Knowledge List of Oil Painting

Oil Painting: Solvents and Resins

FROM:painting.about
AUTHOR:Marion Boddy-Evans

The properties of the various solvents and resins used in oil painting.
Solvents are added to oil paints to temporarily change the way they work and are designed to evaporate evenly and totally as the oil paint dries. (Technically, the more correct term is diluents, as not all are solvents, but it's not the term commonly used.) Solvents are also used to dissolve resins, making mediums, cleaning up, and for cleaning brushes. It is essential to use solvents in a well-ventilated room and remember that they are flammable (catch fire easily).
Turpentine is the traditional solvent used in oil painting. It's based on tree resin and has a fast evaporation rate, releasing harmful vapors. It can also be absorbed through healthy skin. Use only artist quality turpentine as the industrial variety you find in hardware stores probably contains impurities; it should be colorless, like water.Also known as spirit of turpentine, oil of turpentine, genuine turpentine, English turpentine, distilled turpentine, double rectified turpentine, or simply turps.
Mineral spirits is based on petroleum and has a moderate evaporation rate, releasing harmful vapors. It is said not to absorbed through healthy skin, but it's sensible to take precautions, especially if you've sensitive skin. Mineral spirits is less expensive than turpentine. Some people react less to mineral spirits than to turpentine. Mineral spirits is a stronger solvent than odorless mineral spirits. Also known as white spirits.
Odorless mineral spirits is based on petroleum and has a moderate evaporation rate. IIt is said not to absorbed through healthy skin, but it's sensible to take precautions, especially if you've sensitive skin. Odorless mineral spirits is, unsurprisingly, more expensive than normal mineral spirits as it has had some of the harmful aromatic solvents removed. Brands include Turpenoid, Thin-ex, Gamsol.
Despite the more pleasant smell of citrus-based thinners, don't simply assume they don't give off any harmful vapors -- check what the product is made from. Look for something like Zest-It, which is made from food-grade citrus oil combined with a non-toxic, non-flammable solvent. (Of course, if you get migraines from oranges, this would not be a good thing to use!)
Alkyd-based Mediums: If you want to speed up the drying time of your oil paint, consider using an alkyd-based medium such as Liquin (W&N) or Galkyd (Gamlin).
Tip: Test the quality of a solvent by putting a little on a drop of paper and letting it evaporate. If it doesn't leave any resident, stain, or smell, it should be good enough for oil painting.
Resins are used to increase the gloss of oil paint, reduce the color and drying time of a medium, and add body to drying oils. The most commonly used is a natural resin known as Damar, which should be mixed with turpentine as it will not thoroughly dissolve when mixed with mineral spirits. Damar can also be used as a varnish.

Facing the Blank Page

from:buddingartist

Facing The Blank Page Image
There is a well worn cliché about the strife and anguish artists and writers feel in face of the ‘blank page’ or indeed, these days, the blank computer screen!
The blank page is said to be associated with writers or artists block, a condition that is said to have prevented novelist Henry Roth from committing anything to paper for 60 years! Fortunately, this kind of block is normally short lived, and where it is related to the blank page or blank canvas is relatively easy to cure.
Psychologically speaking, the difficulty one has in thinking how best to approach a blank page arises out of a fear of failure. One feels that whilst the blank page is still there any number of incredible possibilities lie ahead, yet once one marks the page, with pen, paint, pencil, and so on, one runs the risks of ruining those possibilities. Here the possibility of action is associated with the possibility of potential failure.
Combating this psychological tendency entails simply turning this rather flimsy logic on its head: It is surely the case that no great achievement can be made without action, and whilst action can lead to failure, failure can lead to new lessons learned, and thus is never failure as such! The only path to making a good painting or drawing is to start drawing: It’s as simple as that!
Marking the Page
The attitude that goes hand in hand with a fear of marking the blank page is likely to lead to a poor artwork even when the first painstaking mark has been delivered upon the page. The reticence that finds it so hard to mark the page will probably lead to very tentative sketchy first marks. It is not until the ‘devil-may-care’ attitude has really sunk in that the ‘block’ can be said to truly be lifted.
One way of forcing this situation is to deliberately and aggressively mark the page in a way that is unsightly: Scribble over the page, cover it in charcoal or pencil marks and make it look really bad. I doing this your worst fears will have been realised, and from there the only way to redeem your drawing will be to work hard to turn the mess you have made into something credible!
This exercise directly challenges the fussy approach that you would otherwise naturally take. In a sense it teaches you to take the same approach you must take in your everyday life if you are to achieve anything. You would, unless ill, approach a momentous day ahead by staying in bed afraid to get up or make a movement lest you ruin all the dreams that lay ahead of you. Sure enough, a certain amount of self-belief is needed to proceed into the unknown, but for any successful person to hide from life altogether is just not a viable option. The result of such inaction makes for a poor life, as it also makes for a poor artwork!
Once you have grasped the mental attitude necessary to counter the blank page syndrome you will be able to work more easily and more confidently, thus developing your style and technique faster.

