Mediums and historic wisdom from rock and roll

Black Moumtain  Stapleton Kearns 24 by30, 2006?

I threw a few fall images of my own into this post.

Here is an ask Stape question, I received recently. I suppose I am repeating myself , but many readers have not read the archives and for them this is a magazine rather than a book. The blog is searchable via the little box up  in the left had corner of the page. But with over a thousand posts the archives are so vast that even I don't really know where things are back there. It was intended to be an exposition of everything I had learned in my time in the painting world, or my corner of it, New England traditional painting.

Arthur D Shroudpak, of Minot, North Dakota asks;

So what should I use for a medium when I’m painting outdoors ?

and

Is there a preferred brand of paint ?

Stape ........

I think you will want to use one of two mediums, either an alkyd like Liquin, or a varnish, turpentine and oil mixture often called VTO.

The ideal medium is probably no medium. Many of the painters of old New England had only a small cap of oil on their palette. To make many kinds of paint strokes though, it is nice to have the paint thinner, slipperier and more mobile.That is usually why a painter uses a medium. Varnish and oil mediums were pretty much standard practice for many years and artists often use them today for that reason. Their long and common use justifies confidence in their  permanence. When I was a kid we all mixed our Grumbacher paint. or Permanent  Pigments with Taubes Copal medium, which is an oil medium although made with the now scarce copal varnish. If you buy a bottle of copal medium today the small print on it's label will tell you that it contains not copal but alkyd.

  VTO medium is 1 part damar varnish, 1 part linseed or stand oil, and 4 or more parts turpentine ( not mineral spirits!). It has a little more glow than  an alkyd medium and  but it is slower drying. .It is easy to make yourself and Utrecht or Jerrys Artrarama can sell you big bottles of the damar varnish and stand oil very inexpensively. Get a plastic funnel and a big glass jar with a screw top like mayonnaise comes in and make a years worth of medium in about five minutes. This is a good medium for cheap Yankees too. Buy it retail in those little bottles and it will be more  expensive than The Glenlivet.

Or you might choose an alkyd medium, these are very common and promote quick drying and reduce "sinking in" problems.  Liquin is one brand name and Galkyd is another.Alkyd is an oil, often soybean, that has been modified with acid and alcohol. It dries insoluble, at least in artists thinners, resilient and a little rubbery.It makes a very tough paint film BUT it looks slightly different and I think not quite as "rich" as a traditional medium. Alkyds usually add a satin finish that has less glow than a VTO mixture.Some formulations are shinier than others but none have that deep luster of an oil medium.

Recently I have been using the VTO  rather than my usual alkyd medium. I am trying to use a lot less medium too.

There is no preferred brand of paint.

IT'S NOT IN THE PAINT!

 I use a lot of RGH (link in my sidebar) but I buy many of colors in quarts and tube them myself. All of the professional brands are fine, such as Winsor Newton, Rembrandt, etc. Every paint maker also produces a lower priced "student" brand. Those are absolutely unacceptable. If you want to know which colors I use , that's behind us about a thousand posts somewhere. Search "materials for a workshop".

Owls Head Light, Stapleton Kearns, 30 by 40 about 10 years ago.

I have a friend who is a rock and roll guitar hero, Kim Simmonds, founder of the band Savoy Brown. I enjoy talking to him, our "jobs"  have a surprising amount in common, and the discipline of daily practice and creation are very similar for each of us. Kim paints too, I don't think I actually know anyone who doesn't. Kim has a lot of stories, he started his band in London in the sixties. I want to share with you something he told me recently that I think has a lesson in it for painters.

Kim was at the home of John Lee Hooker .many years ago. Evidently John Lee Hooker's California home was a crossroads for musicians and lots of them visited and played together there. Someone asked Mr. Hooker "what do you think of so-and-so? ", another hotshot guitarist? And John Lee Hooker answered;

 "I LOVE him! LOVE him! I'm a big fan of his, and he's a big fan of mine!"

This was a standard response for him evidently. It is positive,witty and self promoting all at once. I am adapting this reply for my own use. I am frequently asked what "I think of another painter". I try  to always give a positive and nurturing reply . When I was young I used to blurt out exactly what I felt that artists shortcomings were, it's easy, everybody has em! It made me look small, and it served an insult to a stranger who might someday repay the favor. It usually disappointed my listener and it might have taken the bread from the mouth of a brother artist.

When you are out in the field with your painting buddies, say whatever you like. But in a professional setting, I think it is better to promote any artist who is mentioned to you. People will judge you on your work and form their own opinion of you. Dismissing another artists work won't make your listener like you and usually does the opposite. I believe this to be professional behavior. Knocking another artist (well except for Alex Katz, who is sure to survive it ) should be avoided

 When you are dealing with the public, that is a business setting and not a personal one. By "with the public" means when you are painting out in the field and someone approaches you, or when you are doing a demo or at an art gallery or event. A plein air paintout would qualify.You are there to get paid, not to feed your self esteem, educate the public or take the other guy down a notch. People want to like an artist they do business with, and if they feel you are jealous or negative they might not. I have a hard enough time getting people to like me anyway, being abrasive and all.

What goes around comes round seems a hackneyed phrase but it is appropriate here. In the long run, you will receive about the treatment from your brother artists that you dish out yourself. Sometimes people will hear that you had a good word for them or  promoted them heartily, they never forget that.

When next you are asked what you think of another artist, if you know their work at all, I suggest you answer:

WHAT A GREAT PAINTER!  I LOVE HIS (OR HER) WORK. I'M A BIG FAN OF HIS AND HE'S A BIG FAN OF MINE!

Stapleton Kearns 218 by 24 2010

Chromium thingy?


