For my second study with oil paints using the Zorn palette following on from Self Portrait with Model, I had a crack at Self Portrait in a Wolf Fur Coat (originally painted by Zorn in 1915 – 90 x 58.5cm) as I didn’t have a massive window of time for this one (about an hour and a half). I thought it might be a good option due to the fact that a fair proportion of this piece is the same colour (an off white).
Few things I learnt during this exercise:
- Tip for the new players (yup, that’d be me…) be aware of possible oil separation that my have occurred to the paint inside the tube. When I squeezed out a small amount of red paint onto the palette, it was preceded by decent a pool of oil (compared with the small amount of pigment). As there wasn’t much red in this piece, it didn’t really concern me too much. However the little pigment there was was diluted to the extent that the tinting strength was much weaker than I expected.
- I still had the same issue with modifying elements on the canvas and making a muddy mess, in particular trying to lighten certain aspects by apply white just wasn’t working. A happy accident with an overly wet brush showed me how it was much easier it was to simply remove the offending paint – probably obvious in hindsight but with acrylics drying as fast as they do, it hadn’t occurred to me that it was even a option. Wetting a brush and using it to wipe the paint back to the white ground gave me the exact effect I was unsuccessfully trying to achieve with the white paint.
- The slow drying aspect of the finished painting is becoming a bit of an issue for me however – notably keeping it away from little hands and dust etc. Letting it dry in a dark cupboard as I initially planned is apparently a bit of a no no (can cause the paint to yellow). It has been a couple of weeks now and is still tacky to the touch. Being small 10″ x 8″ paintings makes it a bit easier to keep well out of the way, but larger works would pose a bit of a problem in our house – some more research required in this area I think.
I am still quite intrigued by oils but I am wondering about the practicalities for my current situation.
Do I need to consider acrylics with a retarding medium, or oils with a medium added to quicken the drying rate? Personally, I’d rather just be able to use the paint straight from the tube.
Obviously another area requiring further exploration.