Oil Portrait Painting as Your Anniversary Gift

By: Vikram Kumar
from:celebritypainting

Portrait painting is a tradition which has been widespread even before the advent of photography. In the past, aristocratic and royal families pose for long hours just to have their portraits oil painted or charcoal painted. The most common means of painting though, is through oil. Rich families during the olden times even have portrait paintings of ancestors and family members from the generation before them. Not only wealthy individuals have their portraits painted by artists. There are also some engaged couples who send each other painted portraits before their wedding. After these couples get married, they present their partners paintings as anniversary gifts.
But as years passed and technology has gotten more advanced, photography replaced the art of painting portraits. While there are some individuals who still have their family photos painted, there are only a few of them who actually choose this kind of photo preservation. Most people choose digital images of themselves and their families because of the fact that digital printing preserves the quality of the photos for a long time. But if you want the classic way of saving memories, you can always have your family portraits painted by artists. There are several methods of painting photos such as oil, pencil, watercolor, pastel, acrylic, and charcoal. Among all these means, perhaps the most common is oil painting. If you want to give your loved one an anniversary gift, you can present him or her with an oil painted portrait. This will serve as a souvenir of your lasting relationship and companionship. Aside from being a souvenir, it will also serve as an artistic piece which you will cherish forever. It will be a masterpiece which you can hand down to your children and to your grandchildren.
Coming up with an oil painting of you and your loved one's photo is an art which entails great ability and skill. There are only a few painters who can actually redevelop the whole aura of the portrait into the painting. When you want to have you and your partner's photo oil painted, the whole process can take up to a week. However, it may last longer. The duration of work required depends on the complexity of the task and the size of the portrait. This may cost you, but the reaction of your loved one will be worth it once you give it to him or her as an anniversary gift.
Several years ago, way back when photography has not yet been discovered, people would pose for plenty of hours just to have their portraits painted. But during the recent times, all you have to do is give the painter your photo and they will take care of the rest. If you want a family portrait painted, a photo of the whole family is not necessary. You have the option of sending the painter separate photos of each member. You can just ask him to put all of you together within a single painting. You can even request a certain background. There are various other things which you can request your painter to do.

History of oil paint

From:cyberlipid

The oldest Mediterranean civilization, Greek, Roman or Egyptian have extensively used painting techniques based on mixtures of encaustic (probably rich in bee wax), mineral pigments (iron, copper, manganese oxides) and tempera. Vegetal oils, such as flax, walnut or poppyseed oil were known to ancient Egyptians, Greeks or Romans, but no precise indication of their use in painting may be found. Tempera is a fluid mixture of binder (organic medium), water and volatile additives (vegetal essential oils). Organic binders used by Italian artists were proteinaceous materials available from animal sources (whole egg, animal glues or milk).
At the end of the roman empire and up to the Renaissance period (15th century), this ancient technique was lost and replaced by oil paint and/or tempera. In Italy and Greece, olive oil was used to prepare pigment mixtures but the drying time was excessively long and tedious in the case of figures. This drawback led a German monk, Theophilus, in the 12th century to warn against paint recipes including olive oil (Schoedula Diversarum Artium). It was reported that Aetius Amidenus, a medical writer in the 5th century, mentioned the use of a drying oil as a varnish on paintings. Similarly, it seems that perilla oil was used in Japan in painting after addition of lead in the 8th century. In the 14th century, Cennino Cennini presented a painting procedure integrating tempera painting covered by light oily layers.
According to Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) in his "Lives of the Artists" (Le vite de piu eccelenti pittori, scultori e architetori, Firenze, 1550), the technique of oil painting, as used till now with few technical modifications, was invented or re-invented in Europe around 1410 by Jan van Eyck (1390 -1441). In fact, as said before, this Flemish painter was not the first to use oil paint, his real achievement was the development of a stable varnish based on a siccative oil (mainly linseed oil) as the binder of mineral pigments. It could be established that the Van Eyck secret was a mixture of piled glass, calcined bones and mineral pigments in linseed oil maintained a long time up to a viscous state at boiling temperature. Besides linseed oil, walnut oil and poppy-seed oil were also used while not so quick-drying. It is probable that painters have already observed that these oils led to accelerated drying time of canvas under the sun. It seems that Van Eyck kept his secret up to about 1440, a few time before his death.