Here is another picture of last weeks chromium colored device . Someone guessed it as a paper towel holder. But it is a 2.50 cent toilet paper holder from Walwart that is supposed to hook onto the tank and beari an extra roll. That's a little to nakedly utilitarian for my bath, but it is a handy and cheap way to hang paper towels within easy reach of your easel.

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Leaf Season workshop

September 23-24-25

The Fall workshop filled weeks ago now and I have received a bunch of e-mail  from people who would like to have come. So I am scheduling another fall session. .. I have scheduled this workshop midweek rather than across a weekend to secure room availability. Inns are busiest in the leaf season in New England . Peak fall is a beautiful time of year here. Notice those mountains behind the inn in the picture below. I can't wait, it's going to be so cool!

This is the Sunset Hill House in Franconia, New Hampshire. I have been teaching workshops there for  years and it is the ideal location.  Because I have taught so many workshops there the inn keepers have learned what painters at a workshop need and they are now practiced at hosting my workshops and making sure we have what we need to operate without any distractions or responsibilities other than painting.There is a broad rear porch that overlooks the mountains so we can still paint outside no matter what the weather does. The lower level of the inn  is ours to store our paints and canvas so we don't have to haul it all to our rooms and it makes a good place to teach too. The view of the mountains is spectacular and in the fall it will be even better. The inn takes good care of us. We have our own private dining room too. They handle  our meals and even bring us lunch so  we can work all day uninterrupted. The inn is one of those big old historic affairs from the 19th century and is homey and informal. Most of the rooms have gas fireplaces, and it is cool in the evenings up in the mountains in the fall, so that is nice after a day outside. It is necessary to stay in the inn to take the workshop.

I love teaching workshops. Everyone is always excited to be there and hang out with the other artists. It is like a three day party. We go from breakfast until bedtime. This is a total immersion program and I run the class about 12 hours a  day. I do an evening lecture while we wait for dinner to be served.

. We don't need to leave the grounds of the inn  to find great subject matter so their is no problem with hauling easels around or caravanning cars to daily locations. We just walk out the back door and the whole Presidential range is spread out before us.

The schedule includes;

• a demo every morning, on the first day I explain the palette and the various pigments.
• In the afternoon the students paint and I run from easel to easel doing individual instruction and try to diagnose each students particular barriers to better painting.
•  after the demo each day I run  a series of exercises  teaching root skills like creating vibrating color and the parts of the light (that is what you need to know to establish light in a painting) I will also teach how to most effectively "hit" the color of nature outside.
• I do a presentation before dinner with images from my laptop. One is a history of White Mountain art so you can see what the greats of American painting did with the same landscape we will be painting during the day.  In the 19th century all of the great Hudson River painters made a point of being there too, just a few miles up the road from the inn. The other lecture is unpacking out  the design ideas in the works of great landscape painters, particularly Edward Seago and Aldro Hibbard, two favorite painters of mine.
•  I will work you like a borrowed mule.

 The cost of the workshop is 300 dollars. Sign up here. I charge a 150 deposit up front when you register. In return for that I will hold your place in the class. I wont give away your place to anyone else, so I don't return deposits.

 Lodging reservations must be made with the inn who will provide a discounted room package deal to my students, it is absolutely required that you stay at the inn to take this workshop. Well, actually, if you must stay off "campus" call them and they will arrange a day rate for you which will cover your meals etc. Here is the Sunset Hill House web site

Sanding acrylic gesso.

 I was asked the following in the comments recently. I do want to return to the compressed values subject but I thought I might deal with this quickly tonight;

 I make a lot of my own (canvasses) because I don't like the thinness of the commercially prepared canvasses. I usually apply 3 or 4 layers of acrylic gesso to a heavier than average canvas sanding lightly between each layer. The finished product still comes out rough as sandpaper. I'm afraid to use my favorite brushes on the first layer of paint.What is the fix for this and who makes a good commercially prepared canvas? Thanks!
.....................Myrtle Durgin

I can't think of any reason your canvas would come out rough other than the grade of sandpaper you are using. Your sandpaper must be too fine to take the surface of the gesso down sufficiently. Why don't you switch to a rougher grade of paper, and then use whatever fine paper you are probably already using. It seems a little counter intuitive to use a rougher paper to get a smoother surface than you have been getting. But with only a fine paper you don't rip down the tiny standing ridges left in the gesso from it's application. You need to start with that action and then when those are knocked down you can smooth the gesso out with a finer grade of paper.A middling grit like a 150 might just do both if you don't require a silky or glass like surface. I prefer to have a little more tooth on my substrate.

I keep two only grades of sandpaper in my studio. They are: 80 grit and 150 grit. The 80  will rip a passage of rough or too thick paint off the canvas quickly and mercilessly. You want to stop before you go too far with that! The 150 is good for smoothing things. You might possibly want to follow that up with a 100 grit if you prize a very smooth surface.

I don't use acrylic gesso, I did years ago.  Real gesso is a different beast than the acrylic stuff put up in jars. I never prime my own canvas, preferring instead to buy it preprimed. I also don't like painting on canvas that is not oil primed. I think the paint handles better on an oil ground and looks better when you are finished too.

Here a word of caution,  be very careful about sanding oil paintings. There are lots of deadly cadmiums etc. on that canvas. On your palette or brush they are safe enough as they are bound up in oil. If you sand your pictures they are flying around in the air as a toxic dust which you may aspirate. If I have to sand a painting, I often dip my sandpaper in mineral spirits from my palette and wet sand it. That is somewhat safer anyway.

I NEVER sand  down an entire painting to reclaim the canvas, that releases way too much fine particulate dust. Canvas isn't THAT expensive. You asked me to recommend some canvas, I will recomend several. There are many fine canvasses and I haven't tried them all but here are some with which I am acquainted.

