Post by bunni on Apr 4, 2014 4:55:21 GMT
Writing an artist or traditional painter? Here's some inside info you can use for your artist.
> A few types of paint:
Acrylic - usually on artist panels or canvases, but also on paper (you can use Airbrush medium or flow releaser to thin acrylic to watercolour consistency).
Oil - usually on artist panels or canvases.
Gouache - Usually on posterboard of paper (watercolour paper is good here).
Watercolour - Usually on watercolour paper.
Acrylics are a water-based paint. Water-based paints can be thinned with water, though in the case of acrylics, it is best to thin them with 'mediums' which are fluids made for the job. You can also use acrylic flow releaser (to make it act more like watercolour paint) or acrylic retarder (to slow drying). Acrylics dry quickly, so your artist has to go quickly! A blob of paint can dry right through in about 15 or 30 minutes. Also, you can't blend acrylic. You need to create blends. You can do this by putting down three blobs of paint, and adding black to one blob (to make a darker shade), and then white (for a lighter shade). You paint these side-by side to get a graded shading. OR, if your artist is very quick and experienced, he or she will use retarder and a stippling effect (tapping the canvas or board with a brush with paint on it) to create the illusion of blending. Either way, your artist must lay out his or her work and be ready to ignore phone calls, people, just about everything to get down to business.
Oil paints. These aren't water-based, clearly. They're a bit difficult to use if you are an acrylic artist. If you make your own oil paints, you must deal with some elements that are toxic, so you have to be careful and clean about it! Your expert artist may do this in her/his spare time! Oils don't dry when heat is applied because the drying of oil paints is a chemical reaction. They can take days (even years) to dry. Waiting for a painting to dry can drive your artist batty! You can thin your oils with liquin, this will help you paint thin lines well. But oil paint is very buttery in texture, and it is designed to blend beautifully. When painting, you must use the principal of fat over thin (the first layer is thin), to avoid having the paint dry unevenly, or slide on the canvas. Finally, as oil paintings age, the oil content gives them a sort of golden glow that is considered really beautiful. If your artist is in art school, this is probably a, or the, dominant medium he or she paints in. It's important for such a student to plan ahead to have the painting be dry enough to move about so it's ready for critique.
Gouache, or egg-paint/tempra paint, is water-based. There's also acryl gouache, which is an acrylic-based paint (also water-based). Most artists don't produce big works in this type of paint, but your artist may take one look at the opaque, luminous effects and decide this is his or her thing. Gouache can be very uniform, and is often used in painting posters. On watercolour paper, it's smooth and gives beautiful even colours that look very good in blocks -- you can blend it. It's difficult to describe how good gouache is at manipulating light, but your artist may sit back and just love the softly glowing effect that can come with gouache.
Acryl gouache can be used with acrylics, or water soluble oils, or on its own. It's also very smooth and luminous. If you have a young, trendy artist (guy or girl) in more avant-garde styles (like lowbrow/pop surrealism) it may be worth noting that acryl gouache come in glitter colours. Your artist may freak out when he or she finds this out. To your artist there may be nothing better than adding to the luminous nature of gouache with glitter!
Watercolour paint. Water-based. Done on watercolour paper. This type of paint is very difficult to control. Your artist can either exploit that, throwing a lot of artful colour around, or may paint 'tightly' -- being very careful that there is no watercolour bleed. This really depends on the character of the artist! Watercolours classically don't have a 'white' colour (the modern ones do, but a classically trained watercolour may prefer to use the white of the paper). If your artist wants to maintain white (say for painting white lace) on the paper, he or she will brush on a white masking fluid that can be peeled away after the painting is finished and dry. It's really a striking and beautiful effect when done right. It can be staggering when done well, and your artist may be a master of creating these intricate masks for his or her work. Watercolour is very fluid and dries at the speed of water, it's very transparent and sheer. White-stippling effects can be achieved by throwing salt grains onto wet watercolour paper. Simply shake or brush off the salt grains when the painting is dry. Salt on watercolour paper can create beautiful gradations in colour. If you want to see how creative this can look, image search on the internet "Using salt on watercolour".
There are a lot of tricks with these types of paints. Everything from letting snow fall and melt on watercolours, to spraying a watercolour with white gouache and quickly wiping areas away to create a feeling of mist. A little Internet research on painting tricks will get you more info! Try to imagine your artist actually doing these tricks. If your character is very controlled, the painting will probably follow the mind. If he, or she, paints inside the lines in life, you'll probably see the same in his or her paintings.
