oils- smooth paint without loss of opacity?

**Gloominati** · June 25th, 2007, 02:47 PM

Hey guys, here's a question for all the oil-painting dudes over here!

looking especially at shawn barbers artwork it can obviously be noticed that he often lets the paint just run down the canvas (today I noticed that Kim Cogan does this as well).

example:
see the red and green on the left :

so my question is how can you dilute oil paint this extremely and still have an almost full-opacity brushstroke?? Tried this today and got kinda frustrated because every time I mixed my oils with medium/turpentine until I got a nice brushflow, opacity got lost almost completely making the paint nice for glazing but not to reach the wished effect.

Some advice would be cool, and if I am just not seeing rightly please correct me and kick my ass

**Rhynome** · June 25th, 2007, 02:57 PM

Now I don't use oils whatsoever, but on the hands the bits that ran are the more pale 'highlights'. Do you think maybe the paint used for the highlights was diluted, as not to make it too opaque, and this is also the cause of it running?

Though it doesn't exactly look it that explains what's going on on the left.

**Kresh** · June 25th, 2007, 03:09 PM

try putting the paint straight on first, than use a lil turp and just lil on the paint and see what happens, but this is jst a guess

**joelhinxman** · June 25th, 2007, 03:13 PM

from watching shawn paint in sf i think he was useing turp as a meduim not alot and im not sure what others he had in there but thats what it looked like.

**Gloominati** · June 25th, 2007, 03:16 PM

thanks so far guys, but mainly I am not aiming for making the paint run down all the way down but more for having really smooth paint for a nice "brush-flow", without loosing the opacity, you know (can be compared to Gouache in some ways!)

**k4pka** · June 25th, 2007, 04:30 PM

If you thin an opaque pigment with white spirit/turps, you can thin it to a dripping consistency whilst still having it opaque.

Intrinsically transparent colours of course can't do this. However, if you add a little white (being opaque) you can get close enough.

**mirskov** · June 25th, 2007, 08:38 PM

linseed oil would probably be the best for something like this. But like everybody else said it can be done with mineral spirits. But I don't think the red and the green are fully opaque there either .. it might seem that way because they're running over opaque colors of the same value or lighter ...

**|NTeRN** · June 25th, 2007, 08:44 PM

the more turp you use the more the colors will be burnt out and be less vibrant. im not a fan of the dripped look, but to each his own i guess. try using some different types of mediums and oils to thin down your paints. they should keep your colors correct and thin down your paints a bit.

**Elwell** · June 25th, 2007, 09:18 PM

Learn the characteristics of your pigments. Some are really dense and opaque, and will retain that quality with a lot of dilution. Some are weak and/or intrinsically transparent. Some are transparent, but so powerful that just a little bit is needed with white for an opaque coat.
Do test panels. Play with your paints. Keep notes. It's fun!

**Gloominati** · June 26th, 2007, 07:14 AM

thanks Elwell, you were right, at least indirectly you could solve my problem: Since I am not using high quality oil paint, because I am a poor little bitch, I decided to buy at least one tube of the real good stuff to see if it makes any difference. So I tried it and DANG, I would never have expected that there can be such a difference : I mixed this high quality stuff with so much Medium/turpentine that it got almost an ink-like structure and ivory black was still black like bigass motherfucking night. maaan

.

But heres a new problem : is anybody in here who has got to much money and wants to buy me some high quality oils?