Newsletter15

TECHNICAL INQUIRIES

A Soft Glow

Dear Artist:

I am working on an oil painting and trying to give the work a 'soft glow' to go with the picture. I've tried so many things but can't seem to get it. Any suggestions?

Thylan Marcus
New Haven, CT United States

Dear Thylan:

Wax paste can be added to linseed oil and dammar varnish to give the surface a soft glow. This quality appeals to artists of as widely different aesthetic styles as Bailey and Marden. Make sure that you do not use too much wax. The proportion should be 1/3 dammar, 1/3 oil, 1/3 wax. Test this by putting the medium and color on a glass. When it is dry, scratch with a fingernail; it should be scratchproof. If it scratches, reduce the amount of wax in your formula. A paste made from safflower oil and beeswax, produced by David Davis, also mixes smoothly with dammar varnish and oil paints

Olivia olivia@artcellar.net

Underpainting with Mixed Media

Dear Artist:

Is it okay to use other media for underpainting my oil paintings? I've never done it but it seems to be taboo in the art community whenever I mention it.

Lucas Bosch
London, England

Dear Lucas:

Oil was used first as part of mixed media. Although opinions vary, the undercoat for many renown painters (Grunewald to Bruegel) was executed in egg tempera and the oil paint was applied over it, both opaquely and in glaze. Today, you could use tempera and oil in the same way, as long as you work on a rigid support. But the new acrylic emulsion paints make an equally good underpainting for oil paint. Remember that while oil can be applied over a waterbase medium like egg tempera, no waterbase paint can be applied over oil--with one exception. Northern European Renaissance painters found that they could make sharp details by brushing fine strokes of egg tempera into a wet oil varnish. The tempera strokes did not blend into the oil, but they did merge into the form, thus highlighting such minutiae as single strands of hair.

Olivia
olivia@artcellar.net

Sand and Oil?

Dear Artist:

I learned to paint using pastels and used to put sand as a layer to create certain effects. Now I am using oil paints. Can I use sand with oil?

Patty Homer
West Berlin

Dear Patty:

Georges Braque, an apprentice house painter in his youth, learned the art of imitating in oils such diverse surfaces as woodgrain and marble. This feeling for contrasting textures stayed with him throughout his career, from his early collages of pasted paper and cardboard to his later method of mixing fine white sand with oil paint. The sand produces a subtle but lasting physical presence. If you experiment with this process, don't use too much sand. Sand tends to hold moisture, thereby weakening the glue action of the oil. The p.v.a. medium, with its stronger glue action, can sustain more sand.

Olivia olivia@artcellar.net

Painting in Layers?

Dear Artist:

What is the grisaille system? I went to a lecture and the lecturer talked about this system but did not explain it.

Barbara Kipper
Port Elizabeth, South Africa

Dear Barbara:

Ingres wrote about building up his paintings in thin grisailles---that is, in tones of gray applied underneath the final color coats. Ingres kept the grisaille Odalisque in his studio, while another version in full color hangs in the Louvre. The artist explained how to control values in the grisaille system. After the grisaille stage dried, he built up and smoothly blended the color. The result was a crisp fluidity, for the monochrome underneath clearly differentiated the values to be maintained. Yet, looking at a glowing, yet elusively delicate work such as Bather of Valpincon (by Ingres), there is no way to perceive this process.

Olivia olivia@artcellar.net

Care of Paintings

Dear Artist:

Is there anything I should do with my paintings to care for them when they are done? Could you just give me your basic idea in the care of paintings?

Joe Farmer
Saratoga, NY

Dear Joe:

Your completed works should receive as much careful attention to technical matters as do those in progress. To preserve your paintings in good condition, follow this list of dos and don'ts:

Do let paintings dry in light.
Do roll a painting face out. The larger the roll the less likely it will crack.
Do wait until a painting is dry for a month or more before varnishing---and the longer the better. Premature varnishing traps moisture between the paint film and the layer of varnish, resulting in a foggy film known as blooming.
Don't rub in oil on the surface to take out dry spots.
Don't wash a painting with a strong solution of soap and water. To remove dirt, use only a few drops of detergent to a cup of water. Do not let the surface stay wet.
Don't store paintings in a cold place. Cold causes cracks.
Don't use acrylic paints with oil brushes. Use only nylon brushes for acrylic. (Acrylic paints tend to damage oil brushes).
Don't clean a painting with a slice of potato. This is an old wives' tale.
Don't hang paintings over a heat source.
Don't key a painting too much after it is dry. This will produce cracks. (Keys are wooden, triangular pegs which are placed into the corner sots on the back of a commercial stretcher to tighten the canvas.)

Olivia olivia@artcellar.net

SPIRITUAL INQUIRIES

Type A Personality – What's Wrong?

Dear Dr. Olivia:

I love to work. I go at it with such energy that my family thinks something is wrong with me. I wake up every morning charged to get at my work and I go to bed still ticking inside about work. Is there anything wrong with enjoying my work? I love to talk about it and seek opportunities to grow and learn more. I want to be on top as number one and can't get there sitting back and waiting for it to come to me.

Hugo Proust
Los Angeles, CA, United States

Dear Hugo:

Where's your identity? What's driving you? What will happen once you get 'on top'?

