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Improving with age?
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Message
Posted
I don't spend a lot of time looking back over past work, but today I disinterred a painting I did some years ago, and not thinking much about it, propped it up on a shelf. T'was this one below: at the time, I thought it fussy, too complicated, and a bit hard to actually determine one feature from another. Looking at it today, though - well, either it was done so long ago that I'm able to look at it as though someone else had painted it, or the oil paint has actually 'settled' - so it has literally improved with age.
I've never noticed this phenomenon with acrylic or watercolour paintings, which seem to remain more or less as good, or bad, as they were when first painted .... sometimes a watercolour will take me by surprise, and I have trouble believing I painted it (not infrequently wondering if I could possibly do it again) but on the whole it's the old oil paintings that seem to undergo a very gradual change over time; almost as if they rationalize themselves as the paint very slowly oxidizes and one's original intention is revealed.
Or is this all a total load of old toot? I don't know - I do know that I'll varnish this painting now, which I didn't bother to do earlier; and maybe try to flog it.... but have other oil painters noticed this phenomenon? IS it a phenomenon? Or should I just try taking more tonic with it.....?
Posted
Don't overdo the tonic, it spoils the spirit! I have often wondered if oil paintings improve with time as I sometimes regard a painting more favourably after it has been left for a while. My chief complaint is with people who view oil paintings from a distance of inches rather than feet or yards (a friend calls them 'picture sniffers). Mine definitely improve with distance...sometimes a mile or two helps tremendously.
Posted
An interesting thought...things improving with age. The thread is about oils. Back in the 70s I tried oils, these days it's mostly watercolour. I have a painting in oil that's definitely changed, although not improved. Back then I tried to copy a Renoir in oils, it wasn't a good copy, but we liked it as a painting. It hung on the wall in our previous home for more than 20 years, when we downsized it had to go (along with a batch of other oils that were dumped.) When we moved 10 years ago, this painting on board was used to strengthen the bottom of a cardboard box. It contained odd tools I seldom used. The box sat in my garage for about 4 years. During a clear out I rediscovered my 'Renoir'. Damp had caused paint to flake. I photographed it and tidied it up in photoshop...so it now exists only as a jpeg file. The painting had acquired an overall green tint...the sky was green...I'm certain I painted it blue (as in the Renoir). (This is nothing to do with my fiddling with it in photoshop, the actual painting was green.) I've no idea what caused that. Possibly a combination of my poor colour mixing and the time spent in a damp garage. Odd. I've mentioned this before in another thread, so I won't post the image again.
I agree with the people who say sometimes old paintings can seem better when you haven't looked at them for some time. Perhaps that has more to do with your state of mind at the time than the merits of the painting. Obviously, it can work the other way too...did I paint THAT rubbish???.
Lew.
Posted
If you shove an oil painting in the bottom of a box in the garage, it going green is likely to be the least of its problems - though: old paintings have survived in extremely adverse conditions, the biggest enemy being, as in Lew's case, damp. Probably not your colour-mixing, Lew - more likely a chemical reaction with a metallic pigment like cadmium.
I don't know the answer - it may be that as oil paint oxidizes, it shrinks a bit (hence the need for care in its application, because it can crack); it may also be that this process lasts a certain time and then stops - i.e. when the paint is bone-dry throughout; so we get very old paintings that only need a clean to be restored to what we were accustomed to seeing when they were pristine. This slight shrinkage could - possibly - render certain parts of the picture easier to read? It doesn't sound likely, really, does it?
I'll have to pull a few more old oils out of storage and have a good look, I think. It's the relatively short-term change (or my perception of it: and yes, it might be having the cataract out and a new lens put in!) that interests me.
Posted
This interesting thread prompts me to ask what happens to acrylic paintings stored under probably adverse conditions? I have a number stored in my garage (carefully wrapped), haven't felt motivated to check on them since (they were ones that were turfed out of the house but not (yet) into the rubbish). May have a look next time I clean out the garage which at the earliest won't be until after winter, but does anyone know what state they'll be in when I die and some unlucky soul has to dispose of all this stuff?
Edited
by SandraKennedy
Posted
An acrylic painting - really, oils aren't much different - will last as long as the surface on which it's painted holds up. Damp will damage the support, almost irrespective of what it might be - I mean fairly pervasive, penetrating damp - simple mould can usually be brushed off. Oil paint is in a sense a living substance - one wouldn't want to overdo that, but it does keep developing and changing as the years go by, the more so if it's badly stored, subject to extremes of heat and cold, on a flexible support (canvas isn't actually that good for oil paintings), or allowed to get wet. Extreme damp will certainly soften acrylic paint, cause the support to warp, and may weaken adhesion. But if I were going to wrap up a painting and put it away for my descendants to find, I'd be happier doing that with an acrylic than with an oil.
Watercolours are obviously damaged by damp - the paper can 'fox', the paint can run or lift. But if kept dry, on wood-free paper, watercolours can last for a very long time. I think probably the longest lived paintings have been those painted in wax media - there are tomb paintings, on the wood of coffins, that have lasted for thousands of years. Now find your wax-based paints today - not easy, but possible.... there are some heat-set wax paints, encaustics; and some that can be used cold .... given another lifetime, I'd explore the lot .... anyone here use wax-based media?
Posted
There's one thing I'd say about your stored acrylics, Sandra. Take photographs of them. You may have done that. When I moved into a smaller home 10 years ago, I dumped a batch of oils and acrylics. (Along with swathes of loose drawings...obviously I mean 'loose' in the sense that they were on separate bits of paper...not 'loose' in the sense of 'rude'...Honest! That's why these days I prefer to draw in sketchbooks, they are easier and tidier to store.) I wish I'd taken pics of those old bits and pieces...it's maybe not that important, but occasionally it's interesting to look at your old work. When I look through old stuff, it sometimes prompts me to start a new picture
Posted
No, mine don't improve with age Robert, and neither do I according to my daughter's - sweet little things aren't they!
I look at some of my old oils occasionally, generally when searching for a particular one for a possible revamp - and most are awful, embarrassing in fact.
I do like that tree study immensely though, it all gels superbly and does have your trademark colour palette.
Posted
That's an imposing tree study, lots of character. I'm interested in this, because I've recently done my own digging around in my storage boxes. I have a few works that were done nine or ten years ago that failed to sell but I kept them because there was something I still liked about them. I do wonder whether, now and then, we actually create a piece that breaks through our "plateau" of skill-level, but we don't realise it at the time. Then, several years later, we look at the work again....hopefully from a higher plateau....and understand that actually we had done a good 'un....maybe not all over, but in certain features.
I've got a few oils from the 1980's, including one which was a 30-minute outdoor "sketch-exercise", imposed on us (kindly) by my Saturday day-class teacher. A small birch-tree growing out of long grasses. Probably the loosest oil I've ever painted, and it still looks quite decent today. I also still like painting trees and grasses, almost forty years on. Do the oil paintings mature? Maybe they do, a little. They are 3D, in contrast to the flatness of watercolours...maybe the paint settles a little, tones down, physically shifts a bit (like old houses). I was told never to keep them totally in the dark while drying.
I have photo'd a lot of my stuff since 2005, when I got my first digital camera; prior to that I used to put them in the scanner. My 1970's-80's stuff hasn't been recorded, though. It can be rather eye-opening to look back, and occasionally I see one of my paintings that I've totally forgotten about!