Introduction to Part II
We're back with my grand experiment of oil painting Ta'alaq's white-grey color dark to light. In Part I, I talked about the goal and the initial primer and basecoat layers. I also talked a lot about oil paints and how they dry because that's often a question that folks have when it comes to this kind of paint. Besides, we need to know a bit more about our chosen medium if we're going to avoid problems later, right? As for myself, I don't usually use driers or other mediums. Instead, I lean into the linseed oil as a medium and alkyds if I want to speed anything up. But for the most part, I work with oils' natural drying time rather than trying to force anything as a matter of course, but I have that luxury, don't I? I don't paint for a deadline so I can let something sit for weeks or months if need be. So if you need your oil paints to dry faster, consider doing a deep dive into the links provided in Part I as there's a lot of good stuff there. And, as always, experiment on junkers to get a feel for things and to see how they perform before using that stuff on your actual piece. Who needs a headache, right?
Anyway, okay...so as a reminder, here's where I started: Ta'alaq in charcoal grey done with an alkyd paint first layer...
So now that we're at the launch site, let's blast off!...FOOM!...
SECOND AND THIRD LAYERS
Now there are two things I wanted to avoid with this dark-to-light approach. First was a wet-horse effect that’s easy to stumble into with this method, especially with a white-grey. If I wasn’t intense and careful enough with the progressive layers of White then, he’d look like a white horse hit with a hose rather than a dark-skinned grey horse with a fine coat. So there was that tightrope to walk. But there was another: It’s alarmingly easy to slide into stylization with this technique by “outlining” the muscles in dark grey by only painting the “plateaus” of the muscle surfaces and not getting adequately into the muscle grooves, if that makes any sense. So I had to make sure I painted White into those crevices well enough so he’d look realistic rather than “outlined,” making for yet another balancing act. In short, there were a couple of ways I could royally hose this up, both entirely dependent on how savvy I was in progressively applying the White. A lot of squinting would be involved with this guy, a trick you can use to generalize the look of what you're doing for a more objective view.
As for the colors I’m using for the actual painting, the white is Gamblin Fast Dry Titanium White because it dries a lot faster than Windsor & Newton Titanium White. Really, the latter can take up to two weeks to dry and I just don’t want to deal with that with all the layers I'll need, so I’m opting for the Fast Dry option.
Why did I opt for that when there’s the even faster-drying Gamblin FastMatte Titanium White? Why that choice? Well, because the FastMatte paint uses an alkyd resin as a quick-drying binder whereas the Fast Dry uses linseed oil as a binder, but it's modified to make its polymerization process happen faster. And I like that linseed oil consistency better than the alkyd consistency as it's more luminous and smear-y, more like beautiful oil paint…because, well, it is oil paint. That wasn't an issue with the alkyd Ivory Black because that was just the basecoat. But for actual finessed smearing around of paint, I prefer the linseed oil base for "feel" and effect. So Fast Dry White it was. Now as for the dry time difference between Fast Dry and FastMatte, the Fast Dry is right in between the FastMatte and normal Titanium White, and I can live with that. Not as speedy as the FastMatte, but I figured it could work close to the class timeline all the same.
*Note: FastMatte was discontinued in 2024. Doh! There is a Gamblin Quick Dry White that uses an alkali refined linseed oil to dry quickly, being nearly the same product as the Fast Dry.
The trick to layering on the progressive opacity of the White was two-fold. First, you need excellent lighting. I highly recommend the Redgrass studio light. It's not cheap at nearly $300 but it has been a game changer for me for nailing tones, effects, intensities, and colors far more accurately, and with far less eye strain and a lot more clarity. If you don't want something so expensive though, try an Ott Light. These are fantastic as well and will really be one of your best tools in your painting studio. Because when it comes to painting, lighting is everything! Your paintjobs will only be as good as your lighting! Indeed, your lighting, your paint, and your brushes are your painting success trifecta! Get the best you can afford. But one caution with lighting: A lot of lighting today, particularly LED lighting, has adjustable "temperatures," those usually being natural (neutral), "warm" (skews to the reds and golds) and "cool" tones (skews to the blues and greens). So make sure the temperature of all your lighting is all the same if you use multiple lamps, and ideally with the natural setting. Like don't mix warm and cool light and expect to ping your tones accurately. Those temperature differences will confuse your brain and hose up your colors, and right under your nose. So pick one temperature and stick with it for all your lights, whether natural, cool, or warm. In this then, don't mix incandescent and LED lighting as the former skews to the warm spectrum and the latter to the cool spectrum (unless it's adjustable into a warm setting). As for the second trick with the White opacity, having a "gas pedal" with its intensity was useful. For that then, I found myself drybrushing a lot for the control it afforded. So how did I do it? I just put a bit of paint on my brush, brushed a bit of it out on a shop towel (use this specific brand because it doesn't shed) and proceeded to strategically smear it onto the surface. If I needed to buff it to even it out, I simply used an E.L.F. Eye Crease brush because its size gave me more control in tight areas (and it also doesn't shed and it costs only $3!). In fact, E.L.F. make-up brushes make great buffing and drybrushing tools for oils! I use them almost exclusively now when I oil paint.
However, after all was said and done, after even two layers, the result was icky. Like seriously stupid, being all patchy and totally wrong! Aaaaah! What a mess! Oils don't drybrush like acrylics, like not at all! Instead of setting down paint, you just smear it around, creating "donuts" of color and unevenness, at least in large expanses. Blast it! It works fine in small swatches, but not large ones. Darn it! So here's where I ended up...
Not happy. So not happy with this result! But in a roundabout way, this was actually a good thing! Why? Well, I chatted with Heather about some solutions, and she suggested a couple of glazes to fix the problem. Glazes! Never in my life would I have thought to use glazes to fix this problem, but of course! So that's why getting in the weeds was a good thing: I learned something extremely useful I wouldn't have learned any other way! This is just another example of how FAFO can be so helpful in your long game by burbling up solutions in unexpected ways. Really, if I hadn't screwed this up so badly, I would never have learned that glazes can be a fix, and believe me, that morsel is now neatly tucked into my bag of tricks!
So now I'm wondering if glazes were the answer from the beginning! I may have to retry this approach again, but starting out with glazes rather than drybrushing? Hmmm. I shall cogitate that.
FOURTH, FIFTH AND SIXTH LAYERS
So after an off-white glaze made of Titanium White, Ivory Black, and Burnt Umber, his patchiness was evened out and now I also had an off-white base to strategically lighten for highlight. I'm still debating if I'm going to add some shading into him as well at this point, as his dark base was supposed to do that. But where I am now, that kinda got kiboshed so, yeah...I think I'll add in some strategic shadowing to add oomph and mass. Anyway, here's where I ended up after the first glaze pass...
He's darker in life than he appears in the photo, he's that off-white. So I had to let that dry for a few days then I went in with the second corrective glaze, a dark glaze made of Ivory Black, Burnt Umber with a touch of Titanium White that I applied in strategic areas for his dark skin...
