Mediums
Painting mediums are used to modify the rate of drying, increase gloss, improve flow or add texture, mediums as an additive to color. Working with oils, solvents, mediums, and varnishes for painting requires an in-depth understanding of paint. The wide range of oils, mediums, and solvents to control color makes choices difficult.
Natural Pigments introduces an oil painting medium called Italian Varnish. Italian Varnish was first mentioned by Jean-François-Léonor Mérimée in his 1839 book, The art of painting in oil and in fresco, as a “strong oil prepared in Italy from a very remote period, and which possesses the double-advantage of drying well, and preventing the flowing about of the most liquid glazing.”...
This guide examines oil painting mediums made by Natural Pigments. These paint mediums are designed to alter the consistency of oil paint in novel ways, different from the varnishes that were in common use since the nineteenth century and alkyd mediums today. Painting mediums change the handling properties of paint, such as flow out and leveling; increase or decrease tackiness and drag; hasten or retard drying time, increase or decrease gloss; increase transparency, and other physical properties of oil paint...
To start painting in Ceracolors colors, you only need paint and water. It handles basically like watercolors or gouache. But for nearly endless possibilities in texture, transparency, viscosity, and sheen, take a look at the wide world of mediums. Think of Ceracolors mediums like paint without the pigment. They're made of the same waxy stuff and can be added to any color in any quantity...
Concerns about the toxicity of artists' materials have renewed interest in natural materials for painting. Oil painting has long been associated with health hazards due to using solvents in painting and cleaning. Much attention lately is given to lavender or spike oil as a healthier alternative to solvents. However, many are confused by the names and even more by the non-toxic claims made...
Dramatic changes in the techniques and materials used by artists began to occur in the latter half of the eighteenth century as the binding media was given much more attention than in previous centuries. This is related to the rising professional status of artists and the formation of academies for training artists, especially in Britain. Rather than using well-tested and reliable methods and materials based on studio practice and apprenticeship, artists began trying out new processes. This, in turn, is related to the vain search for the ‘lost secrets of the masters that led to even more experimentation and scandals, such as that experienced by the Royal Academy of Arts and its president, Benjamin West, at the turn of the nineteenth century...
During the first decade of the 20th century, a startling phenomenon was witnessed in exhibitions of oil paintings throughout France: “at retrospective exhibitions of art, many modern pictures which on their first appearance were greatly admired for their brilliance and freshness, seemed so darkened and tarnished as to be hardly recognizable.” The author links the reason for this phenomenon to the practice of oiling out and the application of retouch varnish. In the first part article of a series, James Robinson exposes this faulty practice and shows how it developed as a remediation of sinking in from the 18th century to the present...