• CHEAP!  Centurion DLX an oil primed linen that is around150 dollars a roll. It is a little thin but the price is right and I haven't had any problems with it. Find that here
• More expensive, Claessens type 12 High quality Belgian linen. Also oil primed. Silky under the brush. This is actually whats called a portrait linen. That means it is pretty smooth. Claessens makes rougher linens too if you prefer that. But this is my favorite. Here is that
• Also more expensive. Fredrix is an American made canvas. Another linen canvas. They make a lot of different sorts I like the Kent best. This used to be a lead primed canvas but is no longer. This is a really nice product. Go here for that.... 
• I don't use or recommend cotton canvas, but if you want to paint on cotton here is a link to Fredrix cotton canvasses of various grades. Of these I would  prefer the Tyron or the Knickerbocker.
• The cheap cotton prestretched canvasses sold at the big box retail stores are junk.It would be better to paint on cinder blocks. I will use them sometimes for demo paintings when I am traveling, but they feels dreadful and scratchy under the brush and  their absorbancy sucks the life out of your paint. Some of the big box stores do sell a better quality prestretched linen canvas at a higher price that are OK though.

You must be able to stretch your own canvas. It is not very hard, and it is something that a painter needs to be able to do. It is expensive to throw away the stretchers behind every canvas that doessnt work out. If you stretch your own you can cannibalize those stretcher, use better canvas, save money as you do.

Do you need a Take-it easel? (Gloucester easel) I know of someone who has a gently used one for sale. They want 150 dollars for it, plus shipping and handling, that's an excellent price. Please contact,   Lois@loisgriffel.com

Interested in Snowcamp this year? A number of people have contacted me about that. I will announce the dates soon.  Snowcamp is my winter painting workshop held in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Pouring from a gallon can

There is a trick to pouring from a new can of solvent. For years every time I did it I got turpentine all over. Then I had someone show me how to do it. The trick is to turn the can over. Pour the solvent ACROSS the top of the can, like in the grainy cell phone picture above. You will need to hold your mouth just right for this to work, but try it, no more turpentine filled shoes!
There are about a million little tricks in painting.

Here is the Ocean House hotel in Watch Hill Rhode Island I have been their guest artist for the week and lived like a king. They even feed me two meals a day in their 5 star restaurants. I noticed one of my paintings hanging in the bar. What a great place.

This is the view from the ocean side. If you want to come, bring money, lots of it.

Carrying paintings onto location

I was asked in the comments:
...so I've wondered this a few times from other posts, but this post where you disclose that you never take a carrier into the field with you really begs the question: How DO you transport your supports to and from your auto? Going in I imagine is easier, but coming out with a wet painting(s)? You have your gargantuan Stape Kearns Signature Gloucester-tower easel, your plywood Deadhead painting box, a case of Moxie and who knows what. I realize you are nine feet tall, 300 lbs and eat Modernists for breakfast, but...
...after painting all day on your favorite Metcalf 26 x 29, and perhaps starting the Masterpiece of your lifetime, how DO you get it and all your other gear back to the car? I can't imagine you carry it in your hands unprotected and risk tripping over an errant root.
Do you employ a Sherpa?
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No. I carry my canvas in my left hand. Here I am in Provincetown carrying my kit. So many great painters have walked that street with their easels. I don't often paint small so little canvas carriers are out. I can also take a couple of panels in a slot device on my paint box. Below is a picture of that. It holds 11 by 14's or 14 by 18's. I seldom paint more than a few hundred yards from my car. I can always walk back to that and trade canvases if I need to. I made that like the box, on my cheapo Sears table saw. I should do a post on that.


I also have the leather attache case in my car. It holds extra paint. brushes, batteries for my i-pod etc.

Here is a peek inside.

Panel Boxes

I received an e-mail asking me about panel boxes, did I have them and what kind? I have a bunch of them. None are however, the new vinyl and foam light weight store-bought kind.Those are good and light, but I want armor, not portability so I make my own. Also, since I work larger than many of the plein air painters, the available boxes are often not large enough for my needs. I have had the box below for many years and it holds 18 by 24's. It is luan plywood and pine held together by sheet rock screws. It is functional, heavy and ugly. This would never do for air travel, they live in the trunk of the car, I never carry a panel box with me out into the field. I have had most of my panel boxes longer than the new vinyl jobs have been made and I like the utilitarian crate look, but I would like to have a smaller vinyl one as they are light and good for travel.


Here is the slotted inside of the box, I cut the slots on my cheapo Sears table saw. There is a door hinge at the distal end of that lid I am lifting.

Here is a sash lock, that holds the box closed.

Here are a couple of shots of a box made for me by a carpenter, the top slides in a groove and this holds 9by 12's. It ought to have a handle though, or a strap.

Here is a really easy to make and soundly utilitarian box given me by a friend. It is made of rigid Styrofoam insulation joined with duck tape. Below with construction glued spacers in it's interior to keep the panels from mating. This 16 by 20 box is light. It has no lid and is again, something that lives in the trunk of my car. This thing will hold a lot of panels two to a slot and then maybe a few more crammed in there too. Ideal for a painting trip.


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Riggers

Here is the second of the two species of brush that I carry. I have but one of these, I carry three, or perhaps four bristle brushes (of course I have spares for each in my brush quiver) but only one little pointy brush.

This is a rigger, for many years I used sable riggers but now I am happy enough with the "golden Taklon" synthetic hair. The one I use is a #4 series 7050 script , and at present they cost 3.64.You can get them from Jerrys here.

I call all long, thin, sable- like rounds "riggers" as a convenience, however different lengths of hair or different manufacturers may actually call this sort of brush a script brush, a scriptliner or for the really whip like ones, a rigger. I believe that ship painters may have used those to paint the rigging on boats. I don't know much about ship painting, it is it's own little netherworld.

I HATE BOATS, THEY SINK.

