Snowdrops

In the last post I mentioned that the painting took 2 hours to complete, which was longer than it should have. I used Stand Linseed Oil mixed about 50/50 with Liquin. As I said at that time, the oil made ‘handling’ a little more difficult. This difficult ‘handling’, I think, contributed to the extra time required to finish the painting. It is difficult to describe what difficult handling is. If a layer of paint is put down and left untouched, or allowed to dry before overpainted or glazed, handling is not going to be an issue. Alla prima, or wet on wet painting will be a different matter completely. I complicate the process further by mixing many of the colours on the canvas.

For example, the blue of the sky is produced by laying down a mixed layer of blue and white. To this is added, on the canvas, pure blue and pure white, plus every other colour which will be used in the painting. The entire layer is manipulated and added to, until the effect is achieved. If no medium is used, the colours have to be ‘over brushed’ to get them to mix. This will flatten and remove any cloud details. Linseed Oil added to the paint mix will do exactly the same, but after very little brushing. This may be what is needed in some paintings, unfortunately, every sky will look the same if this is the only technique used in every painting. Liquin, in contrast, flows then becomes ‘tacky’ when brushed. The more brushing, the more ‘tacky’ it becomes. The whole process is controllable. Varying the amount of Liquin or solvent adds further control.

To test the benefits of Liquin, I painted another picture today. I used almost the same colours as in this painting, but with no Linseed Oil. I heaped the paint on, loads of wet on wet and it worked out OK. This painting took about an hour and a half. This painting will be the subject of the next post.

In conclusion, Liquin makes my style of painting easier. As mentioned previously, the last layer must be a vegetable oil like Linseed if I intend to varnish the painting. ‘Oiling out’ with pure Linseed Oil will cover the surface with a thin layer of oil which will harden and not be dissolved by later layers of varnish.

Here is the video of the painting process.