Day one painting notes

Day one of the Norfolk painting school

 Working with lots of skills from other artists from the Flemish masters to Italian school and Turner.

Taught us  to read paintings and work from them learning skills borrowing techniques of Quroscueuro from Caravaggio (light and dark ) and  Rembrandt techniques big to small and small to big. 

Painting 

Direct painting 

E 'bauche painting 

The studies 

paintings are study's not copy's /focusing on making studies which are important Learning points.

First exercise BW photo 

 1, painting the values middle and high tones from light to dark using oil painting on a short ground using a medium.

Learning 

Use of translucent grey black, 

three tones of blacks made from  a translucent mix, soft grey it  is important to keep the first coat very very thin and mix with medium let dry before you apply to 2nd and 

3rd thick coat .

This was the baseline painting then we watch then  

demonstrator Martin Kinnear  .

The difficulty of this exercise was sequenceing the 

mixes 

The transparent paint  reflects the white ground underneath.

It was difficult managing the tones ,you're basically using the reflectivity of the ground.

Substrate that means what the work is done on might be MDF / HDF canvas board .

 

 Short ground is made by using chalk adding three parts white acrylic and water- mix the chalk on the water together first form a paste then you have to mix in the acrylic 

Keep  it in a jar or you  can Use marble dust to the ground must be fine ground.

The Flemish ground has got earth yellow ochra pigment mixed into the ground like  Rembrandt 

Rubens  would have a red background mixed into it that would be a Venetian finish to the ground. It's important to take control of your grounds because that controls the amount of viscosity  of the paint.

You can paint to ground on to a modern canvas or board.

Also we can do a varied ground so some areas can be more chalky than others. 

And when you size your canvas it's best not to use rabbit skin glue anymore because it absorbs water. 

Modern canvas size is better for the purpose now and will look after the canvas better.

Atkinson Grimshaw used aluminous ground. 

Short ground is the luminous part of the paint

Light goes through the colour which is transplant which is optical colour

glaze as well which is transparent so that increases the luminosity.

Modern impressionist painting uses a lot of opaque white paint and produces a very flat Opaque surface which draws attention to the surface of the paint and it hasn't got much depth.

Rubens used orange to add depth to it and using aluminous ground.

 The artist van Dyke used ground used to mix affects .

 Im- Primature would be more Optic than others . 

Think optics before you use white also think about the transparency of your colours

crimson Lake , lake means transparent 

A code tells you about  that colours transparence. 

Mediums
Tradition 
Mixture of Resin  damask 

the original way was used 50% Resin with 50% turpentine a strong mordant.

Modern mediums can use a modern and the alkid varnish 50 Cent with a low oder dolvent  which is it odour free solvent 50% most good quality stand gamsil is by Robert gambit manufacture. 

Store in a jar once mixed

with a topping of solvent to stop the drying process.

Turner often added linseed oil to slow drying of the surface of the paint new .

Oiling out 

This is Vandykes technique which is about creating 

a total value painting or underpainting. 

Then when that is dry oiling the whole surface so then glaze could be put on with transparent oil paint 

The modern solvents can be recycled because they don't evaporate in the air so that means that they can they last longer. 

Modern solvents on safer and easy to reuse

Cleaning Brushes

To clean the brushes use a brush kettle where you can soak hog brushes. Black sables for the top layer painting only wash after use in a special Olive oil soap , 

You can use brush cleaner and also conditioner to bring brushed back to condition.

Basic brush kit you need a number 12 Flat brush small medium small large and small palette knife 

Scraper or scariffito plastic brush 

 Turner did his very  last paintings with Rag  and the palette knife the randomised tool . 

In the afternoon we did colour theory chevrral colours wheel. 

Harmonic warm and cool colours complimentary opposites. He talked about the saturation of colour .

warm and cool colours 

how to make a blue warm and make a blue cold.
Complimentary colours
Additional white to colours is a tint is shade adding black to colour .