Tag: oil painting techniques

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Advantages of painting on hardboard

Serious painters today, especially those who use the medium of oils have several surface choices.  Canvas, either store bought or stretched by the artist is the most common.   I have painted many paintings with canvas and on linen.  The linen of course is a tighter weave and more suited to portraits.   When I began to paint abstracts switching to hardboard became the obvious better choice for me.  

The abstracts that I paint require multiple approaches to medium.  These include brush and appliques and collage and tissue paper varnished on, but also the use of hard squeege to drag across the pigments.  I often press quite hard.  This pushes the paint into the primed board and drags off any excess pigment.  This effect can create some stunning effects.  It can be used selectively or across the entire surface.  All of these effects and methods of creating a painting could not be done on canvas.  The visual result of painting on hardboard is dramatically different.  The smooth surface allows for this dragging of press squeeges but also for very distinct fine lines.

An extra bonus in using the primed panels is that a piece that does not meet muster (falls short of the intentions) can be simply sanded back to the original surface and then re-primed.  I will often pull out a painting a month or two after completion and make an analysis if I accomplished what I had intended.  If not the entire panel can be re-cycled.  This cannot be done so well with canvas – the heavy brush marks inevitably remain.

Buy the panels, cutting them (I use a good grade of 1/2 inch plywood) then attaching them to stripping to keep them from warping, then priming, then sanding and then priming again is a tedious and time- consuming process.  I try to do four to six at one time or about a day and half of effort.  It is worth it but it is the only real surface that can accomodate the multiple applications which I utilize.

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Oil Painting wet on wet

Oil painting wet on wet provides opportunities that fast drying acrylic cannot serve.  Even when dividing up a painting into sections or passages it is rare that an area can be completed.  So it is necessary to work one edge against another.  This requires some finesse with your brushwork – don’t skimp on brush quality.  You will want to drag a good line against an existing field of paint.  A good brush with long enough bristles will help to get a clean line flowing along the edge.  Thin the paint to the point where it is flowing but the pigment is not diluted to be transparent.  The hue and color should be intact but it should flow nicely off the edge of the brush.  Regular paint thinner or linseed oil thinned with paint thinner works though I now prefer Gamblin’s Galkyd SLow Dry.  Turpentine works as well.15

About a 1/2 inch away bring your loaded brush up close to the adjacent field of paint previously painted and carefully begin to drag a bead along that edge.  It will take some practice to load up the brush just enough to cut a line and not leave a bead of paint along the edge.  If done this way the two colors will not intermix and you will have a good line between the two colors.  An entire painting can be processed this way.  You don’t have to wait for one field to dry before painting other adjacent areas.

Painting wet on wet, or wet against wet (to be more accurate) allows you to keep painting while the inspiration is still there.  I paint very free abstracts but also some tight geometrics where precise color hue is placed against its neighbor.  This method of loading the brush so that it flows with a medium but still retains its hue allows me to keep painting for a longer period.  The next day it is still pliable to continue working.  It is always adviseable for beginners to have a spare canvas handy and try dragging the brush to see how sharp a line you can cut before going to your actual piece.  One last tip – if you happen to sneeze and you pigment goes over into the adjacent color, you can always later go back to your pallete, find that color and straighten it out from the other side.  By the way it is standard practice to balance your stroke by resting the small finger against the canvas.  This will help keep your line steady,

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What is Abstract Art

What is abstract art is my second article on understanding abstraction.  I was listening to an interview last night of Gerhardt Richter.  Though the interviewer’s questions were remarkably insipid, his replies were insightful.  There was the distinction made between expression and impression in abstract art – two very distinct processes.  The artist is attempting to express something he or she feels internally.  With expression there  is volition required, a physical effort, planning and execution.  Impression implies an imprint such as what a viewer might receive when looking on a painting.   There is no effort, except for the willingness to absorb the message.

Before however the viewer has a look and when the painting is still in the studio there is the active back and forth between expression and impression.  The artist makes a move, creates and applies and then must stand back to get the impression.  Sometimes the question is asked, ‘Is this what I had in mind, or Is this where I want to be going?’  Richter, who does not believe there is a God stated that he uses his art as a means of discovery, of finding truth, of searching out another dimension of consciousness.  The expression and the impression is a constant and active process, back and forth means to develop an abstract painting.

Because the source is not from natural surroundings ( not of what we see around us) DSC02559 the artistic expression comes in large part from the sub-conscious.  It is certainly a co-mingling of the aggregate of our experiences interpreted through our sub-conscious.  This is why we are attracted to abstract interpretations even when there is nothing naturally recognizable.  If we are to understand ‘what is abstract art’, we need to grasp the source.  The source is that vast reservoir which we all have of inner responses, memories and feelings.  These are stored up in our psyche.  An abstract artist over time develops a sensitivity to these inner resources by overcoming or taming exterior or outward impressions – that is, one gains ascendancy over the other.  This opens up enormous opportunities for expression.