Covers not just oil painting but tempera, casein, complex emulsions, pigments, grounds, and my favorite, cera colla, the water soluble beeswax of the medieval monks of Mt. Athos. A pupil of Max Doerner, Wehlte is careful not to speculate about Old Master (OM) methods and materials but tells you what he knows from experience. This was reprinted years ago by Daniel Smith but is now available again through Kremer. (See below).
Oil Painting Techniques and Materials-Harold Speed
Written in England in the 20's, this is the only book I've ever read which actually explains how color becomes light, in addition to offering some very interesting observations about modern art and the painter's process. It has a certain poignancy, in that Speed saw that painting and western culture were devolving in the face of negative intellectual modernism. Both interesting and useful. Available as a Dover paperback.
Pre-Raphaelite Painting Techniques - Joyce Townsend,
Jaqueline Ridge, and Stephen
Hackney
Contains an
immense amount of technical information about the materials used by the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the technical climate of the time
period. Extremely well done and highly
informative.
Artist's Pigments c.
1600-1835 - R.D. Harley
A great book, the least dry and most readable, most genuinely
informed work of scholarly research I've encountered. Full of lore and
great period quotations, Dr. Harley also has a great and gentle sense
of humor about the many contradictions and inconsistencies of
historical sources.
Velazquez - The Technique of Genius - Jonathan Brown,
Carmen Garrido
Contains
a small but highly informative technical section and great close-up
photos, as well as a well-done historical
text.
The Craft of Old
Master Drawings - James Watrous
This is from the Fifties, and is a very good source of
practical information for metalpoint, reed pens, old ink and Conte-type
crayon recipes. Much of the same information is in Wehlte, above, but
this is more detailed.
Fifty Secrets of
Magical Craftsmanship-Salvador
Dali
This is a kind of Chinese puzzle box in which Dali both
obscures and reveals at once some technical aspects of traditional
painting in a set of fifty secrets. There's lots of stylish esoterica
and verbal pirouetting but it's from the Thirties and is surprisingly
negotiable. I wouldn't read this first but if you've been painting a
while (and you can deal with a mad genius for an author) it's an
intriguing book and provides lots of insight into how Dali approached
older techniques and materials. Of the Fifty Secrets, my favorite is
the last one.
The Art
Forger's Handbook - Eric
Hebborn
Contains a great deal of interesting information about period
methods and materials from the somewhat unfortunate perspective of
producing accurate fakes. Cocky, bitter, in some places downright ugly, but somehow worth it, a glimpse at the artworld's very dirty laundry. Not as complete as it might be: although
written in 1997 Hebborn doesn't mention Lead Tin Yellow in his Forger's
Palette: it would certainly be in mine!
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A tremendous number of older, out-of-print texts are available here, really well done by an excellent painter to boot.
Secret Formulas and Techniques of the
Masters - Jaques Maroger
The
notorious text published in 1948 by a former technical director of the
Louvre. Maroger taught at Parsons in New York beginning in 1939 and had
some well known students, including Fairfield Porter. There's a
Wikipedia article on him here .
Aspects of this are useful but it's also full of massive errors which
are even more puzzling since Maroger clearly had access to the older
documents. Why did he concentrate so much on the medium and ignore the
paint itself? Why did he attempt to document a systematic development of the medium across centuries of isolated practice? A bizarre desire for logical order dominates this book in spite of everything available about historical practice at the time. But, it's part of the story, especially showing how
someone well intentioned can still go far afield in their
conclusions: how easy it is for secrets to be invented. Most of this book is available online here
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The Art of Painting in Oil and in Fresco -
M. J. F. L. Merimee
The 1839 London translation of Merimee's book published in
French in 1830. The standard technical recipe text of the mid-19th
century, referred to by both Eastlake and Merrifield in this manner.
There are many quotes and recipes from Merimee in Carlyle's book,
above. Not all that scientific or reliable, shows where things were at that point, contains much of historic or period interest with regard to pigments. The actual text is available as a PDF if you do a book search on Google.
Chromatography - George
Field
First published in 1835, there are several later editions of
this by different editors. Field was a highly respected colorman in the
earlier part of 19th century London who improved the manufacture of
madder pigments and produced other pigments of interest such as Field's
orange vermilion. His writing is no nonsense, pithy and perceptive. A PDF of the text is available if you do a book search on Google.
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Numenist, anachronist, maroon.