Margret E Short Fine Arts Blog

Preparing the Supports

There are several supports which can be used for painting with oil. Canvas, wood panel, copper are some. For this project I will use only linen canvas and panels made of birch. Here I am stretching raw, unprimed linen over sturdy stretcher bars. Making sure there is enough to pull around the bar, I staple the back side securely, but not too tightly. There must be some slack which will be tightened when the sizing/glue is applied. One concession for this project is the use of staples and a staple gun. Purists would use tacks with a tack hammer which is the authentic method. I very consciously made the decision to use staples because of the tremendous amount of time saved.

Studio Abandonment

Several weeks have passed since grinding enough colors to get a good start on this project. And, in spite of the holidays, I am now on painting #3. Painting #1 is based on a portrait by Franz Hals which is of interest because of the wonderful lace collar on the gentleman. It is a very mono-chromatic painting with bravura brush strokes, showing various tones of black, whites, muted greenish background, and several shades of cool and warm flesh tones.

I decided to do a small still life featuring a lace, a vase, black satin, and maybe a flower or two. As the painting progressed, profound frustration set in. It became overwhelmingly clear that I missed the bright colors such as cadmium yellow, ultramarine blue, cobalt violet, and others that, by self-infliction, I am now forbidden to use. After several days of struggle I decided to abandon Franz Hals and move on to another painting with more lively coloration.

This one is a portrait of a young boy in costume by Dirck Dirchsz van Santvoort. The costume is a bright red with gold accessories, azurite blue feathers, muted greenish/brown background, and black; all strong vibrant colors.

I am much happier now. And wiser too. And I have learned much about myself, and how color affects my psyche. Almost all of the paintings from the Dutch exhibit which I will be using henceforth are more colorful.

Color Junkie

The passed several weeks I have been busy with color making. Pictured here is genuine  Vermilion, a color I could never do without. Because you know my style of painting, you know I favor the warm tones especially reds. This particular pigment has been used since antiquity and is made from natural cinnabar. It has been found in ancient China, Egypt, Greece, Peru, and other areas of the world. In the middle ages Vermilion was used to line early music staves. It is necessary to use mask, gloves, and smock in a well ventilated area as a precaution against breathing the dust. Again, once it is in the paste form,  use the usual hygiene procedures. More colors next time.

Recap Recap

For all of you who are drop in or first time readers of this blog, I would like to recap the nature of my “Lessons from the Low Countries” Project. Alyson actually suggested I do this. She is my career coach and has been instrumental in guiding me through the steps of posting cohesive ideas. The project is actually all summarized in the first couple of postings, but I will outline again once more just for clarity.

The fundamental plan is based on the Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art exhibit now showing at the Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio. This exhibit will travel to Phoenix in January, 2007 and on to Portland, Oregon in June, 2007. I began reading about this Dutch show many months ago and to take full advantage of the master paintings I have developed the following plan:

1. Examine all ninety paintings from Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art

2. Select 10 favorite paintings

3. Paint a body of work based on the palette of the selected pieces using only the pigments available during the 17th century

4. Exhibit the finished paintings at the Lawrence Gallery

in conjunction with the opening of the Dutch Exhibit at the Portland Art Museum next June.

 

Modern Versus Historic

In my research of historic pigments thus far, I have come to this conclusion. The main difference between the modern day pigments and those of the 17th century is particle size. Modern paint makers use technology which enables them to grind paints to a uniform smooth consistency. The grinding techniques or the synthetic process by which paints are made produces particles of similar shape. The size of these particles is approximately 5 to 10 microns(very small).

Contrarily, historic colors were made by hand by crushing stones such as lapis. The end result was a pigment with many varieties of shapes and sizes: perhaps up to 120 microns (much larger).

As light passes through layers of paint, it is bent by the particles. When paint has tiny particles (5 microns) like modern paints , there is not much refracting occurring. But when light passes through paint with larger size particles like the masters used, much light bouncing happens. This clearly illustrates the advantages of using historic pigments and grinding techniques.

Back to the grinding wheel next time!

All for Beauty

As I have mentioned in previous posts, many pigments were really nasty and very poisonous. Two yellows, called orpiment and realgar, both made by alchemy, are extremely poisonous and for this reason have gone out of use. Other pigments were poor driers or not permanent and thus lost popularity. So the list narrowed, and it is now published information in Art in the Making, that Rembrandt and his peers used mostly the following:

ivory and bone black, burnt umber, raw and burnt sienna, ochres, green earths, azurite, lapis, smalt, malachite, brown earths, genuine madder, genuine carmine, lead tin yellow, lead white, and cinnabar and vermilion.

Among the ones still widely used, but with extreme caution, are flake white, lead tin yellow, and Naples yellow; all containing lead. With care these colors can be used in the paint form, not dry pigment, because it is when the particles are air-borne they are the most dangerous.

Before the dangers of lead were known lead white was used in makeup and cosmetics. Victoria Finlay describes it vividly in her book, Color; A Natural History of the Palette, "Lead was a well known beauty enhancer during the 19th century in a product called Bloom of Youth. This  beauty enhancer made women dead pale beautiful. It was applied to the skin every morning assiduously. After a while, lethargy set in, then sleep cessation, and victims would take to their bed after feeling wobbly. Vomiting, constipation, and kidney collapse weren't far behind. Blue marks or plumb lines appeared on the wrists and ankles. All of  this brought an end with an agony of painful final hours".

It is known today to use care while using these pigments. Mask, gloves, and ventilation are mandatory.

Sea Snail Masterpiece

Since embarking on this project, I have researched many publications with specific information about pigments and their history. Much is known today about pigments of the past because of scholars such as those in the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP). This committee set about to discover and determine which of Rembrandt's paintings were authentic and which were done by "the school of Rembrandt". The latest edition of Art in the Making released in September of 2006 has a wealth of information about the materials and pigments used by Rembrandt. One can surmise most other Dutch masters used the same or similar materials.

In the laboratory, scientists in the RRP were allowed to take tiny pin point flecks of paint from the surface of certain paintings by Rembrandt to examine under the microscope. Because of the nature of certain pigments' characteristics, it can be determined what varieties were used. There are also inventory lists of suppliers used by artists during this time that reveal which pigments were available. The Craftsman's Handbook, Il Libro dell' Arte by Cennino Cennini has been an indispensable resource for my research also.

In the 17th century and before, the pigments can basically be divided into 2 categories:

Mineral  and

Organic

For the most part, natural earth mineral pigments were used since antiquity. The second category of pigments come from other sources and were widely used. These are called organic colors and were made from insects, bones, plants, and shells with varying degrees of permanency. The mineral colors in common use were:

many earth tones, burnt and raw umbers, many varieties of red and yellow ochres, azurite, lapis, malachite, white made from lead, raw and burnt siennas, and cinnabar(a beautiful burnt red).

The organic class of pigments included colors such as:

carmine (made from the cochineal insect), Dutch pink (made from Buckthorn berries), saffron (made from flowers of the Indian plant), mummy (made from ground up mummies, it's true!), indigo or woad (the color worn by Braveheart).

Many of these organic pigments proved to be unreliably impermanent and have since been replaced with synthetics. For my purpose in this project, I plan to use only colors of a proven permanency rating but only those from the 17th century and before. By the way, a red purple used since antiquity called,

Tyrean Purple, or Imperial Purple is still available today. It takes 10,000 large sea snails to make one gram of pigment. These snails excrete a purple dye which is then used to make the pigment. The cost:

$935.00 for 1/4 gram

I am sure I will skip this one. Next time, more on the dangers.