'All man's efforts are for his mouth, yet his appetite is never satisfied.' Ecclesiastes 6:7

About A-type personalities - people who are obsessed with work. These people, it has been discovered, see their whole identity in terms of what they do and not in who they are. God help us if we see our identity in terms of our accomplishments rather than in being the objects of divine love. What will happen to us when we can't work any more? when we can't accomplish the things we used to? It's interesting that the word 'appetite' in the quoted scripture is the Hebrew word nephesh, meaning 'soul'. What the verse is saying to us is this: the soul can never be satisfied with anything less than God. And, Solomon adds, not even a bright mind and a good education can do so either. Both the fools and the wise end up in the same place if they do not know God.

If the soul could articulate its needs you would hear something like this: 'I'm so hungry...so thirsty...why won't someone give me what I really long for?' And what does the soul long for? God.

Is work giving you a buzz? If so, this behaviour is fraught with spiritual danger. Nothing fully satisfies the soul except God.

O God my Father, forgive me if I seek my identity in the things I do rather than finding it in who I am. May I fully realize that Your estimation of me is not based on my performance but on the fact that I belong to You. Amen.

Blessings,
Olivia
olivia@artcellar.net

He Has Everything and Still Complains

Dear Dr. Olivia:

I am fairly well off with a large home. I have a great family and good job. I have good friends. I have nothing to complain about. But something is missing. I just don't feel satisfied inside. I have a lot of interests and am very active: violinist, avid cyclist, golfer. My kids do well in school. My wife is beautiful and we get along very well. But sometimes I just want to scream because my soul feels like it wants to jump out of my body.

Trevor Davies
Kirkland, WA, United States

Dear Trevor:

Such a plight for those who have everything life can offer yet are prevented from enjoying it, not by circumstances, but by God Himself.

'God gives a man wealth, possessions...but God does not enable him to enjoy them...' Ecclesiastes 6:2

At first it seems almost unbelievable that God would allow someone to have the good things of life and then dampen the feelings of pleasure that these things can bring. Why would He do this? Is He an ogre who watches out for people who are enjoying themselves and then moves in to cruelly deny them any feelings of pleasure? Surely such a cat-and-mouse game is unworthy of Him. Those who know God are aware that His purposes are always beneficent. In other words, nothing He does is done out of peevishness or caprice. When God acts to deny people enjoyment it is because He wants to show them that He is the One who enables men and women to experience pleasure in things; the things themselves do not give pleasure.

To some that might sound manipulative, but divine love never exploits. God's actions might appear strange to us because we cannot see the end from the beginning. The point is that if people were able to find contentment in money then they would become spiritually myopic and look no further---money would become their idol. So the issue when reduced to basics is this: those who make money their god will never find contentment. Any god that usurps the place of the true God produces a spirit of anarchy in the soul. It therefore puts the soul 'out of joint', so to speak. The power to give contentment belongs to God, and God alone.

Also, there is nothing wrong in enjoying one's family---indeed Scripture encourages it. However, even the most loving family is powerless to quench the ache that resides deep in the human psyche. People are not big enough to fill the vacuum that exists in our souls when God is not present.

Life apart from God is marked by so much frustration if things are powerless to quench the ache that throbs at the core of our being, and what benefit even, would a life of a thousand years twice over bring?

O God, I see now why this book of Ecclesiastes is designed to silence me. Nothing can satisfy my soul except You. I need to learn this lesson for I tend to rely more on the visible than the invisible. Please help me, dear Father. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Blessings,
Olivia
olivia@artcellar.net

The Pain of Friendlessness

Dear Dr. Olivia:

I am a Christian. I love Jesus, yet I am so lonely. I have long morning and evening devotionals, but in all honesty, it doesn't seem enough. I go to work and have congenial relationships with all my associates and I am active in various clubs, but I am still lonely.

Milton Stone
Alberta, Canada

Dear Milton:

Some people are lonely because of the oppression of others, some because their own competitiveness separates them from others. In the Scripture below:

'A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.' Eccl. 4:12

We come face to face with a man who was lonely simply because he had no friends or family connections. How does he handle his isolation? He does what many do in such a situation---he throws himself into an endless round of activity and buries himself in work. But money and possessions are not much good when you have on one to share them with. Life lived on this level, says Solomon, is meaningless.

He then makes an interesting statement which is often misunderstood: 'Two are better than one...If one falls down, his friend can help him up...if two lie down together, they will keep warm' (vv. 9-11). The emphasis in these statements is on two people. But at the end of the section Solomon says something very strange: 'A cord of three strands is not quickly broken'. The point being made here is this: when you are in a close relationship with someone you love and who loves you, you not only have what the other person gives you, but you have a third quality---a strength and power which comes from the relationship, and which you could never have experienced if you had stayed apart. It's called 'synergism'. In the fusion of friendship you discover something you could never discover except in a relationship. it is your strength plus your friend's strength producing an even greater strength.

Solomon's point, of course, in saying all this is that if you want to make it through days of disillusionment, friendships are important. Make Jesus your best friend, but seek other friendships also.

Lord Jesus Chris, though You are my best friend, I see the value of other friendships also. Thank you for showing me that in a relationship with a friend there is a power greater than the sum of its two parts. May I discover more of this. Amen.

Blessings,
Olivia
olivia@artcellar.net

Send your letters and inquiries to olivia@artcellar.net