Commercial Media
|
|
(Excerpts from ART HARDWARE: The Definitive Guide to Artists’ Materials, by Steven Saitzyk © 1987)Commercial MediaCommercially prepared media have a narrow range. They are primarily simple media, although occasionally intermediate and complex media can be found. Among the most commonly offered commercial painting media is a mixture of stand oil and turpentine, which usually carries a brand name. That such media as these continue to sell, and sell in quantity, testifies to either incredible laziness or a profound lack of understanding of these materials. With the exception of these media, many of the other painting media offered by manufacturers can be a justifiable convenience. In fact, most other commercial media consist either of all or part of some version of an oil-modified alkyd resin, which would be impossible to prepare at home. The use of alkyd as well as other synthetic resins has become so widespread that they have all but replaced many of the traditional ingredients used in commercially prepared media. Prepared media such as Liquin by Winsor & Newton, Zec by Grumbacher, and Res-n-gel by the Weber Company, are some examples of primarily oil-modified-alkyd resins. The paste like quality found in some of these media is often due to the addition of silica. Grumbacher's Gel is designed to give body to a paint mixture necessarily speeding the drying time. Liquin behaves similarly to a copal-drying oil medium and, in fact, similar formulations have been successfully offered by other manufacturers as a substitute for this medium. LeFranc & Bourgeois offers a ready-made Flemish Medium, based upon mastic and thickened oil with oxides, which has the consistency of a gel and which is sold in tubes. It also produces a medium it calls Venetian Medium, which is a readymade wax-oil medium prepared similarly to its Flemish Medium, except that a hard wax is used rather than mastic. This medium could be a viable alternative to preparing the beeswax and oil medium previously described. The only serious caution I would add about thinning prepared media that contain alkyd resins is that these resins are sensitive to over thinning and can break down chemically. I recommend that you use no more than 25 percent thinner to prepared media. So far, over the past ten years, these new prepared media have demonstrated great flexibility and durability whether applied thickly or thinly. (Excerpts from ART HARDWARE: The Definitive Guide to Artists’ Materials, by Steven Saitzyk © 1987)
|
Number of Visits to this site since Feb.18, 2008
Questions regarding materials and the
creative process will be considered a request for a consult and
|