Ask the Doctor!

[steve kim]

haha what a pretentious title.

Alex asked me some oil painting questions in lecture thread so i thought i'd make a seperate section for random questions. if ends up just being oil painting shop talk i'm fine with that! hohoho.

things i know a lot about: photography, post-processing, oils and pigments, perceptual color theory, drawing, education in general and in art specfically

not so great: anatomy, perspective stuff

not sure if this is the right place to ask this Steve, but
this week I am buying oil paints, so far my list stands at
"colors: titanium white, ivory black, cadmium red, cadmium yellow, sap green, manganese pthalo blue.
: burnt sienna, raw umber, cadmium yellow lemon, permanent yellow green, windsor & newton's alizarin crimson

palette knife
gesso
turpenoid or gamsol

glass pallet

brushes
small round synthetic(rounded tip)
liner(round, long brush)
filber(flat rounded edge, all purpose)
flat
"
I already have medium and a few brushes, anything else I should buy?
And when you paint, what is the process for cleaning brushes.
Thanks

first off use gamsol instead of turpeNOID or turpenTINE. the 'noid is actually an OMS (odorless mineral spirit) like Gamsol but has a higher evaporation rate and the can doesn't look nearly as nice.

when it comes to painting materials i've yet to come across anything bad from gamblin. imo the #1 trustworthy and informative oil painting brand out there. check out the site for tons of great info. www.gamblincolors.com

lol i'm a commercial.

as for colors, if u'r starting out you can ditch a lot of those expensive paints for brighter, cheaper, higher tinting strength modern colors. unfortunately gamblin's site doesnt sort it's color by type, like earth, mineral (cads), modern like they do with flyers they send to art supply stores. you can also find it online if you look hard enough.

dont use black. nothing wrong with it, just don't buy it for now.
cad's were the color to have back in the impressionist days, but their science is no longer cutting edge. btw there's nothing really natural or pure about cads anyway.

only brown's i'd use is burnt sienna and burnt umber for quick cheap browns. but i bet u'd learn a lot more about color mixing if you left them out. brown is basically dark orange anyway. i currently don't use any browns/earths. ppl say don't paint with black, well maybe ppl shouldn't paint with browns! at least in the beginning... to be burnt sienna is more of an orange than a brown, and quite nice transparency wise but really necessary? who knows.

if u get aliz crimson, make sure it says it's permanent. some manufacturers still sell the original, HIGHLY fugitive aliz. the real stuff is basically a dye infused in clear pigment. dye's are bad!

when you buy paints make sure to look in the pigments list. it can get confusing but this is the only reliable way of knowing what you get. paint places are diabolical about how they name shit.

btw red yellow blue aren't the real primaries. cyan magenta and yellow are. million dollar printers use cmy and variants of it for a reason!

colors i use:

gamblin:

*thalo anything. thalo green, blue, emerald (turquoise is just a mix of thalo green and blue). thalo blue is a good cyan btw.
*arilyde yellow (or hansa yellows for gamblin). hansa yellow light for sure, maybe a medium.
*indian yellow (i like transparent colors)
*quinacridone red (looks like magenta actually) there's a quinacridone magenta too i think but i haven't used it. also quinacridone red + thalo green makes a PERFECT (or closest u gonna get) and neutral black. gamblin actually sells a black (chromatic black) that is a mix of quin red and thalo green.
*napthol red. a good 'regular looking' red.

the thing im looking for in paint: transparency, tinting strength, chroma. most of these paints have these qualities (arilyde isn't transparent so i have indian yellow aka diarilyde yellow).

there's nothing wrong with buying browns, but browns are a color too! mix your browns and you'll learn so much more about color.

think of painting as 50% color mixing and you'll have a lot more fun. try not to paint from 'recipes' like this much red + this much yellow + white = nice flesh.

use the paint that's already on your palette all ugly and weird, what do you add to those paints to get it to the color you want? when is it impossible and you have to 'start from scratch?'. when i paint i'm very lazy about washing my brushes, i like to see how far i can take the paint that's already on it. (not so easy when u wanna make a purple yellow hehe!)

this is very non-traditional approach. tradition would have you work from super limited palette (burnt umber + black), then limited (earth colors, ochres, venetian red, etc), then 'full palette' that really iesn't 'full' at all, cause it's just a buncha cads anyway.

