Kindly advise: I work in oils, but rely heavily on alkyd paints to improve drying times. I don’t mean alkyd mediums such as Liquin, but actual alkyd paints such as the W&N Griffin range. According to W&N, it is acceptable to use alkyds for underpainting, and then work with regular oils over alkyds. I take this a step further. My underpainting is pure alkyd paint, and for the subsequent layers I mix alkyd and oil paints together. I mix a bit of alkyd white with oil white, a bit of alkyd black with oil black. These hybrid mixtures are then used to mix other colours which dry fairly quickly. The upper layers of my paintings consist of pure oil paint, with some medium added to follow the fat-over-lean rule. I should mention that I work on rigid supports, usually on a Gesso ground. Can anyone foresee any issues with this technique? Your advice would be appreciated!
Thank you Brian!
That seems like a perfectly sound technique to me. It is really no different than adding different amounts of alkyd medium to specific parts of a painting except in this case, the paint is leaner than when a medium is added. Alkyds have been shown to be a bit more brittle than paint oil paints overtime but this should not be a problem, especially if applied to a rigid support. The use of alkyds under oil layers even follows the idea of more flexible over less.
Latest Post: Oil Gilding Mordant Our newest member: Dantanamo Recent Posts Unread Posts
