I’ve had about a half-dozen painting sessions with The News. The 44″ x 60″ painting is mid-flight. I estimate there will at least that many more sessions before it’s finished. Large-sized paintings with just a few figures enable me to really work the figures. A lot of my paintings recently, even the large ones, have small-scale…
I get a lot of email from readers, mostly technical questions, which I always answer. A recent correspondent asked my opinion about Blockx oils. Blockx is one of the premium brands and I cover it in my OIl Paint Brands reference. Blockx is really fine paint; Not long ago, I got a terrific price on their…
The widget that displays random images from the gallery on the front page is broken. After I applied the last upgrade, the widget stopped working. I am still waiting for the widget creator to provide a fix. If a fix isn’t available soon, I’ll rollback the widget to the prior version.
Yesterday’s rant started as the preamble to a much longer post about painting techniques and the craft of painting. The soon-to-be-published post is already too long so I removed the preamble. By itself, the preamble is rather mysterious and lacks context. I try to talk straight here and pull no punches, but ranting is not my style. Anyway, so much for that.
I was taught nothing of practical use about painting when I was a student. Worse than the daily dose of esoteric BS was the relentless, sneering attack on the subjects of technique and history, which were held in utter contempt. Pollack, so I was lectured, allowed his brushes to dry in cans of house paint, which he drizzled from stiff bristles onto unprimmed canvas on the floor. If that was good enough for him, it’s good enough for you–so said they. I wrote elsewhere about one professor’s favorite piece of painting gear–fishing boots. My artistic education can be summed up this way: daily attempt by inept professors to destroy the same clumsily constructed straw man. No questioning the received dogma; that was the way it was–and worse
Rubbish–worse than rubbish. Not only not true, not even important to the discussion–mere fashion. Worst of of all, it was all served up without the least bit of humor.
[Rant End]
I updated the Oil Paint Brand post with new information and a rating for Michael Harding paints.
Two recent links will be useful to people interested in the technical aspects of painting. Tad Spurgeon’s site provides a wealth of information about oils. This site describes how to make oil paints.While I haven’t followed the advice of either:-), both have a lot of reference material.
I updated the oil paint brand list with information about the binders used by some manufacturers (Blockx, Old Holland, Michael Hadring, Blue Ridge, and Holbein). I also downgraded my ratings for Blue Ridge. I prefer cold-pressed linseed to alkali refined method they use. They also use a blend of walnut and linseed oils. Finally, I’ve used paint from Michael Harding (ultramarine blue) which seems very good, but I haven’t used it enough to rate it.