I received a great question from David about mediums. I thought I would answer this for all of you who are having the same confusion as him.
Q: Some people use paint directly from the tube with no medium while others use a mixture of linseed or stand oil and turp adjusted for the fat over lean process if building up layers. Still others use Liquin. There are so many mediums out there. My question is: What do you think is the best medium for building up layers of paint and how would you adjust it for the fat over lean process?
First, mediums is one of the most confusing things for people to learn about oil painting. After all, when you learn to draw, you just grab a pencil, paper and go. But medium makes oil painting a bit more complicated.
First, you must make sure you understand what medium is. Medium is simply something you add to your paint to change it’s characteristics.
Now, there is another way to use the word medium. And this is for what the binding medium is that you are adding to pigment to turn the pigment into paint. Acrylic paint and oil paint use the same pigment. But one is acrylic medium and the other is oil medium.
For painting with oils though, the “medium” people have questions about are the mixture you add to your paint.
May times, people just use a basic mixture of turpentine and oil. Some people will mix turpentine with stand oil.
Other people add other ingredients to their mixtures.
They are all fine. The main thing is, you have to know what effect you are after.
Do you want your paint to dry faster? You would add certain ingredients. Do you want to slow down the drying of your paint? You would add a different ingredient.
Do you want your paint to dry with shine? This would demand using a certain ingredient in your medium. If you want to thin down your paint so it’s more watery, a different ingredient would be needed.
As far as fat over lean. I have never had any paintings of mine crack due to bad use of medium. Unless things are taken to extremes, I would not worry about this too much.
In case you do not know. The fat over lean rule means that the layer you are currently painting should have more oil in it than the previous layer. And, unless you are taking it to extremes, this will not be a problem.
If you are painting over a layer where you used a lot of oil in the paint, the surface will be greasy and it will be hard to get paint paint to stick to it. The dried surface will be very shiny. This will present more of a problem than cracking from not following fat over lean.
Renoir, at least in his later years, according to first hand witnesses like his son – used a simple mixture of turpentine and linseed oil for his beginning layers. As the painting advanced, he would use just pure linseed oil as his medium. This made it easier to paint over his underlayers which were done with a slightly “leaner” medium. This produced some “greasy” paint surfaces in the later layers of his paintings, but he liked the feel of it and it the effect he was after. Renoir knew all about his supplies so he knew exactly what to use to get the effect he was after.
There are different ingredients besides regular oil, like sun thickened oil and stand oil. These have a honey like consistency and add a quality to your paint that makes the paint “stand up” from the surface and makes it easier to apply one color over another without making mud.
Like I said, there is no right answer to “what is the best medium” because I don’t know what you after. The effects Monet was after (dry matte surface) is certainly not what Rubens was after (shiny surface, fluid painting) so they would not use the same medium.
In my home study course, I go over exactly what each ingredient will do to your paint. This way you can choose exactly what to use for your mixed medium to get just the effect you want.
You’ll never have any more confusing questions when you know exactly what to use.
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though i have read all information about painting but still i would like to watch and see paint bieng applied on a wall or a watchable programme that can be interested by the students of engineers all over the world.
sorry that is my suggestion and my little brain comments about it.
so let us consider about ones idea .
thanks all of you ,good preparation