Historians agree that the masterpiece of Van Eyck, the wedding portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife (National Gallery, London) painted in 1434, is one of the first and the best example of the new technique. If the pigments were the same as those used by Italian painters, the siccative oil has increased brilliance, translucence and intensity of color as the pigments were suspended in a layer of oil that also trapped light. The resulting optical effect obtained with pigment-oil mixtures and stacked layers explain the enameled aspect of Van Eyck works. These innovations in the oil medium produced an art that set the standard for a long time and which has never been surpassed.
After Van Eyck, Antonello da Messina (1430-1479) introduced a new technical improvement. He added a lead oxide (litharge) in the pigment-oil mixtures to increase their siccative property. The resulting recipe was described by JLF Mérimé (De la peinture à l'huile, Paris, 1830) : "La préparation ressemble à du miel ou de la graisse à demi figée et porte le nom d'oglio cotto (huile cuite). C'est en effet de l'huile de noix cuite à feu doux et contenant en dissolution la plus grande proportion de litharge avec laquelle elle puisse se combiner".
Later, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) improved the preparation in cooking the oily mixtures at low temperature (boiling water) after the addition of 5 to 10% of bee wax, thus preventing a too dark color. While Giorgione (1477-1510), Titian (1488-1576) and Tintoreto (1518-1594) have slightly altered the original recipe, this technique was kept secretly in Italian ateliers nearly during three centuries, thus warranting their supremacy and radiance in whole Europe.
From 1600 and during his 9 year stay in Italy, Rubens has studied the Italian medium and made his own improvements. It was reported by De Mayerne (Pictoria, Sculptoria et quae subalternarum Artium, London, 1620) that Rubens used walnut oil warmed with lead oxide and some mastic dissolved in turpentine to grind mineral pigments.
As said Maroger (The secret formules and techniques of the masters, Edition London and New York, 1948), "Painting had received a rapid and strong impulsion which finally led to the great painting of the Renaissance. But the technique is not enough alone to create a near perfect art, and many improvements would be yet achieved. Each following generation will bring his brick to the building"

An oil is able to dry or to polymerize to a semi-fluid state if it content enough unsaturated fatty acids, preferably di- or tri-unsaturated. The participation of mono-unsaturated (oleic) acid is not well known but rather limited. Only linoleic (18:2n-6), linolenic (18:3n-3), pinolenic (5,9,12-18:3),ricinoleic (12-hydroxy oleic acid) and ?-eleostearic (9c,11t,13t-18:3) acids are constituents of drying oils. A review of the application of vegetable oils in paints has been released by Derksen J et al. (Ind Crops Prod 1995, 3, 225).
Since several years a variety of vegetal and non-edible oils are used in the industry of paints as they are able to dry quickly, sometimes more quickly than linseed oil. Among them, tung oil, oiticica oil, perilla oil, poppyseed oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, dehydrated castor oil, as well as many fish oils are used to make siccative mixtures (Lavers B, Oils and Fats Int 2003, 19, 19). The iodine number (number of grams of iodine absorbed by 100g of oil) is frequently used to classify drying oils. Thus, they are considered as drying if the iodine number is greater than 130, semi-drying if it is between 115 and 130, and nondrying if it is less than 115.
Drying oils (mainly linseed oil) that are heated to about 300° C under conditions that exclude oxygen give products which are referred to as stand oils. They become polymerized (the molecular structure is changed while the composition remains). They have a lower iodine number (lower unsaturation) than the cold-pressed oils, they dry slowly, they yellow less than the native oils, and form a tough strong film. They imparts to the paint an enamel-like smoothness and tend to make the paint fuse and blend. They are used as an ingredient in the diluent, or painting medium.
Several new oils have been studied to improve the performance of paint and coatings. Thus, oils from Lesquerella, Euphorbia lagascae, Vernonia galamensis and Calendula officinalis are used to increase resistance or to decrease drying time.
The drying process itself results in a polymerization upon uptake of oxygen. That complex mechanism includes mainly the oxidative degradation of unsaturated fatty acids leading to the formation of aldehyde groups later transformed into carboxylic groups. Thus, dicarboxylic acids are progressively formed with ageing of the mixture, pimelic, suberic, azelaic, and sebacic acids being mainly found in of old paints (Surowiec I et al., J Chromatogr A 2004, 1024, 245).
European painters mostly used linseed, walnut, and poppyseed oil. Hempseed and pinenut oil have been also mentioned in the early literature.
A dated history of artists, pigments, mediums and painting techniques may be found in a very documented web site.
References
The organic chemistry of museum objects. Mills JS and White R, Butterworth Heinemann, 1994
The chemistry of paints and paintings. Church AH, Seeley and Co, London, 1915.
Materials for a history of oil painting. Eastlake CL, Dover publications, New York, 1967.
Painting materials, a short encyclopedia. Gettens RB and Stout GL, Dover publications, New York, 1966.
Ancient Egyptian materials and industries. Lucas A, Edward Arnold, London, 1948.
Original treatises dating the XIIth to XVIIIth centuries on the art of painting. Merrifield MP, Dover publications, New York, 1967.
An essay upon various arts. Theophilus, reprinted Dover publications, New York, 1979.
Vegetable oils in paint and coatings, Van de Mark MR et al., Inform 2005, 16, 478-481 (see also chapter 8 of : Industrial Uses of Vegetable Oils, Erhan SZ Ed, AOCS Press 2005.