Pigment Weekend
Above are the 62 yards of fabric I dyed this weekend. All freshly ironed and folded and ready for use. I was running low on yellows but as you can see with my newly purchased dyes I was able to remedy that situation. Some of these turned out a bit too bright so I’m planning on over dyeing them with small amounts of brown or plum to tone them back down to something I will actually use. Although this batch of fabric is brighter than I normally dye (other than the standard browns and grays). I was feeling I wanted some for the winter. Sometimes a bright lime green is what is needed to cheer me up on a cloudy, snowy winter day.
As I mentioned last Friday, my good friend from Colorado springs came up to visit this weekend. We had originally thought we might go hiking but the weather inspired us to come up with an indoor plan.
So we went to Michaels and wandered around looking for something creative to do.
We focused in on the canvas aisle (when we saw the sale tags) and decided that painting with oil paints would be a lovely plan. It seemed irrelevant to us that neither of us had ever done this before.
So we selected some oil paints (red, yellow, blue, black and white – pretty much at random – there were too many choices to worry about which might be the best one) and a couple of 36" x 24" canvases.
I knew enough to realized the canvas needed to be primed, but the label assured us they were preprimed and ready to go. That kind of made me wonder about the quality, but whatever, it would still be fun.
I had brushes at home so we got in line to pay. While we were standing there I pondered if maybe we needed something to clean the brushes but lacking motivation to get out of line we figure we could just wing it with something I already had at home.
We got set up in my dye studio, squeezed a few blobs of paint on to some of my dye painting palettes and set to work. It took about 2 brush strokes for us to realized – um – isn’t this stuff usually mixed with some type of medium? Well yeah – probably. But we had better things to do than get back in the car.
Amy’s start:
My first brush strokes (I quickly switched to a larger brush when it was clear the paint was going to be hard to work):
So we persevered and managed to create our paintings with the paint right from the tubes (cheap Michaels quality paints at that). While it wasn’t the easiest to paint this way it was really fun.
I didn’t do much but play with mixing colors, but a type of landscape appeared. Sorry for the bad pictures, flash in a dark basement isn’t probably the best way to get professional images but the paint is still wet and I’m not about to try to handle them much right now.
Amy stuck to a more restrained and beautiful color palette and created this:
We had a blast – it was great fun to just go and mess around even though we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. Life is too short to learn the rules before trying something out sometimes. I definitely enjoyed this significantly more than the water colors I tried this summer.
I won’t bother describing the cleanup (just suffice it to say that soap and water do not work and that I now have a plastic bag with wet brushes in it awaiting me buying something to clean them with).
So now we need to figure out what to mix the oil paint with so it’s actually reasonable to paint with and how to clean the brushes. And probably find a better source for canvases (and how to prime them) if we are going to continue doing this, which we both plan on doing.
This week I rather fortuitously received a Dick Blick catalog in the mail. I tend to just toss these – I think long ago I bought brushes for a dye painting class and ended up on their mailing list. But maybe I’ll flip through and see what I can find. If anyone has any suggestions we’d love any pointers you care to share.
You’ll note in the first photo we didn’t bother thinking that our clothes might get paint on them. Well naturally mine did – my very beautiful Bucky Badger sweatshirt from graduate school is covered with orange oil paint and yellow dye. Oops. Definitely a pigment weekend.
Posted by Lisa in: About Me
My husband paints in oil all the time. He mixes linseed oil and turpentine to thin the paint. THe more turpentine you use the faster it dries. You can also use paint thinner. THe downside is the smell of turpentine.
Be careful Lisa — you could become addicted! And I must say not bad for a first oil painting! I admire your fearless attitude. Years ago before I switched from oils to acrylics, we just used turpentine to wash our brushes and linseed oil was used to thin the paints. But now there are fancier mixing media and also solvents that are supposedly safer to use than turpentine. But I actually enjoyed the smell. You should have a blast with the Blick catalog!
I loved this post and that you fearlessly shared your paintings with us! I was chuckling out loud when I read that you were painting dry with no medium and no thinner. But, the results look great! I wasn’t sure what to expect after I saw the first few strokes on the canvas.
I think not knowing “the rules” can be a bonus sometimes. Innovations are made and you learn more from the mistakes very quickly. Sort of how I am trying to teach myself fabric art…it has to make people smile too.
The basic gist of oil painting (though I haven’t done it in awhile because the solvents are irritating to me I use mostly acrylic) is:
Fat over lean. Use a paint thinner such as Turpenoid (which is an oderless thinner less harsh than turpentine) to paint an “underpainting”. An underpainting is basically your design painted very thin like watercolor…you can still see the white of the canvas underneath.
Then, using a medium, such as linseed oil (there are a lot of different ones on the market), use these to mix with the paint to get a really juicy, soft and buttery paint to layer on top of your underpainting.
Also, make sure you’re working in a ventilated area because some of these products can be toxic.
Depending on how much paint is on your canvas, allow it to cure completely after which time you should add a varnish to protect the painting.
Brushes wash up with Turpenoid or other solvent, and then when most of the paint is off the brush, finish up with soap and water.
Theres really much more to it than that and I’d be glad to share the info with you…we’d actually have info to exchange. : )
PS I haven’t tried them yet, but there are also water soluble oil paints on the market today. And, if you really want to learn, I could help with stretching a canvas and applying gesso.
I forgot…your fabrics look wonderful!!!
Hi Lisa,
What fun to just decide to play around with a new medium…and do it. I don’t paint with oils any longer. I use acrylics. But not too long ago I went to a printmaking workshop where they were trying tu use safer materials and found that they like GAMSOL instead of turpenoid as a thinner and a product called SOYSOLV for cleaning up…but don’t get it in the paint. I bought some for cleaning up and it’s great…just put out some, rub into the surface (palette) and brushes and then rinse out….and no odor.
The fabrics are beautiful………like new paints waiting to be used.
Hi Lisa, So glad you enjoyed “my medium”, maybe I’ll have to get back to that quilt I started 9 years ago:-) If you don’t have a chance to get out to buy mineral spirits to rinse your brushes in, just work some vegetable oil or baby oil through the bristles to get rid of as much of the paint as you can, you can soak them in the oil too if you want. Wipe off the oil with a paper towel and then wash them with soap and water.
I use Liquin as a medium but there are plenty of others available now. I don’t suggest using Turpentine because of it’s toxicity and it’s also really not a very stable medium. I use Turpenoid Natural to rinse my brushes.
I admire how you just jumped in and I agree it’s great to skip over the rule part!
You went to UW-Madison? Me too!
I love the insight into your thread organization — and your fabric dyeing process. I realized while going through my fabric stash this weekend that I’m desperate need of solids to go with patterned fabric.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I’m going to investigate my options and next time out Amy and I will be painting with style.
Cynthia I’ll definitely take you up on an exchange of knowledge!
I did my grad work (4 years) at UW-Madison. I was there 85-90. What about you?