up to you which way to go. just remember back in the day people just killed for a good blue, then ultramarine came along and made it common place. just cause pigments are more commonplace doesn't mean we shouldn't have the same reverence for the best colors available. to me thalo has a place in my heart that ultramarine never will.

its also much less frustrating to paint w/ these colors that have huge tinting strength. one of the problems with painting is that adding white will desaturate and cool down colors to a huge extent, forcing paintings to have a certain value range where the saturation is optimal, or forcing the use of time consuming glazing techniques and forcing the painter to jump through hoops to get the paint to 'behave'. a lot of this is alleviated with better pigments.

i suppose after a lot of experience w/ a *real* full palette, you could try out a limited one. you'd be shocked in two ways: 1. how impossible it is to mix what you see and what a compromise they are. 2. how much color you can get out of these crappy colors, and how you can get away with mediocre color if your drawing/values are strong.

there's also charts and stuff you can make to really understand your pigments, but only if u'r hardcore about this stuff hehe.

one last thing about paints: BUY THE BIG TUBES. it'll be a big initial investment but those tiny little tubes are a waste of time and money. even if you end up with colors you dont like, they can always be the base for a color you do like. small tubes will mean small dollops of paint on your palette and stingy, miserly paint use. be smart and economical. u can buy huge tins of white paint from gamblin and also utrecht i belive.

for washing brushes, clean with oms in a tin can w/ grate (these things are expensive but worth it) and then with soap and water. i like ugly dog brush soap (google it) and everyone i've recommended it to loves it but ymmv. i particularly don't like the company that makes it, but the soap is nice!

brushes> stick with flats and brights! (flats become brights eventually anyway . who the heck uses rounds these days. and i dont recognize some of the other brushes you have. simplify. maybe a few filberts... but typically you can do everything you need with flats.

for surfaces, i used the cheapest canvasboards i can find. gesso them if they feel like they are absorbing too much oil but i personally never bothered. course now i paint on canvas, but the shit is still store bought. i'm not much of a stickler on surfaces, it gets expensive.

what kind of medium do you have? hope it's not homebrew/old masters stuff. nothing wrong with mediums (im a galkyd fiend) but i'd stay away from it at first. how far can you go with just turps as a thinner. working with the viscious nature of oil. it'll be hard, colors will get muddy, but when it does... scrape it off or clean it off with paper towels/rags and reapply clean color!

steve

[steve kim]

made a ton of edits so might want to re-read in case u miss anything

[AlexC]

thanks a butt load, I am buying them today
btw, the brush list came from watching the Shawn barber dvd, do you recommend real hair brushes or synthetic ones?
Thanks again, much appreciated

[steve kim]

bristle brushes. i know there are peeps who use synthetics, especially for finer detailed work but at this stage bristle is best. i personally want to experiment with synthetics but never get around to it.

[Texahol]

ah wonderful, this is the infos I signed up to eat your brain for!
*nibbles*

[serhc]

I've been wanting to get into gouache as a medium, because it seems like a cheaper alternative to oils, more forgiving than acrylics or oils, and better suited to my limited patience.

But...I have no idea where to start. Good brands, a basic set of colors (a prepared set?), brushes and the like.

I've been scouring CA and googling what I can, but it's hard to find objective information. A lot of what I've found comes from proprietary sources, so I'm reserving my judgment on their opinions. I don't want to waste money on unnecessary colors, but I don't plan on being stingy with the paint either. The paint seems to come in 5ml - 15ml tubes, but is that enough? I saw some really cheap 85ml bottles, but it seems too good to be true.

...uhhh, so anyway, sorry about the long post...anything about gouache at all would be helpful.

[John]

I bought some gouache over the weekend. I got them because I used them before, and know them a bit, so they're more usable for me than getting into a completely new medium. I bought white, red, yellow, blue and burnt sienna Schminke Akademie, I think that's a german brand. I'm using them on bristol board. So yea, I'm interested in some extra info on gouache as well.

[aedman]

I'm not a doctor but...

I have been working with gouache for a class and what I can tell you from my reasonably limited experience with them is that: it's a tricky medium in that it remains workable, any goauche you put down that has any additional water in it will bring up the previous layers- it's easy to get muddy. When I've used it straight from the tube or pure gouache mixed, you get some nice color, brilliance, richness, opacity etc, but it has a drybrush kind of feel to the paint handling, it is a bit difficult to get big fluid marks without adding water and diluting the color/changing its look. It's a nice medium for smaller work, studies, learning about color mixing to a degree, but its a tricky format for painting certain subjects (flesh for instance- I'm not saying it can't be done, it's just a lot more labor and skill required to do it with gouache rather than oil or even acrylic). That's my two cents.

