Page 11 - George O'Hanlon
George O’Hanlon is the technical director of Natural Pigments, and executive director of Iconofile, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to promoting understanding of sacred art. George received his fine arts education and apprenticeship in Mexico. Upon return to the United States, he worked as creative director for advertising agencies in Silicon Valley, working on such major accounts as Sony, Hewlett-Packard, and Ricoh. He founded an agency later acquired by the chemical giant, Shin-Etsu. There he served as vice-president of U.S. marketing. In 1992, he studied traditional art techniques abroad. Then in 2001, co-founded Iconofile and in 2003 Natural Pigments to promote an understanding of these practices. Since that time he has formulated hundreds of artists’ paints and materials, including Ceracolors, a waterborne wax paint.
- December 04, 2014 242
A two-day Master Class will be offered by the J. Paul Getty Museum Department of Education and taught by artist Sylvana Barrett on Medieval and Renaissance gilding techniques as practiced by Manuscript Illuminators. Gilded embellishments in texts have an ancient history stretching back into antiquity. Elaborate techniques developed during the Medieval Period became the standards by which gilding is judged today...
- December 01, 2014 1507
Polimeni—also known as bole—is a clay-like substance used as a gilding base. It is applied to a prepared surface, usually gesso or chalk ground. Gold or silver leaf is then applied over this base. The poliment enhances the tone and luster of the gold during the polishing/burnishing process...
- October 31, 2014 455
The palette described by Roger de Piles in his seventeenth-century painting manual, Les Elémens de Peinture Pratique, describes a pigment in French, brun rouge. What is brun rouge? Are there modern substitutes? It is easy to mimic a hue with a combination of pigments, but much more difficult to imitate the undertones and nearly impossible its consistency in paint. The latter can only be done successfully using the same pigment, at least as far as we can determine from literary sources...
- October 02, 2014 1213
In his book, Les Elémens de Peinture pratique, Roger de Piles describes a typical flesh tone palette of the 17th century. On this palette is a dark yellow color, stil de grain, a lake pigment made with unripe buckthorn berries...
- October 01, 2014 4500
A paper by scientists at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute exposes long-term problems with zinc white in oil paint. The report “The Chemical and Mechanical Effects of Pigments on Drying Oils” describes the highlights of a 28-year study on the stability and strength of oil paint films. The results reveal important implications for artwork made with artists’ oil paints containing zinc white...
- September 25, 2014 524
Canvas has become the most common support for oil painting, replacing wooden panels. One of the earliest surviving oil paintings on canvas is the French Virgin and Child with Angels from around 1410 in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. However, panel painting remained in everyday use until the sixteenth century in Italy and the seventeenth century in Northern Europe. Mantegna and Venetian artists were among those leading the change. Religious differences and guild practice, as well as the availability of supports—good quality wood in Northern Europe and a flourishing flax growing and weaving tradition in Southern Europe—likely influenced the preference and adoption of supports. As materials and paintings were imported and exported and artists traveled to Italy, the influence of Italian techniques filtered north...
- August 02, 2014 2657
At one time in history, the English word pink referred to a yellow color. There is no satisfactory explanation for why the word pink meant a yellow color. There is speculation, owing to its greenish-yellow tone, that it is derived from the German word pinkeln, translated in a dictionary of 1798 as ‘to piss, to make water.’ The color most often known as Dutch pink was ‘a yellow lake prepared from Persian berries or quercitron and used chiefly as an artist’s pigment,’ according to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, under the definition of Dutch pink....
- June 30, 2014 3267
Asphaltum and bitumen are broad terms for many substances based on high-molecular hydrocarbons. From the viewpoint of current art historical research, bitumen represents a large group of organic substances, which consist of an indefinable mixture of high-molecular hydrocarbons. Bitumen either occurs naturally or is obtained from the synthetic distillation of petroleum. Depending upon its place of origin or technique of manufacturing, bitumen possesses a composition of different characteristics...
- June 19, 2014 2138
In the 17th century, Roger de Piles described in precise detail the flesh tone palette used by nearly every artist of that time in his seminal treatise, Les Élémens de Peinture Pratique. This painting manual influenced artists for several hundred years and established the current practice of setting a limited palette and a rational approach to painting portraits among the greatest artists of that period. In this article, we translate chapter four from the original 1684 French manual and explain how contemporary artists can set the limited 17th-century palette for flesh tones using Rublev Colours® Artists’ Oils...
- April 16, 2014 5242
The best practice for preparing Dibond (tradename for a brand aluminum composite materials or ACM) for oil painting...
