Oil Painting Mediums: Taking the psychic guesswork out of mixing the perfect linseed oil medium
I think this blog title just got me that “Dark and Stormy Night Award”…
Storm Over Antigua, W.I., oil on canvas
Joking aside, oil painting mediums are used to thin oil paint, make blending oil paint easier, make them more spreadable on the canvas, slow or speed up the drying time, create a nice liquid like consistency for painting your signature, glaze a canvas and more. “Medium” is really just the vehicle that holds the color or pigment.
Here’s my favorite recipe for mixing a linseed oil medium that will meet your most basic needs with a couple variations: Mix together in a glass jar and keep sealed with an air tight lid when not in use.
Basic traditional formula: 1 part linseed oil to 1 part turpenine.
To dry faster: 1 part linseed to 2 parts turpentine. (Tip: Use in high humidity situations).
To dry slower: 2 parts linseed oil to 1 part turpentine. (Tip: Use in extremely dry climate).
Substitutions:
If you don’t like the smell of turpentine –an extract from an oily, exotic hardwood tree and extremely traditional in the oil painting medium formula, you can use odorless turpenoid or mineral spirits both of which are petroleum distillates. White spirits are not highly recommended since it can degrade the product over time. Read more
How to Buy A Canvas for Oil Painting Your First Oil Painting
“Teacher, what size canvas should I buy for my first oil painting?”
This is the most common question I get from my beginning oil painting students. It always makes me smile. I know they want me to say something ridiculous like “Buy any canvas 16″ x 20″ maximum to 4″ x 6″ minimum.” Beginning oil painting students have a lot of fear about buying a canvas for their first oil painting.
Conch Shell, oils on canvas
“First, do you know what you are going to paint?”
If the answer is “no” you should not go shopping because there is no way you can buy the most perfect canvas for your first (or next) painting. Talk about putting the cart before the horse!
The most important aspect to buying a canvas, for oil painting your first picture, is that you understand that the inner vision of your first oil painting is chemically and energetically imprinted on every cell of your body. There exists in the artist’s body a strange and beautiful dynamic tension –that even the artist is totally unaware of until the painting is completed and signed. The best way I can explain this tension is to perhaps coarsely defined it as ”the inner knowing or knowledge of the finished product, which exists in time and space as a completed painting, that the artist has become aware of at a subconscious level.” What I translate this into and tell every art student is this: Read more
Beginning Oil Painting – The Lesson of the “What Do I Paint?”
My First Oil Painting - Age 11
For more than ten years I taught beginning oil painting in Cupertino, CA in a community center setting that became a sort of open studio for more advanced painters who wanted to escape Silicon Valley and paint in a quiet setting with like minded folk.
The first lesson always begins with a talk about oil painting art supplies. I reveal what is needed and why…I even delve deep into the differences between water color versus oil painting brushes and use diagrams to help people remember the names of certain brushes. There is a good bit of info I share and then we discuss how to select an image to paint. This is the most important lesson of all. The idea behind this is so critical that if you get it wrong, you will never be a successful painter. Read more
Creative Writing Defintion and 7 Tips to Clear Writer’s Block
I call myself a creative writer. Those two words are the last two words at the bottom of the last page of my business resume. Partly, because it is tongue in cheek and partly because it is the truth. I really can’t tell if I love being a writer more than an oil painter, gourmet cook, business woman or mother. Being a writer is definitely up there in the top ten. And being a creative writer is the equivalent of have authentic European style mocha butter-cream frosting on my birthday cake.
Creative writers are generally at one end of the spectrum while technical writers are at the other. It’s somewhat like using artists and engineers to create a spectrum. It’s not to say that an engineer couldn’t be an artist of any sort, far from it as I have known and taught several engineers how to oil paint, but for the sake of this blog entry, let’s just look at creative writing and how you need it to help your blog be fresh and engaging and perhaps remove some “blog writer’s block”. Read more
DMOZ – Open Directory Project (Get your site in their directory to improve your rankings)
Raising your rankings happens a number of ways. Remember using WebsiteGrader for evaluating how far reaching your voice is being heard globally? Well, in your website’s report it ought to mention which search engines you haven’t registered with. If you have checked your site’s report card shortly after hanging your shingle and registering with all these online directories like Yahoo, DMOZ and the like it’s time for you to pour a Guinness and go sit outside on the patio. Better yet, open up your calendar and enter a date 60-days or so in the future to return to these directories to check if your site got listed. This all takes patience, my friend. And the reward of patience, is patience.
Once your site submission has been received a DMOZ editor will review your submission for inclusion in the directory. If it gets accepted into the Open Directory –and that may take anywhere from 2 weeks to several months for your site to be listed on partner sites which use the Open Directory data, such as AOL Search, AltaVista, HotBot, Google, Lycos, Netscape Search, etc. –all due to the fact that each of these search engines has their own agenda for checking with DMOZ. Read more
