Welcome to my second part of Tips and Techniques. I hope you enjoyed the first part! I had many emailing me for more private tips. I thank you all your emails and your comments, they are really appreciated.
Lets continue where we left….
==Solvents and Mediums==
As a person with asthma that also has three kids with asthma, strong solvents are not an option in my house, aside from the fact that I don’t like them.
My technique, alla prima, doesn’t involve the use of solvents not even to clean my brushes. The only thing I use to clean my brushes is warm water and a good soap.
As for the mediums, the only medium I do use is liquin in case I really need it, otherwise not even that.
==Brushes==
Ever since I tried the synthetic brushes I fell in love with them. I recognize that I abuse my brushes and natural hair brushes sometimes don’t do it for me. But I think the main reason I love my white synthetic brushes so much, is because the hairs don’t spread apart so easily as brushes made with natural hair. They perform the same and in many cases even better, and they keep their shape for longer.
I prefer the brushes with acrylic handle rather than the wood handle though. I’ve noticed the wood handle is more prone to separate from ferrule as the wood decays, while the acrylic handle holds in place much longer.
I have a huge variety of brushes and ideally I would take out the ones I consider I would be using for my painting session. The reality is I finish my painting with the same one I started with, leaving the rest untouched on my tray. Fair enough, many brushes have never being used, while others look like they need to rest in peace for eternity!
==Other Equipment==
There are many other things I use in my studio aside from my paintings, canvases and brushes. In fact to me entering my studio is a ritual per se. The first thing I do is to turn on the lights, put up some music in my computer (I like to listen to 89x in Michigan, they play really cool music!) and clean whatever mess I had left the day before. But my basic equipment if you will are my apron and my disposable gloves, the same used by the nurse at the doctor’s office.
The reason I use an apron is because I just hate having dots of paint in my clothe, especially since I keep going in an out of the studio to get my kids from school, take care of business (when someone requests a visit to the studio) or plain a friend or neighbor coming over, and since I clean my brush quite a lot on my leg and chest while changing paint (I have the tendency to start with one brush and finish with the same brush regardless of how many brushes I arranged for my painting session) I decided after ruining a lot of cloth to use an apron.
The other thing I’m never with are my disposable gloves. Many of the paintings we use contain chemicals so powerful that are known to cause cancer. Since I don’t want to take any more chances than I already have by genetic, I decided years ago to paint with gloves to minimize the risks.
==Oil Paint==
Ah! My favorite subject! I have to stress that if you are planning to make art seriously, I mean to earn a living from it as I do, you must use professional grade paints, no matter what medium you decide to paint with, always use professional grade paints. The reason for this is more pigment per tube or jar compared to the studio line of paints. The performance of the paint is much better and the resulting painting is high quality, so well worth it!
In my case I have tubes of every imaginable color from different manufacturers and this is simply because the same green might be different from company to company. My favorite brand of oil paints here in the US is Gamblin. The consistency and the vibrancy of the colors is really impressive. I do have some tubes of Windsor and Newton professional artist grade, and I particularly like the sap green from them. Mixed with radiant yellow from Gamblin, you will have a nice light green perfect for foliage. But I admit the paint I have fell in love with is one that I found while living in Spain and that I can’t find anywhere else. The paint is highly pigment and with an exquisite buttery consistency, the brand is Titan, and if you ever come across it let me know if you like it as much as I do. I also have some tubes of Grumbacher, also a very nice oil paint to work with and I really prefer the raw umber from them.
==Light==
I know that on the first part I said we would talk about brushes, solvents and mediums, oil paint and other equipment but I wanted to touch at least a little this important subject, light.
Light is important in a studio, whether is natural light or artificial light, too much or too little will affect your finished piece. For an artist is important to have enough light to clearly see the variations of tone. If you can’t see clearly the variations in tone, then you either have too much light in which case everything seem too light, or you have too little in which case you see everything too dark. To better know what light works for you, test different light bulbs before starting with you painting session. In case you have enough natural light in your studio, position your easel or table near the light source enough to receive light without you casting a shadow on your easel nor the light creating too much shine on your canvas.
I use a clip-on inexpensive light found at any home improvement store that I attach to my easel when natural light in my studio is not available – and living in Michigan, we don’t count too often with bright blue skies like in Atlanta, so in a week the light is on at least 4 days of the week… I know pretty gray!
My bulb gives me a similar light that the one that comes from my window, and this is very important! You don’t want to use different lights to paint in your studio, all your light sources should be very similar one another to being able to complete a painting without too many differences in contrast, tone and color.
I hope you enjoyed this short guide and that would inspire your creativity.
Paint away!
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