There is not a single best way to paint Caucasian flesh. Any orange-brown tone can serve as a base that can be made lighter and darker, and cooler and warmer as needed. As simple as this sounds, it’s maddeningly easy to misfire when painting portraits or figures. The eye scans portraits and notices false notes…
Tag: oil paint
Shop Talk, Tips and Studies
Oil Paint Brands Update 6/30/2013
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This is my second update to the Oil Paint Brands post (a compendium of information about oil paint producers). Blue Ridge has proved to be a reliable producer and they have supplanted Windsor Newton as my day-to-day paint. Their paint is excellent and I had a bad experience with WN. Recently I bought two 200…
Shop Talk, Tips and Studies, Uncategorized
Lost Secrets of the Masters Part I
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We are in the midst of a surging revival of interest in historical painting methods. More is written on the topic each day. Many authors point to received experts (Eastlake and Doerner to name just two—my own threadbare copies are much-thumbed) and claim to have rediscovered or reinvented long-lost methods. The pursuit of the ‘lost…
Shop Talk, Uncategorized
Update to Oil Paint Brands
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I’ve updated the Oil Paint Brands material to reflect the recent quality decline of several brands: LeFranc, Rembrandt, and Daniel Smith. All three have fallen from the ‘mid-range, good value’ category to student grade. Avoid except for sketches or grounds. One consequence is that Windsor-Newton has tightened its grip on the all-important mid-range category. The others…
Shop Talk, Tips and Studies, Uncategorized
White Paint–in Praise of Lead
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The most important color–by far–is white. White oil paint comes in three flavors: Zinc white (zinc oxide, PW4, usually called Chinese White when used in watercolors). Although known from ancient times, its common usage is relatively modern, dating from the 18th century when it was developed as a replacement for lead white, which was long known to be…
Shop Talk, Uncategorized
Oil Paint Brand Ratings
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I’ve used oils paints from almost every producer known to man, or at least those known in the US. This photo shows my two paint cabinets. The one on the left has tubes of blue, green, yellow, and earth red. The top-drawer, for example, contains only yellows. The barely-visible cabinet on the right contains reds, whites,…