A Systematic Approach to Painting, Part 2: Paint to Canvas

Let's finish the thought of the systematic approach and apply it to painting. The phrase "order from chaos" refers to this. It is natural to fantasize about being a painter in some previous time. Most people imagine themselves at some point while painting outdoors being Monet or Van Gogh quickly dashing off painting after painting. Or, they see themselves in a loft in Soho slashing away at enormous canvases with a big house-painting brush. What is actually being emulated is the finishing process which is, after all, what the painter wanted us to see. What most fail to see is all of the underlying structure behind the beautiful, bright brush work. This is the chasm that most students fail to leap. As an instructor I allow for this and let students fail miserably, at least at first, because it doesn't matter how much I talk or how many demonstrations that I give, most students need to find out for themselves that they do not yet understand how a painting is constructed. They will usually listen a little more intently from then on. The thing to remember is that most of the work throughout history, that we all know and love, was created using a system of some sort. Yes, even Abstract Expressionism.

Here is a quick tutorial on Systematic Painting. First, adhere to the Three Rules of Oil Painting. You should know them. If not take a look at the first lesson of this Blog (click here). Simply put, the three rule are: Lean to Fat, Thin to Thick, Dark to Light. Second, develop a painting in stages. These stages vary depending on the size of the canvas and how complicated the work is. In general, the stages look like this:

1. Sketch: Sketch in the composition. This is usually done with a thin wash of dark paint. This will allow you to check your composition lineally (more on this and composition in general in future lessons).
2. Turp Wash: Turp is short for turpentine which is sometimes used as a paint thinner. This stage requires that you mix colors for each element in your composition. remember that to create form you will need to mix one for the dark side and one for the light side, then mass them in with a washy mixture. This stage is much like watercolor and like watercolor little white if any is required. This will allow you to check your color composition. Be careful not to make this mixture too thin for after the thinner evaporates the remaining pigment from the paint will be nothing more than powder sitting on your canvas which will keep future layers from adhering. As a student becomes more proficient he or she may skip this stage entirely.
3. Thicker But Still Lean: During this stage your paint should be applied a bit thicker while still using only paint thinner to thin the paint. You should be thinking of darks and lights (tone values) and applying them to create form. Your colors at this point should be getting clearer and close to the finished color. The importance of this stage should never be overlooked in that it establishes form and overall structure. Whether it be bowls and pitchers, hills and trees or heads and torsos, it is the work that you do at this stage which gives you something on which you build.
4. Fattening Up: Little of what you have done to this point will be seen. This stage marks the beginning of the end. First, start to add some painting medium to thin with. Maybe half medium and half thinner. This can be done by dipping the brush in medium then into thinner to thin your paint. Paint as in the previous stage while adding subtleties such as reflected light, local color, reflections and details in the forms.
5. Refining: During this stage you'll be using only painting medium to thin your paint or to be more accurate, to make your paint move, since medium does little to make your paint thinner, on the contrary, medium is the fat in the lean to fat rule, at least the oil is. What you are looking to achieve in this stage is to first, refine smaller areas where a line may need to be sharper or softer. Second, during the painting process, we get so focused on color and drawing that we tend to ignore that the tonal values have ended up in the mid-range area resulting in a loss of contrast. This is a good time to revisit large, light areas and repaint some of them. It may sound drastic but it will make for a much more vivid painting and one that is more solid. Look for dark areas as well that have lost their depth. typically this will happen in cast shadows and small recesses. Finally, this is the time to apply highlights and accents. Highlights are of course the reflection of the primary light source which appears on reflective surfaces. Accents are the small areas of extreme dark.
6. Finishing: You painting may already be finished. God knows you've worked hard enough. However, this is the stage to be critical of certain aspects of your painting such as color and cohesion. Color corrections my be performed with the use of glazing and scumbling. Glazing is simply applying a mixture of a little paint and a lot of medium over the areas to be corrected. This is most effective in darker areas using darker colors. Scumbling is similar to glazing in that it requires a small amount of paint and a large amount of medium. Unlike glazing however, a light colored paint which is more opaque, is used instead of a dark color. This mixture can be used over a dark area as well as a light area. It is used over light areas to change the tint. When used over dark areas it casts a veil on that area. Cohesion of form can be lost by adding details, such as reflections that may have a bit too much contrast to successfully sit down on the form. What happens is that the reflections start creating forms of their own. To counter this a simple glaze is applied to tie the area back together.

This approach will help to ensure that your painting will always have the structure that goes along with whatever work you choose to do with the surface.

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In our next lesson I'll discuss form and how to create it using light and dark.

(c) 2010 Holm. All Rights Reserved.

The Three Basic Rules of Oil Painting

These three rules will help to ensure the longevity of your paintings.

1. Lean to Fat: Probably the most important. It refers to to the solvents added to the paint to make it move or flow. Lean means adding only thinner, whether it's gum spirits of turpentine or an odorless paint thinner. Fat means adding only medium to the paint which is normally a formula that includes linseed oil, a primary component of oil paint. A typical oil medium is: 1 part linseed oil, 1 part damar varnish and 1 part thinner (gum spirits of turpentine is the norm but I use an odorless paint thinner as a substitute*). Start out by using all thinner then gradually introduce more and more medium into your mixture.
   
2. Thin to Thick: This refers to the thickness of the layers being applied. Remember that your thickest layers go on last.
   
3. Dark to Light: This is the most difficult for beginner painters to comprehend. For several reasons, which will be discussed at a later time, dark colors need to be applied thinly and light colors conversely, need to be applied more thickly.
   

There are a couple of ways to think about all of this. The first is stability. Because oil paint tends to shrink slightly while drying you want the earlier layers to dry before the subsequent layers so that the upper layers don't split or crack. Think about baking a cheese cake. If you simply put the cake mixture into the oven the upper layer will cook (and dry) first. Then as the rest of the cake cooks and becomes dryer, the top of the cake cracks. Another way to think about this is, as a wall patch. Think of patching a hole in the wall with Spackle and being in such a rush to finish that you don't wait for it to dry before applying paint. The coat of wall paint dries much faster than does the Spackle so the paint will inevitably crack.

The second issue is adhesion. Oil paint needs something to grab on to. If the early layers of paint are lean then the oil in the subsequent layers will be drawn into them pulling paint along for the ride. If they are fat then there will be less room for the additional oil. Which do you suppose would be a better choice to sop up spilled milk (don't cry we're only supposing), a full wet sponge or a relatively dry one. C'mon, you know. The other concern regarding adhesion is sheen. Paint is less likely to bond with a shiny, slick surface than it is with a more porous surface.

Getting back to the three rules, as with any painting rule.....

.....remember it, then, forget it.

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* some sources claim an incompatibility between damar varnish and most odorless paint thinners stemming from the fact that damar varnish is made from damar crystals and gum spirits of turpentine. Odorless paint thinner is a petroleum based product. The result is a cloudy medium (which has never bothered me). Some claim however, that it could have a detrimental effect on the longevity of your painting. If you have any concerns please do your own research.

(c) 2015 Holm. All Rights Reserved.