Old Masters Academy

Posts Tagged "old master techniques"

Canvas and its Applications.

Canvas is a sturdy plain woven fabric used to make tents, sails, marquees, backpacks, canoes, trampolines and tarpaulin, all of which are for outside use but (linen) canvas replaced wooden panels as the favoured medium for oil painting artists around the time of the 17th century. Historically, canvas was made from hemp, before being replaced by linen, but more common these days is cotton canvas due to it being economical and versatile. Canvas comes in two forms, plain and duck, the latter being more tightly woven and used extensively for outdoor applications, such as clothes, camping and sailing. In the 20th century, cotton canvas replaced linen canvas as the most popular painting medium, although linen canvases are still used to…

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For Real Artists: A Guide to Specialty Art Paper

Creativity is a tricky endeavor. To get the right look, you need the right materials. As any artist knows, anything can serve as a canvas, but for the truly exquisite look, you need something special. In this short guide, we’ll explain some of the art and craft products available and some possible applications for these products. Curious iridescent paper is certainly one of the oddest products on the market today. Normally, embossed iridescent paper is not so much a paper, but more like plastic or a thin, flexible and colorful metal, and as such, is well suited for sculpting and other crafts. Iridescent paper is often made by foil stamping and lasers on light-sensitive chemicals, and can only be used…

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Painting Styles: The Scumbling Painting Technique For Softening And Adding Depth

Scumbling techniques have been used by master painters since the 1600s to create smooth gradations, modify a previously dried layer of paint and to add a sense of depth. This technique is accomplished by applying thin layers of light opaque colors over dark layers of dried transparent paint. The final results gives a painting a surface that various in how much of the under painting is revealed. An ultra thin layer of an opaque paint can soften an area of a painting while giving it a misty, almost out of focus look that might be typical of background objects. Adding a thicker layer of paint to an area would naturally give that object an appearance of being in the foreground….

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Tips on Oil Painting – Your Advanced Palette

In this article I will discuss the tube colors belonging to an advanced palette based on a basic 6-color palette. I find these colors the most useful and often necessary to round out a versatile palette. The 6-color basic palette consists of the following colors:       1. Lemon Yellow      2. Cadmium Yellow      3. Cadmium Red      4. Permanent Rose      5. French Ultramarine      6. Phthalo Blue To these 6 colors we, of course, add        7. Titanium White      8. Ivory Black Note that you can already create amazingly diversified paintings with the above palette. But, for various reasons, artists tend to add a variety of other colors to their palette. One reason is that tube colors are, by and large, always brighter…

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Top Tips: What you need to know about a paint brush?

Most of us like to paint different things. Some of us are professional painters while some of us just paint for fun. If you are serious about the subject it’s very important that you have some knowledge about the different types of paint brushes. Paint brushes are made up from stiff or soft hairs, which are either natural hairs or synthetic fibers. Soft brushes are specially designed for thin paints as they spread easily. Similarly incase of hard strokes you need hard brushes for creating brush marks in the paints. Is natural hair better than synthetic? Natural hair paint brushes are expensive as compared to the synthetic brushes. The modern synthetic brushes are excellent and have flexibility to beat even…

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Soaring Prices in Europe’s Contemporary Fine Art Market

The South African fine art community of collectors and investors may be a distant hemisphere away from the elite of Europe’s summer worldwide tour that began in Venice Biennale this year. However, analysts predict that the steady upward curve in the world’s fine art market that began in 2002 will continue to push prices through the roof. One of Europe most elite social scenes began their quest from Venice, where fleets of private jets took collectors to the Basel Art exhibitions, following onto Documenta in Kassel and finishing their pursuit by raiding Sothebys in London. Sale of contemporary art works reached unprecedented heights at auction. The event saw Francis Bacon’s self portrait sell for a record $40m, twice its reserve…

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Do You Know How to Get the Most Out of your Oil Painting?

Learning how to become a good oil painter is a difficult undertaking. In fact, it is more than likely one of the most difficult painting mediums to master. Things like color mixing & theory, perspective, techniques and materials can really intimidate a beginner artist. So how do you get the most out of your oil painting and become a more accomplished artist? You must make it a point to learn the fundamentals of oil painting, practice often and have an enormous amount of patience. You must start with the fundamentals of oil painting first. You cannot expect to produce Rembrandt quality paintings in the beginning. In fact, the first paintings you produce will probably be a lot worse than you…

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Art Tips: Why Choose the Panels Oil Painting

If you are ready to hang painting on your walls or if you are looking for the perfect present, you have arrived at the right place. The oil paintings are to be regarded as a sort of timeless representation that can make the difference for every décor. The oil painting can also be rich in valuable meaning and you should buy such a gift especially if you are celebrating a new real estate. But you will have to be careful when choosing the oil painting. There are plenty of factors for you to consider. For instance, if you feel ready to hang painting, you should think twice about the sizes and colors. You should stay away from overwhelming colors that…

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Tips for Maintaining Good Oil Painting Habits

Following are the tips for you to maintain good oil painting habits: Tips for saving color: • Clean away any mixtures near heaps of colors you are setting up to keep. • Keep a habit to put colors in same place on palette – used up areas must be worn out & wiped for new oil paint for next painting session. • For disposable palettes scoop off mounds of paint you desire to maintain with your knife and move them to a fresh sheet; if a skin shapes, stab and take away the skin and work with the new color under. • If you are not regular on painting for a week – cover palette with plastic cover & place…

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