March 2022 | Page 2 of 2 | Carol L. Douglas

March 7, 2022

Monday Morning Art School: that sinking feeling

Over time, the dark passages in an oil painting can grow hazy. In watercolors, the beautiful, jewel tone on the palette can look flat and dull after the paper dries. That’s ‘sinking’ color, and an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure.

Clear Morning on Bunker Hill, 24X36, $3985 framed.

Oil painting: Sinking is caused by the displacement of the oil in the top layer. It’s most obvious in dark passages, but that’s only because the dusty haze is most visible there. It appears slowly over time—a painting that was once exuberantly colorful is suddenly dull. The different drying times of pigments means that color will sink unevenly across the canvas, giving it an irregular, blotchy look. Details that were once subtly beautiful will disappear.

Sinking can be repaired by oiling out or varnishing, but this may need to be repeated to keep the painting beautiful. If a painting is sold, you have no idea if it’s losing its color. It’s far better to do it right in the first place.

Tom Sawyer’s Fence, 14X18, $1275 unframed.

Sinking has three common causes:

Too much solvent—the painter has not mastered the art of using unadulterated paint or painting mediums in the top layer. He relies too much on odorless mineral spirit (OMS) to get good flow. The OMS takes the place of the linseed oil binder and then evaporates. That leaves the pigment particles isolated, with no oil surround. Air doesn’t have the same refractive index as linseed oil, so a pigment that looks dark and beautiful in solution looks dull and grey when the binder disappears.

Not enough oil in the top layer of paint—this is why we keep repeating that old saw, ‘fat over lean.’ There’s enough oil in modern paints to make a solid top layer, but only if applied in proper thickness. If you want to paint thin, you must cut your paint not with OMS but with an oil-based medium.

Over-absorbent grounds—acrylic gesso is more absorbent than oil gesso, but a well-prepared acrylic ground is fine. However, a very inexpensive board may not have enough ground to stop oil from seeping through. An aftermarket coating of gesso is a good cure. Non-traditional grounds like paper and raw fabric need very careful preparation.

Bunker Hill overlook, full sheet watercolor, available. One of the advantages of Yupo is that there is no sinking.

Watercolor: “The difficulty in watercolors is not that it is ‘unforgiving’, as amateurs widely misbelieve: it is that it begs for fussing,” wroteBruce MacEvoy. That fussing takes the form of overworking passages. Alla prima, or ‘on the first strike’ is vital in watercolor.

We want the pigments to stay on the top of the paper, rather than sink into it where they can’t be seen. The cellulose fibers of watercolor paper were laid down in a stiff mat so that pigments will sit nicely on top. Reworking wet-on-wet, scrubbing, and other repairs cause the fibers to unravel, creating a microscopic forest of random threads. Paint sinks into its crevices. The color is duller and, worse, blotchy.

The deck of American Eagle, from my sketchbook from Age of Sail workshop.

Most watercolor paper is coated with gelatin or other sizing. This controls its absorption of paint. When you do a preliminary wash of color, you’re wetting the paper along with establishing primary shapes. If this wash layer is allowed to dry completely before the next layer is applied, the water and paint mix with the sizing and create a new layer, comprised of binder, sizing and pigment. That new, dense sizing layer can help hold successive layers of paint on the surface.

But if you ‘lick’ the wet paper constantly with your brush in an attempt to control minor flaws, you interrupt this process. Unless the paper dries completely between approaches, each pass with the brush lifts more paper fibers. That disturbance increases the capillary action that draws the pigment deeper into the paper. Overworked passages look dull and fuzzy.

Of course, the type and quality of the paper you use matters. Hot press paper is more tightly-compacted, making it more tolerant of overbrushing. Cold-press paper has less sizing and looser fibers. It tolerates less fussing.

March 4, 2022January 10, 2023

I’d rather be painting

We don’t control our legacy; we just do our best work and hope for the best. But, please, if you love me, don’t tell me you like my writing better than my painting.

Pull up your Big Girl Panties, 6X8, is one of the paintings at Rye Arts Center this month.

Next Thursday, I give a short talk at the opening of Censored and Poetic at the Rye Arts Center in New York. It will be livestreamed; you can register here. I’m no stranger to speaking; I generally lecture for 25 minutes each week to my painting classes. That takes me about three hours to research and write.

Cutting that in half increases the prep time exponentially. The more economical the text, the longer it takes to prepare. Certainly, the more emotionally engaged you are with the subject, the more difficult it is to put it in lucid order, and I’m passionate about my subject.

Spring, 24X30, is one of the paintings at Rye Arts Center this month.

The net result is that I’ve used my entire week writing and practicing my talk. I’ll get out tomorrow for a few hours of plein airpainting in the snow, but that’s only because I’m doing a photo shoot with Derek Hayes.

