art lessons 29th mar – chalkyness, glazing and how fast does paint dry?
Posted by orangewink on April 2, 2007
brought my camera, but forgot to take a pic of the work in progress, yellow cow, so no pic update. i wasn’t on earth last week. my absent-mindedness was off the charts. will do so this week.
an odd thing happened tho. the oil turned really chalky, almost pastel-like. SE explained that’s cos all/almost all the colours were mixed with white, and the white that i use, (titanium white), is actually denser than say other whites like zinc/lead white so that leads to the “chalkyness” once it dries. also, it could be the quality of the paints, i use a combo of winton oils and daler-rowney. probably student grade? i dunno, that’s all i can find in artfriend, and is there any other art shop that sells quality paints besides creative hands? sure there are, but they are so gawddamn $$!! so student quality is fine since i’m still learning technique and copying masters, like duh, i’m a student… just for laughs, here is the dodgy plastic bag i use to store paints:
transporting this bag around kinda makes me feel like an itinerant painter in ancient china. haha. i could get a nice wooden box to store ’em, but then i’d probably forget where i’ve placed the box… better to have this bright yellow thing screaming for attention.
anyway, there are 15 tubes, so that means my present colour palette is 15 strong. too much actually. the best masters are minimalists. wish i could learn how to mix all types of colours from the basic 3 primaries + white and one other colour just for kicks.
which means, i’ve gotta know my paints well to exert more control over this slippery medium. it’s quite odd, come to think of it, how many of us paint w/o really understanding the quality of our individual paints. we don’t really need to know all the brands or all the colours under the rainbow, just simple stuff like which is our fastest and slowest drying paints, how chalky each is, the names of our paints etc. these are the things that directly impacts the quality of our paintings right? so why is it that we don’t learn such stuff? laziness?
hmmm, the devil or is it god that is in the details?
so this is a lil experiment i’m doing now. just squeezed all 15 colours onto a disposable palette to check which dries fastest and which slowest. also, i’m gonna see which ones have alot of white/is chalky.
the 15 colours:
from right to left:
titanium white (W), flesh tint (DR), lemon yellow (DR), cadmium yellow pale hue (W), yellow ochre (W), burnt sienna (DR), burnt umber (W), permanent alizarin crimson (W), cadmium red deep hue (DR), yellow green (DR), viridian hue (W), prussian blue (DR), coeruleum (DR), french ultramarine (W) and permanent mauve (DR).
incidentally, the paints that look dry even at this stage are:
cadmium yellow pale hue, yellow ochre, burnt umber, yellow green, french ultramarine and permanent mauve. interestingly, all except yellow green and permanent mauve are from the Winston brand. hmmmm. this could just mean that Winston oils are just generally faster drying.
now, the other impt question is which colours have a lot of white/is chalky.
one way to test this (albeit quite unscientifically) is to spread the paints with yr fingers (something i learned from SE). see below:
no prizes for guessing:
white duh
ok, seriously the most noticeable colour with the most white is flesh tint, when you spread it out, the colour almost disappears.
the next is actually burnt umber, yellow ochre and to a lesser extent, cadmium red hue and yellow green. this is quite surprising cos burnt umber and cad red are so dark, i’d expect them not to have so much white. also, the two yellows do not have much white, again, quite surprising. permanent mauve looks chalky too.
this is really unscientific, cos there is one impt variable here, the colours are not from the same brand. nevertheless, it is good to find out that just cos a colour is ‘dark’ doesn’t mean it doesn’t contain more white than other ‘light’ colours.
interesting.
now, i’ll just have to observe how the paints dry over the next few days/weeks.
SE also spent some time talking to me abt glazing, cos i’m really interested in how the old masters painted… but that is another topic for another day.
ivy said
Hey, interesting site. I’ve been painting for some time now, and realised that ivory black takes the longest to dry. tried it with the method you used too.
Adding more linseed oil to some paints speeds up the drying process, esp for fast drying colours like yellow orchre and naples yellow.
That aside, I really like that meditation/contemplativee piece you had about the nanyang style and a singaporean id. In a way I’m rather uneasy about our history being grounded by influences by the fusion of western and chinese school of Art, and our nanyang style artists drawing inspiration from Bali and we cherish these works as representative of Singapore Art.
but on the other hand, the fact is that Singapore is a place where this mix of ethnicities and identities influence each other to form a ceaseless concentric circle of influence (of sorts)
I don’t know really, I guess the search for identity, and for the essence of Art is a continuum after all. and we’d have to keep walking.
