Old Masters Academy

Posts Tagged "linseed oil"

Palettes of Famous Artists.  The Anders Zorn Palette

Palettes of Famous Artists. The Anders Zorn Palette

Palettes of Famous Artists. Zorn Palette Swedish painter Anders Zorn (1860-1920)  has long been associated with a limited palette of four colors. Rosemary Hoffman, in the book Northern Light: Nordic Art at the Turn of the Century wrote, “Zorn was noted for executing paintings using a sober color scale limited to white, ochre, vermilion, and ivory black.” Hans Henrik Brummer, writing in the 1986 catalog on Zorn, said “basically his register was limited to black, white, earth yellows and vermilion; other pigments could be used if local accents were needed.” Several art teachers, such as Jeff Watts, use the “Zorn palette” (sometimes substituting cadmium red light for vermilion) as a teaching tool because it provides students with a finite range of color choices with a…

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How to paint like Rembrandt: Oil Painting Glazing Techniques

How to paint like Rembrandt: Oil Painting Glazing Techniques

Rembrandt was so pleased with his innovation of glazing over dried impasto that he expanded the practice to other textures, devising a method that utilized different whites for impasto and smoother passages. His impasto white was very “lean” and had egg as an ingredient (meaning it must have dried quite quickly), ground glass, and also white lead, which was used as a binder. He generally applied it with increasing thickness in several stages, whereafter it was finished with transparent glazes and wiping, creating the lustre and dimension he is so well-known for. No other technique produces the same brilliance as Rembrandt’s. When he painted Lieutenant Ruytenburch’s uniform in “The Night Watch,” Rembrandt used this method to build up the dimensions…

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Oil painting materials – Oil Paints

Oil painting materials – Oil Paints

Oil painting materials Oil Paints Oil paint is a mix of a powdered pigment bounded with a medium of drying oil.   Linseed oil is commonly used as a carrier in oil paint. Oil paints can be mixed with linseed oil as a medium to make paints more fluid; this medium also increases glossiness and makes paint more transparent. Linseed oil comes as cold pressed, alkali refined, sun bleached, sun thickened, and polymerised (stand oil). Traditionally, the old masters used to prepare oil paints themselves. Today, ready-made oil paints available in tubes from any art supply shop. It is possible to paint with oils without diluting them with solvents, by using brush pressure to spread the paint out thinly. In…

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