I am particularly fussy about the condition of these brushes, because as they wear, the tips of the hair explode as they abrade to the unattractive thatched end that no longer provides a crisp line. As soon as they begin to lose their neat tip, out they go!

Don't leave a rigger behind uncleaned at the end of a painting session, if paint dries in one of these it will quickly be ruined. Even if you only clean them real well in your solvent, rather than with soap and water, make sure you never forget to put these away clean and protected in your brush quiver, wallet or pastry belt area.

The rigger is what I use to put little branches in, define the rake-boards of a house or other little details or things with man made straight lines. However! this little brush is dangerous, it tightens up and can rob your work of painterlyness . It's overuse can rapidly give your painting a brittle, seized up and crabbed look, so use it gingerly.

OVERUSE OF THE RIGGER BRUSH WILL GIVE YOUR PAINTINGS RIGGERMORTIS!

Say, that might make a dandy neck tattoo!.

A worn out brush

I wrote last about the importance of clean, sharp brushes. Someday when I am rich and famous I will just throw my brushes away, with my rags, every evening. I would buy my brushes by the gross, in three different sizes.

The brush ( a #4 flat) pictured above is ruined, worn out ( not good anymore). The pro's are rolling their eyes reading this, for they maintain a collection of fine tools. But a lot of people read this blog and most of them are in the earlier stages of their march to artistic greatness.

Now your brushes may wear more evenly than this abraded specimen but the wear happens the same way on a finer scale. The hairs have broken or been worn off in gradated lengths back to the ferrule ( the shiny part). Why its almost like a Mesopotamian ziggurat, or a layered haircut from the David Cassidy period! The same sort of unattractive wear and fragmented deterioration you would expect to find in a broom.

It makes a stroke or line with a chopped up edge, or drag marks at its side. Next to a sharp brush stroke it looks raggedy assed. Rather than acting as a flexible blade, different units of the brush operate in splayed and stiff independent scales or groups. Like a burr that sticks to your woolen sweater in the autumn ( under fading light at fields edge on a hillside in Northern Vermont, with big maples and a 19th century barn and the whole landscape woven into a tapestry of ochers, grays and violet. There's thistles there and sumac) Or imagine an anesthetized porcupine or large hedge hog, gently, kindly, but firmly, attached at its stomach area to a mop handle.

This is a worn brush, an evil thing, but there is something darker still. There are among us men and women (well, I think there are men) who carry with them a collection of brushes in which the paint has been allowed to dry. These brushes are a solid mass from ferrule to tip. They are like a tongue depressor or small pry bar. Obviously these people have to know that the brushes in this condition could never be used, Certainly there is no way they are going to resuscitate one out on location and work with it. But they still carry them, sometimes a dozen or more. They have brushes that once were an inch and a half long worn down to half an inch and totally rigid all the way to its heel. You could hammer one into a phone pole. But they have em, why?

They are not really being honest with themselves, they are engaged in "magical thinking". Or at best a low level simmering resentment, and yes, regret over the lost value of once useful brushes bought at high retail in some big box craft store. I'm not sorry for them, I just can't be.I don't have the time, I have my painting and my commitments. I don't really think about them that much.

New Brushes

I bought more new brushes the other day. I order the Winsor Newton artist's brushes. They are a white hogs bristle, the basic oil painters brush. The English company, Winsor Newton has been around for a long time and produce sound, quality products. These particular brushes have an odd tapered waist like a wasp. I am sure they are supposed to balance better in the hand, but I had no problem with the brushes before and I don't choose theses brushes for that feature. They are a consistent quality brush at a reasonable price. At least online. If I go to the big box craft retailers prices are nuts. I only buy a single brush there in an emergency. I always buy brushes online. I buy brushes regularly and eight or ten of each size at a time. Sometimes I will buy a dozen of each of the smaller sizes. The big brushes last a long time. I can use up a # 1 in a session or two.
The Jerrys online catalogue entry for these is Here.

I want my brushes sharp and new. So I use up a lot of them.There are painters who hold a different brush for each color in their painting. They might have a dozen wet brushes. This spreads the wear out over all of your brushes, just as it might with shoes. But' I only have three brushes when I paint outside, plus a rigger. They are; A #4, a # 1 and a #10, all flats.

When I teach workshops I only see a a few usable brushes. At least half of the students are working with a dried out, worn down brush that wouldn't do the job in practiced hands. I have gone for a look in peoples brush collections and not found a single usable brush. Appalling. You wouldn't try to sweep your kitchen floor with a broom in that condition, a worn out broom is grotesquely inefficient. Lots less hair contacts the floor and it won't cut into corners very well.
A brush is a sort of little broom. It works the same way and if it is worn it won't push the paint around crisply.

The real cost of painting is in your time and travel, brushes are not a real driver of costs, There was a time when Robert Simmonds brushes were the first choice and I will happily use those if I can get a good price on them, usually the WN are cheaper from my sources. The Chi-Com brushes seem to have loose ferrules and other minor quality problems and aren't much cheaper than the WN brushes.

tyro art materials you don't need

The art materials people stay up late at night (later even then I do) to think up things to sell to people who want to be artists. Their job is not to help you to be an artist, but to sell you stuff. They don't actually know anything about art but they have heard the voice of the art student and terminal amateur calling. When you get a catalogue in the mail from an art materials supplier about three quarters of what is in there is aimed at folks who are clueless. Most of the people who receive those catalogues are amateurs or totally inexperienced and the vendors have learned there is a lot of money to be made supplying not artists materials, but the things those folks think they might need.
To fulfill the needs of these occasional and naive visitors to the art sphere they have developed many products that will appeal to the artistic tyro. Frequently these materials are to help the beginning artist experiment or work in a new and easy system that requires less learning to give "professional results immediately. Following is a list of some of those products that you probably don't need.