Orangewink said
hi Ivy, thanks for your comments and tips. how long have u been painting? and what do you paint? do you spend a lot of time painting? it’s great to find fellow painters in sg!
i’m pretty confused abt using additives. doesn’t painting ‘fat over lean’ mean that you add more and more oil as you paint, so that means that each layer would dry slower and slower? its a surprise to learn that adding linseed oil will speed up the process! is it only for yellow ochre and naples yellow?
my experiment wasn’t very successful, mainly cos the quality of the paints are too poor to have any noticeable differences between them. and the thing is, even after a month, you can still peel back the layer of skin to get fresh paint! so to really know if paints dry completely will take me at least 3 mths.
i’ve heard that mixing acrylics and damar varnish speeds up the process too for many colours?
yes, the sg id thing… the eternal connundrum.
have you found a way out of this in your paintings?
after sitting on it for a few weeks, i realize i’ve posed the ‘problem’ of id quite incorrectly. that is not to discount the unease many pple in sg feel, as we do. reflecting now, it’s more accurate to say that i became confused with style as substance, whereas style should be a vehicle to convey certain ideas/values (i.e. cubism the rethinking of spatial values). the nanyang style is limited, because sg has developed AWAY from its values. this is probably why it’s been labelled a footnote in our art history.
as for what we are and how we should represent sg as artists… perhaps the right question to ask is, do we really need to?
ok, pretty blasphemous idea, but looking at all the great artists, they aren’t really spanish/french/mexican artists. their nationality was always secondary to their art. i think people who love art, whatever their backgrounds can claim kinship or affinity to any kind of artist anywhere. that’s why we can love rock, pop or classical music made by different people too.
yes, the context, the places where each artist sprang from was important, it shaped and influenced them, but fundamentally, most of the great ones managed to transcend their specific culture to speak to our common humanity.
guagain comes to mind. his paintings are so odd, they aren’t french nor taihitian, although those influences are def there. taken in total, esp near the end of his life, his paintings are so spiritually powerful, its shocking. it’s probably that jolt that most pple can recognize. nationality, culture and all those labels that change over time is perhaps just the vehicle, not fundamentally relevant at this level and depth.
oh dear, hope i’m not preaching.
ivy said
Hi, I’ve been painting for a long time, ever since I was 4 perhaps, but I never got to study Art for real. (cept in O and A levels) However, I always find ways to paint my way out of and into school projects in NUS.
I did a module this semester called, “Arts of SEA”, and was doing research on the Nanyang style and chanced upon your blog.
That aside, I did a piece titled, “Progression to a vanishing point” this semester, inspired by the tourist trade and the identity constructed by the state (in SEA) for this trade. In essence, we give them what tourists expect to see, and we internalize these expectations as representative of our identity.
It’s not definitive though, it’s just a thought that is part of the whole (assuming there is a “whole”). The incomplete version is on my blog, you can click on the tag “Art” greyhoundstation.wordpress.com.
.
Yes, I agree with you about the inconsequentiality of nationality in the various Art movements. I’ve never studied Art movements for real, but have always taken a strong interest in them.
To me, movements, esp the end of it, signifies a change that accompanies a change in thought of that particular society. I like to relate this to a movement of philosophical thought. To me, the emergence of the Nanyang style is reflective of the European fascination of Bali, esp with Artists like Walter Spies and Ralph Bonnet. That explains part of my unease. I’m not saying that it’s bad that the Nanyang style emerged, and it comes to me as no surprise that it did. It existence just allowed us to exist outside of our thoughts for a moment.
Context is impt, yes, but as you mentioned, it’s the idea behind the work that relates to humanity. Then again, a similar piece of Art, when displayed in different countries, provoke different sort of emotions don’t you think? even though the idea behind it remains.
I caught Tan pinpin’s Singapore Gaga some time back. A musician (Singaporean bred in NY) performed john Cage’s 4′33 in a void deck, and had us questioning her intent. In a very different setting, the same work, performed by a different artist (nationality) speaks to us differently. If Cage performed it there and then, it’d have been totally different.
So I guess, in a globalized world, it’s true that some of our thoughts/opinions/experiences are universal, but we can’t detach the context out of the movement. I like to study them as a whole.
ha, I preach too, and i could go on forever.
Anyway, have you found your way of the conundrum?