This is a common term for method (i)above, and is clearly the one familiar to most painters today. It must seem self- evident to us that mixing distinct colours (e.g blue and yellow) produces others, but to the medieval artist this appears to have been unknown. Since...
A support is whatever material onto which the paint of an artwork, including the primer, is applied. Slate, marble, copper, aluminium, glass and paper have all been used with some success as supports for oil paint, but many of these require unusual preparation and...
Usually, artists think about the choice of priming as they make their choice of support. The priming can be defined as the liquid application that, when dry, to some extent isolates paint layers from the support. This is necessary in the cases of wood and canvas,...
As is evident, a semi-absorbent layer of size is necessary for both oil and gesso primings. Art shops will sell size of sufficient quality for this purpose; decorators’ “size” sold in DIY stores may not be good enough, and may not be rabbit-skin glue at all. Size is...
If a priming is faulty then your efforts to achieve desired artistic qualities may be constantly thwarted, and the survival of the work might be irreversibly impaired. Excessively slick or excessively suctive primings are uncomfortable to work on. A slick ground,...