• iridescent paint, also metallic oil paint, often available in reds and greens, bronze and silver
  
• plastic projectors for transferring images from photos to canvas
  
• plastic devices for holding brushes next to your easel, often in lazy Susan drag, sometimes made of wire
  
• wire storage systems for your studio, often on casters, plastic studio furniture and special plastic tackle boxes for the artist
  
• oil paints with names like coral and delphinium blue rather than after the pigments of which they are made
  
• aprons with specialized pockets just for artists often having the name of the vendor emblazoned thereupon
  
• rubber sticks with beveled ends to be used instead of a brush
  
• books that promise spiritual enlightenment driven means of making your painting better or offer psychology based advice on breaking out of the restraints of creative block.
  
• wheeled trolleys for French easels that fold out into seating for the elderly
• weird color mixing guides that promise a new proprietary way to understand color
• flimsy aluminum easels with plastic parts on their legs that slip while in use.
• safe solvents made from vegetable matter that while harmless, or even potable, will not clean a brush.
• brushes that some artist with a DVD or book has invented in a new shape or configuration that are used to allow the tyro to work in their "method" Also brushes with rubber rings around their handles for EZ grip comfort
  
• books with "free and easy" in the title.
• prestretched canvas with wide stretcher bars that "don't need framing".
• canvas in cabochon, triangles, or octagon shapes .
  
• Paint sets that have collections of dozens of unnecessary colors in tiny tubes nestled in a wooden box with a little bottle of linseed oil and a plastic palette knife and three pieces of cardboard with canvas on them
  
• sets of premixed colors for portrait painting or working in the method espoused by some dork who puts out DVDs on how to paint
• Little posable wooden or plastic mannequins of figures and horses
• ergonomic studio furniture that allows you to work in a kneeling position
• special lamps for painting that clip to your easel
• pads of paper "canvas"
• plastic viewfinders
  
• stuff to spray on canvas to tighten it up when it sags
  
• oil paint compressed into sticks or in little squeeze bottles
• canvas that fits in your printer so you can put a painting on it for painting over
  

I invite you to add to this list of evil and unnecessary junk in the comments. The list is nearly endless.

AMIEN, a painters resource

Childe Hassam, Church at Old Lyme

I am returned from the weekends teaching at Old Lyme. As usual I had a great group. I always wish I knew these folks better, but I teach em for a few days and off they go. Something about a workshop must preselect for a certain kind of people. I get such good groups. Years ago that was not the case. In the eighties when I taught a few workshops I had a lot of very mean old ladies. Often they complained incessantly and didn't want to hear anything other than encouraging praise for their paintings. Those folks are now either to old or too inert to take workshops and teaching has become a lot of fun. I am willing to teach about twenty or twenty five days a year, after that I have my own art to make.

Thomas Kitts provided a link to a site called Amiens.org which is a conservators advice forum for artists. I looked at that and it seems to be a good reference. Here is a link to that. I read a good deal of it and learned a few things. They seem to strike a reasonable balance between caution and the artists need to create in the real world. I am not about to start grinding my own marble to make gesso, or breeding the rabbits for the glue either .

I did extract from my readings there some more information on mineral spirits vs. turpentine. They are definitely in the odorless mineral spirits camp.They do not use damar or recommend it, but if you use that, turpentine is a must. But from a safety standpoint they strongly advise against turpentine. I generally use the hardware store kind, but the really cautious among you may want to use the Gamsol. They didn't specifically endorse it, or any other product, but it has had most of the volatile (easily evaporated) evils removed from it.

Amien also seems to be very opposed to Zinc white for longevity reasons. They say it forms a brittle paint film. I never use it anyway, but some folks do. If you are using Zinc you may have some soul searching to do.

In their discussions of canvasses they surprised me a little. I have often used a good quality heavy cotton canvas and been happy with it. They don't argue against that and feel that cotton is an acceptable material for canvas. I am currently using the Centurion oil primed so right now I am using linen but I have no idea what I will be using a year from now.

I must unpack my kit and get back to work in my studio.

18th century French gastroenterologist's dredge, from the Louvre.

Here I am in Old Lyme Connecticut.I taught a workshop today and will again tomorrow. I think I will write just a little more about canvas as the comments have been filled with various ideas, some good and some confused about that. Bullets please.

• YOU CANNOT USE HOUSE PRIMER ON CANVAS, DON'T DO IT!!
• You CAN put an oil ground down over acrylic preprimed canvas. Let it dry for a good long time before using it. At least several weeks.
• Gesso is made with rabbitskin glue and whiting, marble dust etc. The acrylic stuff in the jar from the art supply store is not gesso, They just call it that. I hate the stuff. It might or might not be a good ground for oil paint, but it is unpleasant to work on. Your paint will stand up on the surface better on an oil ground.
• I often use TEMPERED Masonite as a panel. The untempered would be preferable but it has become hard to find. I use oil primer on it, I would not use acrylic primer over this though.
• I use Zinsser oil timer. They are better known for shellac based products. You can certainly paint on shellac, but I think a primer is better, it has substance, tooth, and small degree of thirstiness that I think is good.
• Shellac is made from Lac beetles, it is not a plant exudate or a varnish from a tree. It doesn't keep terribly well. It thins with alcohol and dries extremely quickly. You can shellac watercolor paper and paint in oil on it.
• Here is a tutorial from the blog on making panels
• If you can afford it, use Claessens type 12, mounted on panels that is the best fix I think, but it is expensive. Sourcetek has those. I can't afford them. I use acres of canvas.
• I find the surface of the Polyester canvas to be too hard. It is a little like painting on a window screen. But I want to experiment with it some more. Synthetic is the future, it is stable and never rots.
• Fredrix makes a very high quality oil primed cotton with an oil priming, called Scarlet O'Hara, you can get it here.
• Here is a link to Jerry's for the Centurion oil primed linen made by the Chi-Coms.
• Here is a link for cheap panels with oil primed linen on them. They are not the quality of Sourcetek, but the surface is nice.
• Here is the same Chi-Com oil primed linen prestreched, sold in boxes.
  
