Happy New Year

Happy New Year

We will be traveling for the next three weeks, so I suppose I will not be able to write much on this blog. From here I wish you all a Happy New Year! If one of your New Year Intentions might be “Learn to paint better” I will be here also in 2013 to help you!2013

optical ilusions
Have fun with these optical illusions. See you next year.

About using painting medium.

About using painting medium.

One of the most asked questions in my portrait painting classes is about using painting medium. “When do I use painting medium?”

medium blSometimes I might rub the whole canvas with a neutral drying medium just before starting to paint, I mean at the beginning of the day. I do so, because I want to make the canvas suitable for receiving my paint. Nothing is more annoying than paint not willing to come of your brush. Mixing the paint with  medium on the palette also is a way to get the same result but there is a danger to use too much of the medium at once. I said “sometimes”. I depends on the canvas. If the canvas is really dry and sucking this approach is useful. If the prepared canvas is already oily then don´t do this. During the first stage, in the face, I hardly use any medium. In large background surfaces I might dilute paint with citrus turpentine; a thin wash as if it was watercolour. Later I come back with the right layer of paint. See also this page.

Read  what Talens says about using painting medium.

WHEN DO I USE PAINTING MEDIUM? Whether a medium is used depends on the chosen technique. With oil colours there are two possible techniques: ‘Allaprima’ and ‘layered painting’.

‘Allaprima’ means that the painting will be painted ‘wet-into-wet’. With this technique the colours are mixed not only on the palette but also on the painting itself, and the paint can be continued to be thinned with the same solvent or medium, or the paint can be used pure.

Layered painting means that the painting is made up of various layers. A subsequent layer can only be applied once the previous layer is dry enough for it to no longer dissolve. Meticulous use of the various solvents is advised in connection with the adherence of the individual layers. Through anchoring, oil colours adhere into a porous ground. If a thick layer of pure oil colour were to be allowed to dry, then this would not be porous enough for a good adherence of the next layer.

Layered painting uses a technique that is called ‘fat-over-lean’, which also can be described as flexible over less flexible. For the first layer the paint is thinned with white spirit or turpentine. Due to the thinning there is relatively little oil on the painted surface. The layer is ‘lean’.

Once the first layer is dry enough, the second layer is applied, thinned with Painting Medium. Talens Painting Medium consists of three components: oil, resin and white spirit. The extra added oil feeds the lean first paint layer by filling the pores that are formed by the evaporated solvent. At the same time this second layer can also adhere well to the underlying layer. The evaporation of the white spirit forms new pores which allow for the adherence of a subsequent layer. The third ingredient, resin, makes the paint layer stronger.

If we apply a third layer, we need to use a medium that is fatter still in order to feed and strengthen the underlying layers. If a painting is made of more layers, then the mentioned thinning agents can be mixed proportionately from lean to increasingly fatter.

The last layer to be applied is usually a glazing paint layer. Glazing is the application of a transparent layer of paint. No brush stroke may be seen in a glaze as the brush strokes of the underlying paint are visible. Various glazing mediums can be used, such as Talens Glazing Medium, Alkyd Medium, Venetian Turpentine and Stand Oil. These mediums are fatter than the painting medium and allow the paint to flow without showing any brush stroke.

Portrait of a young lady

Portrait of a young lady

Our friend Jenny was so kind to be my model. I made a very short video of the whole process. As you may notice I did the drawing using a grid. Usually I don´t do that, but it was for this demonstration. Later you can see a complete video of this preparation. First I made the drawing in charcoal and later I repeated in red colour pencil. The underpainting was made in raw umber, oil paint. Like in all my video´s the guitar is by Rob Kietselaer. Enjoy this demonstration.

Trip to Madrid.

Madrid Retiro

Trip to Madrid.

Last week I promised to take and show you some pictures of some details of the paintings of Martin Rico in the Prado Museum. Of course it was forbidden to do so, almost they bundled me out of the museum! The exhibition was great. But what me impressed the most were his drawings in the little sketch books. Marvelous!

Tower of the ladies
Martin Rico

Inspired by his paintings of reflections of boats and buildings on the water I made this photograph in the Retiro Park behind the Prado.

Madrid Retiro
Madrid Retiro


Young artist

Young artist Kimbal Bumstead

Yesterday we had visit of Kim, a young English artist. We met him here in Chelva at friends. He offered to help me getting started with Final Cut Pro, the program in which I want to edit my video´s in the future. During lunch he told about the trip he made over the last year, hitchhiking through Europe. We had an interesting conversation about how to create a future as an artist. The experiences of the last forty years from Helma and me opposite the future expectations of Kim. What do you wish of an artist´s life, and can you make a living out of it? An open and enthusiastic conversation with perhaps the most important conclusions: It will not always be easy but don’t give up and keep believing in yourself. And above all: don’t go for cheap success! I am convinced Kim wil find his way.


Watch the slideshow of his last trip and listen to his beautiful story.

Kim: “This slideshow is the prelude to a book, which is the fragmented anthology of a series of encounters. These encounters took place inside cars, truck cabins, roadsides, cafés, and at border crossings throughout Europe. Between January and December 2012, I travelled overland on foot and by hitchhiking through a series of lines that I had marked on a map, and the people who I met on the way form the basis of these encounters. I wanted to see this as a one to one performance piece in which the audience stumbled on the performance by chance. I was the protagonist, the performer, producing a social sculpture that moved physically through small roads, carrying local traffic that ultimately contained drivers who would invite me into their homes. 

At night I slept in fields, gas stations and sheds. Occasionally also in truck cabins and on living room floors, and in the morning I would go back to the road and wait. Every place I waited I took a photograph of the road looking ahead. Each road the same, each day the same, but each encounter unique. Through the stories, the photos take on the history, memory and energy of those who inhabit that place, but also the disinterest of those who simply pass through as a transit route to go somewhere else knowing nothing, or guessing, or simply not wanting to know. 
There was no script to these meetings, as one might expect from a one to one performance, each encounter was unique depending on the energy I received from the person I met. I noticed however, as I moved across borders, that certain themes were reoccurring, the fantasy of a place on the other side, the fear, hatred or envy of ones neighbours, and the glorification of the place I call my home. London – a living organism – neither a city nor a nation – that drifts around the imaginations of searchers and seekers. She does not belong to anybody, but almost everyone I met had some connection to her. 
The resulting text loosely becomes a projection of home – mine and others – exploring notions of us and them, absurdities and tensions across borders, and an intimate insight into the lives of ordinary Europeans. Europe – a garden with walls.

During 2012 I made a triangle through Europe through England, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium and Spain.
This text is a selection from over 300 encounters.
This project has been supported by and presented as a live performance at BasementArtsProject – Leeds, SUPERMARKET independent art fair – Kulurhuset, Stockholm, PAiN residency programme (Performance Art in Norrbotten) – Luleå, Sweden, Ptarmigan – Helsinki and Tallinn, Bunkier Sztuki – Krakow, Poland, Bridewell Gallery – Liverpool Independents Biennial