Oil Painting Tips - Renaissance Painting Techniques

Advertisement

Tips Of The Day

Q: Can you recommend a practical way to replicate the gold grounds often seen in medieval and Renaissance paintings?

A: Although there are several excellent gold acrylic paints on the market today, the brilliant effects of gold leaf grounds found in many medieval and Renaissance paintings can't be easily duplicated by the simple application of a painted ground.

On the other hand, gilding, the ancient art of adhering thin metal leaf to a surface, can emulate the appearance of these ancient paintings. Two gold leaf gilding methods are used for this purpose: water gilding and oil gilding, also called mordant gilding, which is the simpler process of the two.

There are three essential tools required to master this delicate art: a gilder's cushion, a thin 6"-x-10" padded palette on which the leaf can be laid out flat; a gilder's knife for handling, straightening, and cutting the leaf; and a gilder's tip, a rather flat brush with sparse hairs, for picking up the leaf and laying it on the surface.

Questions And Answers

Advertisement

ADVICE ON  :

• Salvaging Oils and watercolors 
• Starting over in Oils
• Understanding color 
• Loosening pastel edges

Q. How do I salvage dried – up oil and water colour tubes ?

A. The solidification of tubed oil color is called livering. It's caused by a chem­ical reaction between impurities in the pigment-especially traces of sulfur and the oil vehicle. As a result, the tubed oil color forms rubbery masses, distorting its handling qualities. Impu­rities found in the tubed oil color are characteristic of poor, or incomplete, washing of pigments during initial pro­cessing. In general, livering tends to occur in lower-grade oil colors- not in colors made of high-quality, properly washed pigments correctly ground in the best oil vehicles.
The same problem can happen with tubed watercolors. Occasionally impure pigments will liver when ground into gum arable, the traditional vehicle for tubed watercolors. Some­times plasticizers or preservatives are added during production of high-qual­ity artist's watercolors to prevent this.

SALVAGING OPERATIONS

 Whether or not lumpy, gummy tube oil or watercolors are salvageable depends pretty much on how far gone they are. Reconditioning, then re tubing, the col­ors may require more time and effort than they're actually worth. In many instances, you're much better off with fresh, newly produced tube colors.

If you're determined to try to save your old paints, here are some sugges­tions for reclaiming those tube oils (be Sure to wear latex gloves to keep all traces of paint off your hands).

 First, you'll need to remove all of the color from the tube and deposit it onto your working palette so you can recondition its consistency