Staining with Oils

[Tarok]

In his Painting Whites article on ML, Mark Bannerman refers to painting pouches white white, and then doing a colour stain over the white... How does one do a stain? Do you apply a thick coat of oil paint and then take most of it off?

Please help...

Rudi

 

[btavis]

I assume Bannerman means glazing. Glazing is to thin the oils with something like Liquin or other medium so that they are transparent. You can thin oils with thinner but the pigment may not be evenly distributed. A glaze will provide a transparent pigment that has even stain charactertistics. You can then overcoat a base color causing the base color to be "filtered" by the glaze.

 

[My_name_1s_MUD]

Personally, I have had great results from using Marshall's Photo Oils. They are transparent inks that work very well for various types of shading.

 

[Einion]

Hi Rudi, I'm sure Mark means glazing in the broadest sense.

But as to how to actually do this, there are a number of different ways. Basically any transparent paint, or a paint used thinly enough to become transparent (transluscent is more accurate but you get the basic idea) can be used as a glaze. This will stain the paint over which it is applied, particularly if it is matt - much like what you see with a drop of coffee on a sheet of paper.

The three basic ways are:
brush on the oil at the standard consistency, then take most of it off with a clean brush;
thin the paint with spirits so it spreads easily;
make a true glaze, in the artists' sense, adding in a painting medium or extra oil.

Try all three, but in general I would suggest that the first and second are the way to go for most painting because we usually want to control gloss.

You can also use what amounts to a combination of any two or all three of the above.

Einion