Question about medium

[marcoeberhart]

Hello everyone!
Here i come again seeking for clarification regarding my painting methods. In the last week im having so much technical problems! But you guys are soo much wise and can for sure help me.
I dont know exactly what happened now, but i was aplying an underpainting for a sky, using ultramarine blue. Since i wanted the ultramarine blue to get very transparent, i've used a lot of medium. Im using Talens Painting Medium. The next day, it was touch dry, so i started painting the sky. I've noticed this second layer wasnt fixating very well over the first layer. It looked like the first layer was a bit "sticky" and glossi, and the paint i was aplying was not beeing absorved correctly by the other layer. Im painting on a oil paper (called "Figueras" which is a very hard paper with a soft canvas texture, very nice) mounted on a MDF board. Im using Winsor&Newton and Van Gogh paints. You can se from the pictures below what is happening. On the tree's folliage, you can see a lot of brush marks, they are kind of "gloss" looking. You can see on the grass below which i have used the same quantity of medium then i the tree's folliage and the brush marks are much more soft and the paint seems to have been more "accepted" by the surface. The blue sky was difficult to paint, but since i used a more heavy quantity of paint i was able to paint over the gloss looking ultramarine blue.

Is there anything like too much medium? like the painting getting over oiled, and when it dryes gets a bad texture? When i use loads of Liquin, for exemple, this doesnt seem to happen. Maybe the paint was touch dry but wasnt ready for paint over?

Thank you very much for always beeing soo helpful!

[black-swan]

Most probably too much medium. For your first few layers, to thin paint use pure turps, gradually add more oil/ medium if necessary to succeeding layers. Better to paint with as little medium as you can get away with, as oil paints already have oil added to them in the tube.

[bjoern3000]

Black Swan is right. Use as much medium as necessary and as less as possible. You can either use more pressure on the brush to spread the paint thinly or - as Black Swan suggested - use turps - or use Liquin.

BUT: if something looks glossy doesn't necessarily mean that there is something wrong. There are pigments that tend to dry glossy and there are some that "sink in" which means they become dull. And it depends on your ground - if it is very absorbing then the oil would go into the ground. I don't know about that oil painting paper. But for archival reasons I fear that paper tends to deteriorate much easier than wood or canvas.