Page 12 - George O'Hanlon

It’s not often that a brand-new fine art medium comes along. Ceracolors is a new artist-grade paint made from quality pigments in a water-soluble wax binder. Although made from wax, Ceracolors are not encaustic paints because they do not require heat, solvents, or mediums...

When used in its most specific sense, the word “resin” is a hydrocarbon secretion of many plants, particularly coniferous trees. The resin produced by these plants is a viscous liquid composed mainly of volatile terpenes. Oleoresins are naturally occurring mixtures of oil and resin. Other resinous products in their natural condition are a mixture of gum or mucilaginous substances and are known as “gum resins.” Mastic gum is a good example of a gum resin...

Oleogel was featured in Rob Anderson’s Road Test column in the October 2013 issue of The Artist’s Magazine. Rob writes about Oleogel: “What exactly does adding Oleogel to paint do? Oleogel maintains the body of the paint—say goodbye, in other words, to drippy paint—at the same time it increases the paint’s transparency. The medium is versatile enough that it can be used for a thick impasto and also for glazing. The fact that this medium is this versatile is something I’ve never seen before. In my experience, a medium typically is only good for one thing, either glazing or helping to extend and thicken the paint, but not both. All in all, I had a very positive experience using Oleogel. The increase in fluidity and simultaneous control were wonderful surprises. I plan on continuing to use the medium, making it a part of my painting process.”...

Ochers are natural iron oxide earths found in many parts of the world. They are among the most lightfast and stable pigments used in the arts. Iron oxide pigments produce a wide range of colors, from black through shades of purple and red in the anhydrous oxides to yellow, orange, and brown in the oxide hydroxides. While iron oxide produces the color in ochers, other minerals—such as quartz and clays, for example—are also present...

The simplest way to create an impasto surface is to apply large amounts of paint, usually with a brush or palette knife. Commercial oil colors have a heavy consistency, which can be achieved by working directly from the tube and applying the colors in thick layers. Opacity and built-up texture are usually interrelated, with much of the thickest impasto consisting of solid and opaque pigments, such as lead white or titanium white. Passages of thickly applied paint can also be translucent, so extender pigments are chosen that supply both bulk and transparency...

Chrome yellow enjoyed a brief history of widespread use among nineteenth-century artists, such as Turner, Manet, Cézanne, Monet, and Pissarro. Cézanne, like Pissarro and Monet, used the neutralizing effect of combining three primary colors—ultramarine, vermilion, and chrome yellow—to make colored grays. Its popularity soon faded because a more stable opaque pigment, cadmium yellow, was introduced in the middle of the century...

Impasto is paint laid on a canvas or panel in quantities that make it stand out from the surface and is usually thick enough that brush or palette knife strokes are visible. The first known use of the word was in 1784, from the Italian impasto, the noun of the verb impastare, “to put in paste.” The heavy viscosity and slow drying time of oil paint make it a suitable medium for the impasto painting technique. Watercolor and tempera paint are not satisfactory for this technique because they lack these properties and do not form continuous films surrounding pigment particles...

Color is an experience enjoyed by almost all the human race from a very early age. As we grow, we learn to recognize and often name specific colors, such as sky blue and grass green, and yet we can never be sure that all persons derive precisely the same sensation from a given stimulus. Our paintings reflect our love of color and contain an infinite variety of hues and shades. While we enjoy the variety, it also condemns us to be forever vigilant to its appearance in different ambient conditions...

We just returned from the 14th Annual Art of the Portrait Conference in Philadelphia last week excited by the interest shown by hundreds of artists in Rublev Colours Artists Oils. These artists displayed intense enthusiasm for learning about traditional colors and how they can be used in contemporary portrait painting...

Artists are sometimes surprised to see one application of paint barely hide the drawing or underpainting below and another color completely mask all that was underneath. Some wonder why sometime after they complete a painting, they begin to see pencil lines of the sketch that before were completely unnoticed. (This effect is called pentimento.) Other artists wishing to apply a beautiful glaze are frustrated when the glaze kills the color below. These are common problems experienced by all painters at one time or another, but they little understand the reasons...