• Here is a link to Jerry's for Claessens type 12 a premium oil primed linen. It is expensive but a wonderful product.
• I think cotton is as good, or nearly as good as linen, but it must not be the thin stuff that is sold at the mall craft supply stores. A 7 oz canvas is too light. 12 oz is about right. Notice the surface. I don't like a rough weave, but you might.I often use portrait linen that has a fine weave.
  

priming and sizing

If acid in paint cause canvas to deteriorate HOW would oil primer (which is an oil paint) prevent it? ? Is a quality oil paint PRIMER from paint store great to use??

This question came up in a forum on the Internet, I guess I was cc,ed because my name was mentioned so I will answer it.

The acid in oil paint will cause damage over time to your canvas. That is why you cannot prime raw canvas with oil primer. It is necessary to first apply a size layer. There are commercially available products that are ready to go, but your canvas MUST be isolated by a sizing layer before the oil primer goes on. Rabbit skin glue and or gesso (real gesso not acrylic polymer) is the other fix. Of these I think the commercial sizing is the easiest and simplest. Also rabbit skin glue is hydrophilic, that is it absorbs water and that makes your canvas come and go more with the barometer.

For me the real question is why bother with priming your own canvas? There are so many kinds of preprimed canvas available and there is even an inexpensive oil primed linen available from Jerrys called Centurion. It is made by the Chi-Coms but it seems to be OK at least for its price.Frerix makes a nice heavy oil primed cotton, called Scarlett O'Hara, too. That is also inexpensive.

A coat of oil paint over an acrylic canvas might be a good solution too. Stretch the canvas and put the oil paint over it, then set it aside to dry.Cheap, and oil primed. Paint does sit better on an oil ground and it feels silky under the brush.

Oil primer made for house painting is OK on rigid panels, I use it a lot. But it should not be used on a canvas. I don't think that is good at all and I think it might crack.

I don't really see what is to be gained by priming your own canvas, my time is precious and I want to use as much of it as possible painting. Inexpensive acrylic primed cotton can be had very cheaply and is just fine, unless you are a pro. I feel the same way about grinding paint. There are materials freaks out there who really enjoy custom making there own materials and that's fine for them, but I just want to spend my time painting and let some one else prepare my materials. It ain't in the paint.

A little more about adhering canvas to panels

I returned home late last night after five days of driving. Long trip! A month on the road. I am reposting a comment from the blog as it is informative. Thanks Tim, for the method you use.

Tim said...

I use ordinary wood glue for mine, on birch plywood that i seal with acrylic matte medium ( I could also use the matte medium but it is more expensive than the wood glue, which is PH neutral anyway)

I have a cheap large mirror from IKEA that I put then panel on, to ensure the surface is completely flat and then I have a bunch of glass from the different frames Ive bought bulk, they are very good to put on top of the panels for an even pressure. I put two heavy books on top of that (Bauhaus design History and a Sargent book, maybe some dumbbells too)

I spread the glue with a old credit card, making sure it isn't too thick. If the glue is too thick, the moisture could dissolve the ground from the back, and you can get "dents" if you apply pressure too hard in certain places. Say that your glue layer is 1 mm, you could if you are unlucky end up with fingerprints that are like craters 1mm deep.

Its a good idea to start the contact of the panel and linen in the middle of the panel and work your way outwards from that. Hold the linen in both hands make a "U" shape with it and plopp the the center down in the center of the panel, slowly pushing the linen down. Thats difficult to explain, but it usually leaves me with no air-bubbles whatsoever.

I was also asked this:
"Is the jury still out of polyester canvas? I have been trying it out and love that it is so stable and unaffected by water based primers and gessoes. It keeps its tension regardless of atmospheric conditions and eliminateds the need for keying. But I wonder about the paint canvas bond over time and what happens if the tension on the canvas is released. ? Will the canvas contract more than the paint film?"

I have decided that I didn't like the surface of the polyester canvas. It does stay stretched and is probably tough as nails, but it is a little like painting on a steel window screen. It has a very hard feel to it's weave in my opinion.

I wouldn't worry about the adhesion any more than any other acrylic primed canvas. Of course I always worry about adhesion on an acrylic canvas. The coming and going of the canvas should be less than almost any other canvas as the polyester is so inert, so that shouldn't be a problem.

For now I am using the Centurion oil primed linen from Jerry's. I think it is OK, but I haven't used it long enough to say I recommend it. Claussens type 12 is awfully nice but very expensive. All linen comes and goes a lot, that has been an ongoing problem for me, so I am not sure what I think is the best substrate. Up to 18by 24 I am happiest on an oil primed piece of Masonite. I wrote about how to make those in a blog post entitled "making panels.

I recommended Miracle Muck for adhering canvas to panels, here is an info sheet from its manufacturer on that stuff. They say that it is a EVA or ethylene vinyl acetate so it is PH neutral when dry and archival enough for our purposes. I still think that hide glue or Elmers is OK too, all the old guys used it and their work is fine.

Sourcetek, a fine supplier of artists panels and materials has an explanatory sheet on using Miracle Muck here. Here is a link to their site where you can buy excellent panels all covered in Claussens linen and ready to go.

I believe their site recommends using a rolling pin to smooth the canvas onto a panel and instead of beginning in the middle and working outward, they suggest rolling from the bottom. Everyone seems to have their own method here.

Mounting canvas

"Question...what kind of adhesive is used to attach oil primed linen to a Masonite panel and does it need to be stretched? I was going to try contact cement watered down a little and a razor knife to cut around it."

