Edited notes on Day One

Day one of 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 . techniques of Quroscu euro of Caravaggio light and dark of Rembrandt

" big to small and small to big" I think he meant textural mark making .

Painting  Techniques we will Learn are 

Direct painting 

E 'bauche painting 

We are making  study's  not copies. 

First exercise  painting the values and middle and high tones from light to dark using oil painting on a short ground.

This was the baseline painting . We painted a what we knew. 

Then we watch the demonstration by Martin Kinnear 

The Use of translucent grey black which was used in   three tones blacks which was made by the addition of medium.

 A translucent mix with Ivory  black  which became a   soft grey with the addition of medium.

This is a important point to keep the first coat very very thin . Allow to dried before you apply to 2nd coat using the rag techniques. Finally 3rd coat white opaque  paint .

The difficulty of this exercise was sequence of different layers of opacity. It was difficult to mix transparent paint and managing the tones and you're basically using reflectivity of the ground just like Watercolour.

Substrate that means what the work is done on might be HDF canvas board Sectra

 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 the acrylic install 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 and a Rubens  would have a red background mixed into it that 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 a modern and 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 grounds .

Short ground is the luminous part of the paint and so it goes through the colour which are transplant which is optical colour and it will then also comes through the 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's  surface which is orange had depth to it and using aluminous ground. 

The artist van Dyke used grounds used to with mixed  affects .

 Premature would be more Optic than others . 

Think optics before you use white would like such as in crimson lake  implies that the colour is transparent some of your paints are very transparent and they are to be used in that way.

Mediums
Tradition 
Mixture of Resin was the original way that a medium was used 50% Resin with 50% turpentine a strong mordant.

Modern mediums can use a modern and the alkid varnish 50 % with a low oder thinner   which is it odour free solvent 50% most good quality stand gamsil is by Robert gambit manufacture. Store in a jar with a topping of solvent to stop the drying process.

 Turners often added linseed oil to his paint this added translucency and slowed down the drying time of the oil paint.

Oiling out 

This is Vandykes technique which is about doing 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 layers .

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

Modern solvents are safer and easy to reuse

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 last paintings with Rag  and the palette knife the a  randomised tool this could be just a rag  . 

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 .

Adding black paint to a colour is a shade.

My day one painting  study from Turner