e-Pulsar - Oct

e-Pulsar Oct - Nov 98

PAINTING IN OILS

From Bob Eggleton

I haven't worked in oils since around l980. I did use them in college painting classes but that was about it. I really was taken in with acrylics for the most part due to the fact I would invariably get oils all over myself and the drying time was a factor, as was the fact I hadn't had much experience painting!

Well, 18 year later I worked up the courage to work again in oils. I began to grow tired of the general flatness of acrylics. Having for the most part given up airbrushing, I found the acrylics getting a bit cakey as I worked, I started playing around with alcohol in the paint so as to get interesting effects. Also, many of my contemporaries in the SF field have gone back to oils or started and never left using them. So I figured, why not just jump right in.

There are no "rules" to painting. I don't care what anyone tells you. Working in oils you just have to make it up as you go along. Usually, for something like a landscape, I "see" what I want to paint and I just start working out a rough charcoal sketch on the canvas. I use either stretched canvas or gessoed masonite as a support. I then lay in an acrylic "rough" painting-all done in Quinicridrone Gold-the warm underpainting serves two purposes: 1) violate the clean,frightening white surface and 2) get your shadows and lights going.

At this point, I let this "cure" for the night. Then, attacking it from the background forward I simply start layering in paint. I use mainly mediums -drying linseed oil, liquin and Winsor & Newton painting medium, all mixed in a small cup. I use very little turpentine - the smell gives me a headache for one thing. I lay in with large brushes, covering large areas with paint and just sort of play with it, letting my underpainting show. I use a little turpentine to wipe off some areas and rework or simply leave them alone. I use also a palette knife to poke, swipe and stab the painting with dashes of paint and removing layers of others. I also use fan brushes and smaller brushes to bring up my details and lights, and to darken the darks. I use sable oil brushes and bristle brushes. In one week I completed a 30x40 painting this way. My working in oils is a very very different method than with acrylics.

My advice - and these ain't rules - when oil painting:

* Stand BACK a lot. Remind yourself of this. This is what long handled brushes were made for! Stab at the painting. It’s great for creating rocks.

* Be careful and read labels to colors and mediums as to their handling. I know people who have poisoned themselves mixing up "white lead" painting surfaces, or sinister stuff as "Jelly of Rubins" which is, made with walnut oil and...boiled LEAD. Even Japan Dryer and Cobalt Dryers are horribly poisonous-to-the-touch stuff! I knew a teacher who was hospitalized with blood poisoning because he washed his brushes in a big barrel of noxious substances such as xylene, acetone and even too much turpentine. I use only drops of turp and I never leave the can uncapped to vaporize into air.

* Always wash your hands when finished! Scrub them really good.

* You can get as loose as you want or tight as you want with oils. Usually, my "miniatures" tend to be tighter and my big pieces tend to loosen up.

* I use only two or three brushes at a time. I rarely clean a brush in the middle of a painting. I simply add a new color to it.

* Don't worry about whether or not your oils (or your work in general) rates up with the "old masters". Most of them never thought their own work rated up with each other when they were alive. Just paint.

* Don't worry about those who suggest you make "statements" with your brushes. Just paint.

Oils are the original medium to paint in. Acrylics have their own properties but it is oil that really makes the painting look "deep".

Remember - JUST PAINT!

"Cassini's Division" by Don Dixon.
High in the atmosphere of Saturn, cloud tops frame the rings as the sun passes through the famed divide.