NEW ART PROJECTS GOIN ON?

You guys have been talking about the toxic effects of paint, so I thought I'd share this information. I met a artist and art professor, Dan, on my first trip to Tanzania and Kenya a couple of years ago. When we returned from our trip, he gave us an original oil painting as a gift which now hangs in our entry way with a picture of him. A few months after this trip, the other professor from our first tour called me to ask if I would like to join them on a trip to South Africa for the following April. I, ofcoarse, responded with a positive "yes." On this trip, we had a layover in Atlanta, but when I arrived there, Dan and his wife were missing. I asked Richard, and he informed me that Dan was very sick, and was at Stanford Hospital for tests. At that point, the doctors did not know how to diagnose his disease. After our return from our South Africa trip, all we were told was that Dan had a rare blood disease. Five months later, Dan died. I can't say that Dan's expose to paint was the cause, but please be careful. c.i.

truth
C.I., thanks for your concern. Unfortunately, today travel is also dangerous, and I know that won't stop you. So be careful as well.

JLN, That's the reason I won't consider travel to Israel, Iraq, and a few other places. Otherwise, I feel pretty safe. Thanks for your concern, but in my plans for travel, I always try to get travel warnings ahead of time.

I'm very careful not to get cooking oil on paint/painting - and wash them in soapy water before putting them away clean. So all is well archivally!

Ive never tried cooking oil for anything but cooking, and anyway, watercolors are pretty easy except when they seep into the porous surface of my drawing table., which, by now, sort of looks like the Maryland State Flag

I use the non-stick cooking spray not for protection, but because the paint all over my hands is easier to clean off. When I'm finished working, I just wipe my hands on a towel, then a bit of soap and water and my hands are clean. Sometimes paint on the cuticles, or under the nails is hard to get rid of.

Here's a couple of other things I've found useful:

Add food coloring to you gesso. It cuts the glare of the canvas when you first start, then acts as a middle tone. Its also useful in laying down full, even coats of gesso onto your support.

papertowels are often useful; use a short bit of twine tied to a stick and dropped down the tube. Tie the other end of the twine to your easel in a handy spot. I generally put a light rubber band around the end of the papertowel roll to keep it tidy.

When gessoing panels, nail them into frames to dry. This prevents warpage, except on very large surfaces where traditional gesso "all-round" is still advisable.

Turn the surface upside down, check it in a mirror, or hanging on a wall with a lot of other pieces between painting sessions. This helps to identify where things are going wrong. It is a way of divorcing ourselves from the vision we have created in our imagination.

When painting from an object, don't look directly at it for long periods. Keep the eyes moving. To focus too long, just a matter of seconds, will screw up your ability to correctly "see" the color and tone.

Painting is a form of meditation. Do it often, preferably everyday. Keep three of four paintings going at a time, and move back and forth between them. This lets the surface of the pigment dry enough for the next layer of paint. It also helps to restore our rational critical facilities.

"More paint is almost always better than thin paint". Light doesn't just bounce off the surface of things carrying with it their colors. A small portion of each light wave penetrates to a lower pigment layer. In bouncing from the object back to the observer, the light frequencies are altered by passing through each layer of paint. If you are painting with relatively transparent glazes there will be greater frequency changes because more light is altered as it journeys through the pigments. I paint almost as much with light, as I do with pigments.

A lot of folks tell me they dislike oil because of its drying time, and they aren't wrong. A moderate amount of pigment will take, in most moderate climates, up to six months to fully dry ... that's why varnishing is generally done six months to a year after the paintings last work. However, I schedule sessions only a couple of days apart. Starting a session, I wipe a light coat of oil over the whole surface. While thats being done, I let the brush(s) that I will be using sit in oil to loosen them up and grab hold of a store of oil. The oil on the surface reduces the amount of oil/turp/mediums I need to use on the palette. It also "loosens" the paint from the earlier session just a tiny bit. That makes it easy to use "fat" colors to blend into the older paint. The result is a more even and better rendered final product.

Since many of you have formal art training, I suppose you already know most of that. It may be useful to the occasional painter.