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time recently writing. And yet, I don’t think of myself as a writer, but a painter. This winter, it seems, I’m a writer whose subject is painting. Or, perhaps I’m a painter who writes.

It’s all very annoying. I’ve spent many years learning the craft of painting and almost none learning to write. That comes as naturally to me as talking.

Michelle Reading, 24X30, is one of the paintings at Rye Arts Center this month.

All of us carry these labels. I told someone recently that my husband was a programmer. He corrected me, because he is—of course—a software engineer. Not being in the profession, I don’t understand the difference, but it clearly matters.

Labels can be limiting. Mid-century America used to talk about the ‘Renaissance man.’ This was a polymath, a person who was a virtuoso at many things. That’s very different from the pejorative ‘Jack of all trades and master of none’ that we sometimes use to describe a person who can’t light on any one thing and do it well.

Polymathy was, in fact, a characteristic of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Gentlemen (and some ladies) were expected to speak multiple languages, pursue science as a passionate avocation, play musical instruments, and draw competently, all while fulfilling their roles as aristocrats and courtiers. Of course, that was only possible because a whole host of peons (that would be you and me) attended to their every need from birth.

This Little Boat of Mine, 16X20, is one of the paintings at Rye Arts Center this month.

Having to work and do your own laundry tends to cut into one’s leisure time. In fact, in America, we have an inversion of the historic distribution of leisure. Our elite are workaholics. Wealthy American men, in particular, work longer hours than poor men in our society and rich men in other countries.

This leaves no time to do other things. It also affects our overall culture, since culture is the byproduct of leisure. We used to love highbrow things like classical music and art because the well-educated had time to turn their hobbies into art. Today our culture is much earthier, for good or ill.

Loretta Lynn made a commercial in the 1970s which opened with, “Some people like my pies better than my singin’.” I remember that and her 1970 hit single, Coal Miner’s Daughter, and, sadly, nothing else of her three-time-Grammy-Award oeuvre.

We don’t control our legacy; we just do our best work and hope for the best. But, please, if you love me, don’t tell me you like my writing better than my painting.

March 2, 2022January 10, 2023

Don’t look at the hill

My asthma is teaching me life lessons that are applicable to painting and any other heroic endeavor.

Clary Hill Blueberry Barrens, full sheet watercolor, available.

My asthma, which is usually quiet, has been kicking up since I had COVID. I find myself stopping to suck air as I climb Beech Hill in the morning.

Beech Hill is no great shakes as hills go, since its summit is only a few hundred feet higher than my house. I climb it every morning, which gives me a good base level of cardiovascular fitness (and around 6000 steps to start my day). I figure that a little cardio work each morning will give better long-term results than killing myself a few times a week at the gym.

Early Spring on Beech Hill, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas, 12X16, $1449 framed.

Painting is like that, too. In their Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, David Bayles and Ted Orland make the point that the best art is made by people who do it over and over. A half-hour drawing every morning will yield quiet, positive results that no painting marathon can.

We’ve had a cold winter here in New England. Yesterday, it was -2°F. as we set out. Sensible people don’t go rambling in those temperatures, but rambling is a habit, and habit forces me out the door. In my professional life, I’m in a phase where I’ve spent most days ‘putting out fires’ rather than working on new material. There will always be challenges, but habit alone forces me back into my studio.

Mountain Path, 11X14, oil on canvasboard, available.

I’ve started repeating a mantra as my chest tightens: “Don’t look at the hill.” If I look at the distance I still have to climb, the tightness doubles and I have to stop. I know I’m psyching myself out, but I can’t seem to stop it. So, in the steepest parts of my climb, I concentrate assiduously on my footing. It’s better not to contemplate the enormity of what lies before me.

A few weeks ago, a student asked me how long it takes to learn to paint. Because he’s tough, I answered honestly: it takes years. But to focus on that is like looking up at the hill; it makes every step harder.

That dissuades many people from even trying. But time elapses whether or not we’re doing anything useful. It’s easy to fritter away, as all those people who were going to learn second languages during lockdown have learned to their dismay.

Christmas Eve, 6X8, oil on canvasboard, available.

I’m planning on walking the length of Hadrian’s Wall in Britain in May. It’s the wall’s 1900^th anniversary and Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee. Walking across an entire country sounds absurd to an American, but it’s a shorter distance (84 miles) than from my house to the New Hampshire border. However, it will be a series of long days in the company of friends who are all younger than me. And northern England is hilly.

I should be seriously training right now, and instead I’m unable to keep up my usual four-mile-a-day pace. I’ll regret ruining this trip for my companions, so I occasionally wonder if I should just bow out now.

However, I’m old enough to realize the truth in the adage, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Worrying about tomorrow is a great way to stop myself from doing anything today. That’s true of painting or any other heroic endeavor. Instead of panicking, I’ll just challenge myself again this morning. And, lest you worry, I have an appointment with my nurse-practitioner on Friday.