For a week I’ll be teaching high school and college art teachers at a university in Texas in June.
Oops! I received a number of emails from the university urging me to use water-based oils for the class. There are a number of companies scaring the gullible and risk adverse about alleged health consequences related to the use of some artist materials. I teach the use of professional methods and materials which I have employed for fifty years or so, including the use of oil paint and turpentine, and I’m still in perfect health at the advanced age of seventy-two. I’m afraid I have contempt for the whiny weanies of this world, will not teach something I don’t believe in and so I’ve cancelled the class.
Your answers on the OPA website blog were great. I think you hit it. We go into the studio and think we can slow down and take our sweet time and the painting dies. For me, it is often that since of urgency in a plein air work that attracts me. Bringing that inside would surely impact the energy of the studio painting and it is great advice. Thanks, Doug
Joe Anna
Joe, I have a student who seems to want to get things exactly right as she proceeds through the painting. As a result, the paint is overworked and loses vitality. I gave her an exercise to go through an entire painting without adjustments, cleaning the brush between mixtures and painting the large masses without corrections and so on through the painting with thicker and still uncorrected paint in the light. The result was a painting with much more “freshness”. I tried it myself and am happy with the result.
This may be another expression of vitality. To be honest, I got the idea from Charles Movalli.
Good to hear we’re on the same page, Joe