I use turpenoid when working with oils. Graham puts out a walnut oil for thinning that is supposed to be almost non-toxic. I've used that as well, but it is very expensive. I'm a great fan of glazing and find it exciting to work with acrylics using that technique. I will try the oil over idea and see if I can get it to work for me. FM, I too had a fire going and was dismayed to watch the defeat of the Eagles. If it wasn't to be for the Packers, it should have been the Eagels. Well, there's always next year. Today I'm going to water down those soluable oils and try some glazing just for fun. I have only used them on 140 arches scrap so far, not wanting to waste canvas. As it is a sea of fog outside, today is great day to experiment.

I love to use those blue shop towels (from the hardware store), they don't break down in your painting like standard paper towels.

I use the latex or vinyl gloves to paint. They can get a bit itchy, but are handy for keeping hands clean, and also handy because you can take them off to snack, then put them back on.

It's so hard not to have a habit while painting. Some people booze, some people smoke, some people talk to their friends on the phone. I like to drink sweet things and nosh - just a little throughout the day. It makes my teacher's mad when I get like, a big bagel dog though.
hmm... I also have an inordinate amount of cavities... Relation?

Farmerman, I think I gave a link for that toxicity thread recently ... on the Pastels thread. Both subjects ended up being covered in it...

truth
Osso, are you giving your eye enough rest?

JLN, Eyes do not need to "rest."

truth
Osso, that's right, but what about your eye muscles? Is that relevant?

I see an Edward Schofield went for 700k at a freemans sale of New hope artists. This is a new record for that new Hope impressionist . Hes best liked for his capture of urban and rural snow scenes of Pennsylvania. Im amazed at how the art market has just gone nutz, and more scholastic plein air artists of regional impressionism have just skyrocketed. The hold that the avant garde has had on the normal art centers is being replaced by buyres who look at these works more as antiquities, meant to fit in their parlors.

truth
Shades of the Antique Road Show!

Strictly speaking, C.I. is correct that the eyes "don't need to be rested". However, the process of seeing properly does require "rest". If you look at anything too long, often only a few seconds, the colors and values that you "see" can't be relied upon. Intense concentration in translating a visual image onto a surface tends to obscure errors. Painters have a number of techniques to overcome visual saturation. Here are a few:

Turn the painting upside down, or on it's side.
Look at the painting from a distance.
Mix the new work with older pieces on a wall and then look at them as a group.
The all time best means is to set the piece aside where you can't see it for at least several days, a week or more is better.

These techniques, and others, help us to see the image clearly and rationally again. Mistakes and little unconscious mannerisms that we loved as the paint was laid down are clearly revealed as the screw-ups they always were. In at least my own case, few paintings can come close to what they could/should be in fewer than four or five 3-5 hour sessions.

As to my using the computer, both surgeons know about it and had no qualms. Besides, it is my right eye I am using here. Sometimes I even have a patch over the left.

Thanks for worrying.

osso, I must have missed the news about your eye. I hope it is healing and not causing any problems. I once had a patch when I had a corneal scratch and when I painted during those months. I was always doing what Asherman said earlier. I used a mirror to reflect my work and see if I was making mistakes in perspective.

I do that a lot now to paintings in magazines . Itsamazing to see how many people dont pay attention to perspective, and I think many of them do it unknowingly.

some errors can be due to uncorrected visual defects as well. I read an interesting book ... The World Through Blunted Sight by Patrick Trevor-Roper.

He comes up with all sorts of reasons for the quirks in artists work - he's not dogmatic about it and appreciates that in some cases it may have been the artists choice, but explains the defects that would cause a particular effect such as the elongation and lean to one side in El Greco and the colour shift in Monet's work when they were at their worst, before being operated on.

I didn't agree with him in every case but it was a fascinating book.

Farmer, there's a whole thread on m'eyes, in the general forum, if you're curious. I show up on page 3 + 4 with a description of what's going on.

I agree with Asherman on all his comments on looking at one's work, especially the stand back part. It is part of why when I am actively painting I usually have several pieces going at once, to force myself to get some distance.

truth
Farmer, you note that many painters ignore perspective, unknowingly. That's undoubtedly the case, but you recognize, of course, that sometimes the demands of perspective might be violated (ignored or transgressed) in the interest of a conscious concern for purely abstract design/aesthetic" values.