I was asked the above question via e-mail.

I seldom mount canvas to my panels, but it is easy enough to do. I would not, however use contact cement. There are a number of different glues that you can use though. Elmers makes a liquid hide glue that many people like. Others like Miracle Muck, here is a link to get that from Judsons.

The process is simple. Cut your panels on which you intend to mount your canvas, linen or cotton or whatever you like. Paint the board with the adhesive and lay the canvas on that, your canvas should be about an inch larger than the panel all the way around. I like to smooth it out with a brayer, here is a link for those.
Work the air bubbles from the center outwards.You can do that just with your hand, but not quite as well. If you have a friend who owns a frame shop perhaps they will let you put panels in their vacuum box, that lays them down really well as it pulls all the air out from between the canvas and the support.

Stack your canvases up and put a heavy weight on the overnight, a pile of books or a Ford Explorer. The next morning trim the canvas to the same size as the support using a NEW fresh razor knife blade. Razor knives are the most dangerous tools an artist uses. Always retract the blade when not in use and watch the non knife wielding hand.

If you were paying for MY supplies

Because I am in business as a painter, I have to to hold my costs to a reasonable level, but what If I didn't care what things cost. If instead of me paying for my paint, what if YOU were paying for my paint? What would I use?
Well let's see.....

• I would use Blockx paint, I like it , there are a few more expensive paints, like Old Holland, but I like Blockx.
• I would use Fredrix's, Kent Linen to paint on, there are again more expensive oil primed linens, but that will do.
• I would probably continue using the Winsor and Newton brushes, but I would throw them away and the end of every day. I do like em sharp.
• I would use English rectified turpentine as my solvent, again Winsor Newton's is fine. It sure smells good.
• My white would remain Lefranc and Bourgeois, It is my favorite white at any price.
• I would wallow in Genuine Rose Madder, and cobalt violet, I might choose the Old Holland for that. The list on that is 468 dollars a 225 ml. tube but it is awfully nice.
• I would allow about 2,000 dollars or more for each 24 by 36 frame. I know several makers in that price range.
• I would have a Wooten desk for a taboret.

Squaring up stretchers

I was talking about stretchers the other night. I think I will continue in that vein by talking about squaring them up prior to stretching. There are several different ways of doing that. It is important that your stretchers be square. If they are not your pictures will not fir your frames, and That's a nuisance.

The standard method, I suppose, is to assemble them and using a tape measure, manipulate them until the dimensions between the opposite corners is equal. Once you have those two distances equal, Staple, screw, nail or ignore the corners together. If you fix then together (which I routinely do) you will be unable to use stretcher keys. Those are the triangular pieces of wood or plastic that are affixed to the back of a canvas when you buy it prestretched. I never use them because they knock the canvas out of square. If a canvas gets loose on the stretchers I pull out the staples on two sides and pull it taut again. Again if you knock the canvas out of square it won't fit the frame.

The easier way to square a canvas is with a drywall square. Here is one of those below.

They are made fore people hanging drywall, or sheetrock. They are about four feet long and you can rapidly push the stretchers into square using one. This in what I usually use.

Sometimes when you are traveling, you may not have either one. Find a steel doorframe, or window, or some other feature of a building that is liable to be square, assemble your stretchers and push them up against the inside dimension. Then turn the stretchers the other way and do that again. Usually you can get close enough to square that way.

stretching it

Good questions in the comments today. I think I will answer those out front.

Jesse said...It's an interesting method. It's been a LONG time since I've painted on stretched canvas (15 yrs?) but I seem to remember it taking a long time. It added time since I stretched unprimed, and then went through the priming process. How long does it take you to assemble the stretchers and attached the primed canvas?

I can stretch a 24 by 30 in about ten minutes. I often meet students who have never learned to stretch a canvas, there is really no big deal to it, and what are you going to do with all of those stretchers behind the paintings that don't work out, throw them away?

Deb said...Why not linen panels, Stape?
And Cynthia, I've used that method many times and works fine.
Stape, how do you cut out the linen in the first place? Do you try to square it at all, or just cut a bit swatch larger than the painting size?

I don't want to pay that much for panels, the big ones are expensive, the little ones are OK but I can rapidly stretch up a canvas with good materials for less. To cut it I lay the stretcher, assembled, on top of the canvas rolled out flat on the floor, I draw a line about four inches out from them and cut it with a scissors.

Prairie painter said...I am wondering about priming the canvas. Do you do this before you head out on your trip so it is ready to go? or do you buy pre-primed? How much priming do you do anyway? I get confused about the different recommendations when using oil. Canvases will come primed, but then one is recommended to put on some more.

I always buy preprimed canvas, I am busy enough without priming my own canvas. I very rarely paint on acrylic primers or acrylic gesso. I see no reason to add more primer to a preprimed canvas. I am not too hard to please, I don't obsess over the materials, I just need professional quality. I have been using a very inexpensive oil primed linen called centurion, sold by Jerry's. I haven't even used a whole roll yet so I can't endorse it, bnut it seems to be fine, particularly considering it's price. Maybe I will discovered some big problem with it, but so far it is OK. It is a little thin.

I went to a great show today at the Amon Carter Museum of Hudson River school paintings. There were many important canvasses in the show, really the best examples of the finest painters of the period. Including a great Moran of the Snake River, Asher B. Durands "Kindred Spirits" that I recently showed on this blog and Coles "Course of Empire". The admission was FREE, thanks Amon!

One of the guards repeatedly told me I was getting too close to the paintings. I always fold my arms when I lean in to examine a painter's handling, to show that I won't touch them, and the paintings were all under nearly invisible museum glass. I found that really annoying, as a painter it is essential to look closely at a painters worksmanship.

The catalog was sold out but I was able to order one and have it sent home. It appears to be excellent, they had a copy to look at on the benches in the exhibit.

