Paintingmatters

http://channel.tate.org.uk/tateshots-blog/2011/02/10/tateshots-callum-innes-studio-visit/

 The two alternative 'traditional' surfaces for oil painting are linen and canvas. For canvas you  can use either acrylic primer for a white surface (or what ever colour you desire) or an animal size. (You can also get size non animal size. I will get some of this in for when Richard does his master class on support/structure making for painting. I will post the date as soon as it's arranged. Primer brushes,  Canvas pliers, These really do need to be tried out/demonstrated to make sense of. Just thought it would be worth showing you how beautiful linen is when it is sized with R.Skin, such a great colour. Any way this post is to pre-empt Richard's master class and remind me to make sure we have all the materials /equipment that we need.

 I love all of these images, the two coloured ones were taken in artists studios, both are from group exhibition catalogue covers in the 1980s. The top image is Gillian Aryes and the bottom Frank Auerbach with his painting 'Vincent Terrace 1982-84' the title reveals that this painting took him two years to complete. You can almost smell the really oily dank paint and the turpentine its fabulous that the blistered paint work on the walls echo the painting.  Someone said they hated oil paint....(as they were trying to wash it off under the tap!) if you don't know how to clean it up it can be a nightmare. I love oil paint but only my own so I will be posting up some cleaning tips how very exciting!. The black and white image is of a performance by Janine Antoni 'Loving care', I think it's a great painting.

To heat up the wax for encaustic and the rabbit skin for sizing we used a small commercial double boiler. I just thought I would post a DIY alternative, I use this method in my studio and it seems to work reasonably well.  However I was talking to Andy and he mentioned that you can use sand instead of water. The advantage is that the sand keeps the tin cans upright. (I usually get around this by heating 3 cans at the same time) I will defiantly try the sand and post the results.  A Double boiler or one that use's two pans which fit together has the advantage that you can pour the wax/size much easier. 

J ust posting up a couple of pictures of the brushes that I showed you on tuesday, the ones for dry brushing in particular.  It's a good idea to keep one brush just for priming. (The large pale brush in the first image is perfect for both size and primers.)

Thank's to everyone that came prepared for the day, I enjoyed it. I do think that having tutorials before hand was helpful in terms of supplying you with appropriate materials. I am posting some of the painting experiments if any one else has any photographs I will post those up also. Please post any questions about the materials that we used on the day, where to get them...Most importantly you should be asking each other these question's now as you are the experts. Sarah.