[steve kim]

gouache in many ways is like the least forgiving medium of them all.

i personally haven't used it much besides color swatches and such.

in terms of the ideal medium to learn painting, well i really don't think there is a substitute for oil. it has the widest range, clearest color, transparency and opacity, etc.

it's also a lot cheaper pound for pound than gouache which is pretty pricey stuff last i remember.

but if u'r really dead set on working with it, go for it! any kind of painting is better than no painting. cept maybe watercolor which really isn't very painterly at all. oh yes i went there!

oh in terms of the big gouache too good to be true bottles, they probably are. gouache is not cheap.

steve

p.s. don't be afraid of oil btw! best to dive in the scariest thing or u'll be running away forever~~~

[serhc]

I found a set of what I'm pretty sure are 5ml gouache paints, so I think I'll give it a few runs before I throw money at oil paints. :] I'm assuming I'm to use some stiffer brushes to lay down the paint? As you can tell, I am highly inexperienced with any sort of paint, so...excuse my noob questions please :|

[steve kim]

for water/acrylic/gouache u probably want to use synethetics. those red winsor brushes are popular.

[AlexC]

ok, I am downloading both critique videos.
I am a bit unsure what is happening next, is there another assignment or is it finished?
As far as instructional video's go, the best possible thing you could do would be a "experimental, thumbnail to a finished piece process"
The reason I wanted you to be my mentor is become you come up with some great ideas, and represent them well. Traditional is your strong point, I dont see much point doing a drawing in photoshop if you know you could do much better with a pencil.
If you rigged up a webcam or video camera and went crazy, you could get some great footage.

[steve kim]

well video would be good for demos but capturing through photoshop is already a lot of work. let alone setting up camcorder/sound, capturing, encoding etc.

i'll probably do it for my pay class when it comes to that.

[AlexC]

I watched the video( well my crit part at least).
Also, thankyou for all the help, I really appreciate the words and the time spent explaining stuff. Also you asked during the last video about school, it's not art school( I wish), just high school, the end of year show is pretty low key, basically demonstrating the lack of work the final year students put into art
When is the due date for the 90 minute and 30 minute portrait?

[Aardvarkphil]

Hi Steve I'm able to post images again woooohooooo! Any way I've just added my first real attempt at oils onto my sketchbook thread. If you have time would you give me your first impressions. Thanks Phil

[steve kim]

I watched the video( well my crit part at least).
Also, thankyou for all the help, I really appreciate the words and the time spent explaining stuff. Also you asked during the last video about school, it's not art school( I wish), just high school, the end of year show is pretty low key, basically demonstrating the lack of work the final year students put into art
When is the due date for the 90 minute and 30 minute portrait?

oh high school huh? well then you're at a pretty good place. just don't ahead of yourself let your fancy style get in the way too much... at least not until your drawing is better!

[sve]

Hey, Steve, I listened all videos with all crits for two times and I have a lot information to think about concerning my images and general philosophy about art and people restrains and misconceptions you gave and about your question how to improve classes too. I need to think more about it and I write later to you if you want it (what bothers me in the way you gave your critique including).
In general I have to say that the last video where you talk about fine art and paintings and what you see in them and value was very likable and personal and I felt that the subject was interesting and exciting for you... and because of that contagious and exciting for me as well. You led me in those voiced thoughts because you talked about things that are dear to you. In this you sure reached me and involved me.
I agree with your advice concerning my image and very thankful.
I didn't expect class to be dismissed so suddenly, and it is sad especially now when I just started to understand what is important to you and what you see when you look at any object or artwork.
Thanks for this help and effort and time and precious information I got thanks to you during our class, it was useful for me for sure. Your words about effect of surroundings on object and logic of how apply certain colors and values to planes and change of planes were very good, I will remember those.
With respect
Sveta

[AlexC]

oh high school huh? well then you're at a pretty good place. just don't ahead of yourself let your fancy style get in the way too much... at least not until your drawing is better!

I dont really understand what you mean
A bit off topic, but does the name Roland mean anything for you( from Artcenter)?