Morning Glade 5x7
Hello and welcome to Tonalist painting with M Francis McCarthy.
Today's painting is 'Morning Glade' 5x7.
Our video features the progression of this painting from its early underpainting stages on up through the final finishing brushwork. Also featured is my usual rambling narration, so please check it out.
Today I would like to talk about white oil paint. I am subscribed to a newsletter from Natural Pigments. Natural Pigments is a company in the US that supplies artist with paints and pigments derived from natural sources. Natural Pigments also provides a lot of information about how oil painters in the past have painted.
Today I received a newsletter about zinc white. For the modern artist, there are only three white pigments available they are: lead white, titanium white and zinc white. For much of painting history, the only white available to the oil painter was lead white.
Lead white (while currently not favored by most artists) is the king of paints. I have written about lead white here. No other color lends itself as well to oil painting in color fastness, permanence and paint film flexibility. Sometime in the early part of the 20th-century titanium white was invented. Titanium white is the predominant white you will see available in most commercially made oil and acrylic white paints.
Zinc white has been available since the late 1700s. Zinc white is often added to tubes of paint marked as titanium white because zinc white has some unique attributes that titanium white does not. Titanium white is very opaque and slow drying. Zinc white is very translucent, dries quickly and helps ameliorate the extreme opaqueness of titanium white.
Lead white is very stable. Titanium white also quite stable. Zinc white, on the other hand, is like painting with glass. Here is the article that goes extensively into the myriad problems of zinc white. The primary issue with zinc white is that it is very brittle when dry and even in small quantities can create problems with modern paint films.
After reading this article (which helpfully lists all of the major paint manufacturers and their mixtures that include zinc white), I'm amazed that any paint manufacturer would use this color for anything but watercolor pigments.
I am concerned with the permanence of my work, this is one of the reasons why I paint on wood panels and avoid zinc white like the plague. I've been aware of this information for quite a while but I thought it would be germane to share this article with you now on the off chance that you are not hip to it
I love lead white and I cannot recommend it enough. Lead white is a very flexible paint though it does have one attribute that I have adjusted for, and that is, it is not very opaque unless you put it on very thickly. For this reason, I like to mix lead white and titanium white together on my palate and use that as my primary white.
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Morning Glade' 5x7; this is a painting that I painted three years old. I have progressed somewhat since this time but still a good painting and a motif that I have painted several times.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| 'Morning Glade' by M Francis McCarthy, 5x7 Oil Painting on Wood Panel |
Our video features the progression of this painting from its early underpainting stages on up through the final finishing brushwork. Also featured is my usual rambling narration, so please check it out.
Today I would like to talk about white oil paint. I am subscribed to a newsletter from Natural Pigments. Natural Pigments is a company in the US that supplies artist with paints and pigments derived from natural sources. Natural Pigments also provides a lot of information about how oil painters in the past have painted.
Today I received a newsletter about zinc white. For the modern artist, there are only three white pigments available they are: lead white, titanium white and zinc white. For much of painting history, the only white available to the oil painter was lead white.
Lead white (while currently not favored by most artists) is the king of paints. I have written about lead white here. No other color lends itself as well to oil painting in color fastness, permanence and paint film flexibility. Sometime in the early part of the 20th-century titanium white was invented. Titanium white is the predominant white you will see available in most commercially made oil and acrylic white paints.
Zinc white has been available since the late 1700s. Zinc white is often added to tubes of paint marked as titanium white because zinc white has some unique attributes that titanium white does not. Titanium white is very opaque and slow drying. Zinc white is very translucent, dries quickly and helps ameliorate the extreme opaqueness of titanium white.
Lead white is very stable. Titanium white also quite stable. Zinc white, on the other hand, is like painting with glass. Here is the article that goes extensively into the myriad problems of zinc white. The primary issue with zinc white is that it is very brittle when dry and even in small quantities can create problems with modern paint films.
After reading this article (which helpfully lists all of the major paint manufacturers and their mixtures that include zinc white), I'm amazed that any paint manufacturer would use this color for anything but watercolor pigments.
I am concerned with the permanence of my work, this is one of the reasons why I paint on wood panels and avoid zinc white like the plague. I've been aware of this information for quite a while but I thought it would be germane to share this article with you now on the off chance that you are not hip to it
I love lead white and I cannot recommend it enough. Lead white is a very flexible paint though it does have one attribute that I have adjusted for, and that is, it is not very opaque unless you put it on very thickly. For this reason, I like to mix lead white and titanium white together on my palate and use that as my primary white.
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Morning Glade' 5x7; this is a painting that I painted three years old. I have progressed somewhat since this time but still a good painting and a motif that I have painted several times.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| 'Morning Glade' by M Francis McCarthy (Detail) |
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| 'Morning Glade' by M Francis McCarthy (Detail 2) |