Painting Techniques and Materials

126 flashcards by MentisLibrary

What paint is and how painters handle it: binders and supports, grounds and glazing, oil, acrylic and watercolor practice, color mixing and temperature, composition, and the movements that shaped technique.

What are the two ingredients of every paint?
Pigment, the colored powder, and a binder, the medium that holds the pigment together and sticks it to the surface. The binder is what makes a paint oil, acrylic, watercolor, tempera or encaustic.
What binds oil paint?
A drying oil, most often linseed, sometimes walnut, poppy or safflower. It hardens by oxidation rather than evaporation, so the film keeps curing for months.
What binds watercolor and gouache?
Gum arabic, a water-soluble gum from acacia trees. The dried paint stays re-wettable, which is why pans work at all.
What binds acrylic paint?
An acrylic polymer emulsion: plastic particles suspended in water that fuse into a continuous, water-resistant film as the water evaporates.
What binds egg tempera?
Egg yolk thinned with water. It dries within minutes to a hard, lean, matte film that cannot be blended, so form is built with fine hatched strokes.
What is encaustic painting?
Painting with pigment mixed into molten beeswax, usually with damar resin added for hardness, applied hot and then fused to the layer below with heat.
What is a pigment's lightfastness?
Its resistance to fading under light. Artists' pigments are rated on the ASTM scale from I (excellent) to V, and fugitive colors can fade within years.
What do pigment codes such as PB29 or PW6 tell you?
The Colour Index generic name: a letter pair for the color family (PB blue, PW white, PY yellow, PR red) and a number identifying the chemical pigment. It is printed on the tube regardless of the brand's marketing name.
Where did ultramarine originally come from?
Ground lapis lazuli, mined mainly in Afghanistan and once costlier than gold, which is why medieval and Renaissance painters saved it for the robes of the Virgin Mary. A synthetic version discovered in the 1820s made the color cheap.
Why was lead white replaced by titanium white?
Lead white (flake white) is toxic. Titanium white, introduced for artists in the early 20th century, is safe, far more opaque and does not darken.
What is the difference between raw and burnt earth pigments?
Earth pigments (ochre, sienna, umber) are natural iron oxide clays. 'Burnt' means the pigment was roasted, which drives off water and turns it darker and redder.
Which historical pigments were poisonous?
Lead white, the chrome yellows, vermilion (mercury sulfide), the arsenic greens such as emerald green, and the cadmiums are all toxic to varying degrees.
Linen vs cotton canvas
Linen, woven from flax, is stronger, finer and more stable but expensive. Cotton duck is cheaper, stretches evenly and is the standard for students and for acrylic.
Why is canvas sized before priming?
Size (traditionally rabbit-skin glue, now usually PVA or an acrylic sizing) seals the fibers so oil from the paint cannot soak in and rot the cloth, and so the primer stays on the surface.
What is gesso?
Traditionally a mix of chalk or gypsum with animal glue, applied to rigid panels as a white ground. 'Acrylic gesso' is a different product, a primer of acrylic polymer, chalk and titanium white, that works on canvas.
What is a toned ground and why use one?
A ground covered with a thin, even wash of a mid-tone color before painting, so both lights and darks read against it from the first stroke.
Hog bristle vs sable vs synthetic brushes
Hog bristle is stiff and moves thick oil or acrylic. Sable (the finest is kolinsky) is soft and springy and holds a lot of watery paint, which makes it the classic watercolor hair. Synthetics imitate both at lower cost and stand up to acrylic.
Round, flat, bright, filbert, fan, rigger: what is each for?
Rounds point for line and detail; flats are square-ended for broad strokes and edges; brights are short flats for control and thick paint; filberts are oval-tipped for soft-edged strokes; fans blend and texture; riggers are long thin rounds for fine lines.
What is a palette knife used for?
Mixing paint on the palette, scraping it off, and applying paint in thick, unblended strokes with crisp edges.
What is a medium, in the sense of a paint additive?
A liquid mixed into paint to change its handling: to thin it, make it flow, speed or slow its drying, or increase gloss and transparency.
Turpentine vs odorless mineral spirits
Both thin oil paint and clean brushes. Turpentine, distilled from pine resin, is stronger and dissolves damar varnish, but its fumes are harsh; odorless mineral spirits are gentler and are now the studio default.
What is stand oil?
Linseed oil thickened by heating without air until it is like honey. It levels brushstrokes, yellows less than raw linseed and gives a tough, glossy film.
What does fat over lean mean?
Each successive layer of oil paint should contain more oil (fat) than the one beneath, so upper layers stay flexible over lower ones that dry harder. The reverse cracks.
How long should an oil painting dry before it is varnished?
Traditionally six to twelve months for a painting of normal thickness, so the film has cured enough that the varnish can later be removed without disturbing it.
What is alla prima?
Painting wet-into-wet in a single session and finishing without waiting for layers to dry. Also called direct painting.
Direct vs indirect painting
Direct painting reaches final color in one layer. Indirect painting builds the image in stages, typically an underpainting for drawing and value followed by glazes and scumbles for color.
What is glazing?
Applying a thin, transparent layer of paint over a dry layer so the underlayer shows through and the two colors combine optically, giving a depth that physical mixing cannot.
What is scumbling?
Dragging a thin, broken, semi-opaque layer of lighter paint over a dry darker layer so the underlayer shows through the gaps, giving a soft, hazy or textured effect.
What is impasto?
Paint applied so thickly that brush or knife marks stand up from the surface and catch real light.
What is a grisaille?
A monochrome painting in shades of gray, used either as a finished work imitating sculpture or as an underpainting for later color glazes.