The Carter has a great collection, all of American painting,they are particularly strong in Remoingtons and Russells. There was a time when most of the museums in America were free or had very low admission prices. They were thought of the same way as a library, purposefully made available to everyone. Today many of the museums are pushing towards twenty dollar ticket prices. When I was an art student, museum restaurants were often cafeteria style located in the basement and affordable. Today they are upscale elite restaurants that exclude by their price and formality all but the elite visitors. But the Carter is free. good fgor them, I hope they will be able to keep it that way. I expect that was a condition that Carter set when he founded the museum, but that was the condition set by the founders of Americas other great museums donors that now charge high admission prices.

Cleaning brushes

On the last painting trip I took, discussion turned to "how best to clean brushes?" One of the women on the trip suggested that Murphy oil soap was the best way. So I tried it when I returned home. It does seem to work really well, it cleans them quickly and leaves them soft, it doesn't seem to dry them out so they will become brittle.

I am murder on brushes, I don't often wash them, I scrub with them and abuse them with my paper towel. I only use a few. Some day when I am really rich and famous I will just throw them away at the end of every painting day. I do like them sharp and when they lose their edge, out they go.

When paint dries in my brushes, I use professional house painters brush cleaner, but that has to be done outdoors as it is nasty stuff. I used to use Ivory bar soap until I was turned on to the Murphy"s soap.

The procedure is this:

• Pour a dot of the Murphy soap directly onto the brush from the bottle.
• Run it around and around on the palm of your hand ( I wear gloves most of the time and it would seem like a good idea for this too, I was taught to do it barehanded years ago, but it is probably smarter not to grind pigments into the skin of your palms.

• Keep that going until the lather comes out white, indicating no pigment is left in the brush, try to get the paint out of the ferule too (that's the shiny part between the hair and the wood).
• Shape the brush when you have finished so it will dry into a shape that it is supposed to be. NEVER point a brush with your mouth, or hold a brush in your mouth either. Even the little residue of paint in your brush is toxic.
  
• Often in workshops I have students whose brushes are totally worn out. They are useless, when your brushes get worn, replace them. A brush needs to be able to make a clean mark not a fuzzy one. The cost of painting is your time and education, not the materials or brushes. Go ski for a day if you disagree, then get back to me.
  

Take-it- easel returning!

Here is another forty minute pirate portrait done by Logan Hagege.

I am home from my two week painting trip to Provincetown with the fourteen pirates. I had a great time, learned a lot and made some new friends.

I am going to begin a new series of posts. As is often the case I am going to write about design. When I am on the road and working long hours it is hard to do tutorial posts, but as I am in my studio again I will return to that. That should start tomorrow.

Lets see what can I write that might be useful tonight. Oh, I know..................

This is Rosalee Nadeau who along with her husband and son, make the Take-it Easel. That's the quality Gloucester easel that has been copied rather ham handedly as the Beauport easel. I recommend you not buy one of those, as they are put together wrong and won't work out of the box. They can be made to work, but not unless you are familiar with the Gloucester easel. Rosealee's son, Tobin is tooling up to begin manufacturing the Take-it Easel again from a workshop in Vermont. The new easels will have a few minor improvements and will be made out of American grown maple and not compressed silt. The take it easel is better made and sturdier than the commie easel and sets up and takes down more smoothly. The new easels will probably feature a redesigned leg release mechanism that should be extra dependable.


I will keep you all posted on this. When the new easels come on line I will post a link so if you want one you can get one. They will certainly cost more than the Chi-com easel but they will work, and be indestructible. I have worked on the same one for fifteen years or so with only some minor repairs recently. I sent the easel into Rosealee and Tobin redid all of the fittings and release levers. I think the Take-it Easel is the best fix for outdoor landscape painting, unless you require a very light kit for traveling or hiking or are only interested in painting small.

A little more about varnishing paintings

Above are damar tears as the crystals are called. They are the exudate of dipterocarpaceae trees which grow in East Asia and India. When dissolved in turpentine they form damar varnish. Utrecht sells a nice package, pictured below that comes with a big teabag full of the tears, you add turps, let em soak, and in a day or so you have lots of affordable varnish. Great product! This is a great buy if you make your own varnish and oil medium too.

ITEM LIST PRICE		PRICE QTY
Utrecht Ready-to-Make Damar Varnish for Oil Painting, 10.5 oz can (Item No: 27101) Bulk Discount		$9.99

I was asked;

"So my gallery wants a nice even finish, like that of a varnished piece, on every piece going up on the walls. How do I get that if I am not to varnish a piece for 6 months to a year after I finish it?"

All galleries want that. Here's the best suggestion I can give you. I don't think there is any great harm coating the paintings with Liquin but I think a better fix is to spray them with retouch varnish after they have dried for a day or two. DO NOT use enough that the varnish pools on the surface of your new painting, otherwise it may actually dissolve the paint. This problem goes away after the painting is dryer but I advise you to never let that happen.

It is best to do that in a couple of thin applications. But this is only temporary and the painting should be final varnished at a later date. Several commenters have asked me how I deal with that. The short answer is, often I don't. This is a problem I have discussed with my artist friends and they all seem to do about the same thing, retouch and then out the door. I cannot possibly sit on all my work for a year and then varnish it.

If I do get a chance to varnish a painting that hasn't sold or I am visiting a client who has one of my paintings I will varnish it. I do that with a brush and with the painting lying flat. Keeping it thin is good too, pools of varnish will show on the painting. Matt varnish is a crime against nature. It KILLS your color.

I am thinking that I will write up a page to be included with the painting in an envelope that is stapled to the stretchers describing to the client that the painting needs to be varnished and how to do it. When I do I will publish it to the blog so you all can copy it of and use it too.I often don't know who has my paintings as they are sold through dealers.