Indirect Painting

Today's ART-Tickle deals with Indirect Painting. I am not aware of a French or Italian term for this method, but there may be one. Many famous painters that you are no doubt aware of employed this method with great success. Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, Van Eyck, El Greco, ...the list goes on. This method, whether using oil or acrylic paint, involves three or more distinct stages in a painting where layers are built upon with patience and forethought. The first stage is the underpainting. Painters begin this stage knowing that subsequent layers are going to cover this layer, although not completely. This stage may be done in a monochromatic fashion, all in gray (Grissaile Painting), or a variation of umbers or other colors, or may be done in full color. The painting is allowed to dry completely (usually 7 to 10 days for oils, 24 hours for acrylic), then a more opaque layer of paint is applied using full color, leaving much of the underpainting visible. After this layer dries, a final layer of glazes is used. Glazes are very thin, transparent color layers that change the hue of the lower layers, yet allow light to penetrate and refract or bounce off the lower colors. This creates an incredibly luminous affect. Typical glazes are made by using a couple of techniques. A clear medium may be applied over the dried paint to create a "couch" for the new color; then the new color is applied into the clear medium and wiped or brushed away until the desired affect is achieved. The other method is to mix the medium into the paint itself, creating a very thin, transparent paint that is applied over the dry area. These types of glazes are generally applied over light valued colors. A traditional glaze applied over a dark color generally may look muddy, or simply not work to create the affect properly. Scumbling is a glazing technique used over dark colors where a relatively dry brush is loaded with lighter value paint and lightly scrubbed over the darker paint so that the dark paints shows through the scumbled layer. This is quite effective and should be used along with traditional glazes to create luminous paintings. Indirect painting can take weeks to finish when using oil paints, and days to finish when using acrylics, but the patience required is usually greatly rewarded. This is my personal favorite method of painting and the one I use for the majority of my work.