I know this is very sketchy (har-har) <g>, but I hope it helps! Please add onto this if you can!
Cheers!
> A few types of paint:
Acrylic - usually on artist panels or canvases, but also on paper (you can use Airbrush medium or flow releaser to thin acrylic to watercolour consistency).
Oil - usually on artist panels or canvases.
Gouache - Usually on posterboard of paper (watercolour paper is good here).
Watercolour - Usually on watercolour paper.
Acrylics are a water-based paint. Water-based paints can be thinned with water, though in the case of acrylics, it is best to thin them with 'mediums' which are fluids made for the job. You can also use acrylic flow releaser (to make it act more like watercolour paint) or acrylic retarder (to slow drying). Acrylics dry quickly, so your artist has to go quickly! A blob of paint can dry right through in about 15 or 30 minutes. Also, you can't blend acrylic. You need to create blends. You can do this by putting down three blobs of paint, and adding black to one blob (to make a darker shade), and then white (for a lighter shade). You paint these side-by side to get a graded shading. OR, if your artist is very quick and experienced, he or she will use retarder and a stippling effect (tapping the canvas or board with a brush with paint on it) to create the illusion of blending. Either way, your artist must lay out his or her work and be ready to ignore phone calls, people, just about everything to get down to business.
Oil paints. These aren't water-based, clearly. They're a bit difficult to use if you are an acrylic artist. If you make your own oil paints, you must deal with some elements that are toxic, so you have to be careful and clean about it! Your expert artist may do this in her/his spare time! Oils don't dry when heat is applied because the drying of oil paints is a chemical reaction. They can take days (even years) to dry. Waiting for a painting to dry can drive your artist batty! You can thin your oils with liquin, this will help you paint thin lines well. But oil paint is very buttery in texture, and it is designed to blend beautifully. When painting, you must use the principal of fat over thin (the first layer is thin), to avoid having the paint dry unevenly, or slide on the canvas. Finally, as oil paintings age, the oil content gives them a sort of golden glow that is considered really beautiful. If your artist is in art school, this is probably a, or the, dominant medium he or she paints in. It's important for such a student to plan ahead to have the painting be dry enough to move about so it's ready for critique.
Gouache, or egg-paint/tempra paint, is water-based. There's also acryl gouache, which is an acrylic-based paint (also water-based). Most artists don't produce big works in this type of paint, but your artist may take one look at the opaque, luminous effects and decide this is his or her thing. Gouache can be very uniform, and is often used in painting posters. On watercolour paper, it's smooth and gives beautiful even colours that look very good in blocks -- you can blend it. It's difficult to describe how good gouache is at manipulating light, but your artist may sit back and just love the softly glowing effect that can come with gouache.
Acryl gouache can be used with acrylics, or water soluble oils, or on its own. It's also very smooth and luminous. If you have a young, trendy artist (guy or girl) in more avant-garde styles (like lowbrow/pop surrealism) it may be worth noting that acryl gouache come in glitter colours. Your artist may freak out when he or she finds this out. To your artist there may be nothing better than adding to the luminous nature of gouache with glitter!
Watercolour paint. Water-based. Done on watercolour paper. This type of paint is very difficult to control. Your artist can either exploit that, throwing a lot of artful colour around, or may paint 'tightly' -- being very careful that there is no watercolour bleed. This really depends on the character of the artist! Watercolours classically don't have a 'white' colour (the modern ones do, but a classically trained watercolour may prefer to use the white of the paper). If your artist wants to maintain white (say for painting white lace) on the paper, he or she will brush on a white masking fluid that can be peeled away after the painting is finished and dry. It's really a striking and beautiful effect when done right. It can be staggering when done well, and your artist may be a master of creating these intricate masks for his or her work. Watercolour is very fluid and dries at the speed of water, it's very transparent and sheer. White-stippling effects can be achieved by throwing salt grains onto wet watercolour paper. Simply shake or brush off the salt grains when the painting is dry. Salt on watercolour paper can create beautiful gradations in colour. If you want to see how creative this can look, image search on the internet "Using salt on watercolour".
There are a lot of tricks with these types of paints. Everything from letting snow fall and melt on watercolours, to spraying a watercolour with white gouache and quickly wiping areas away to create a feeling of mist. A little Internet research on painting tricks will get you more info! Try to imagine your artist actually doing these tricks. If your character is very controlled, the painting will probably follow the mind. If he, or she, paints inside the lines in life, you'll probably see the same in his or her paintings.
I know this is very sketchy (har-har) <g>, but I hope it helps! Please add onto this if you can!
Cheers!