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thickening question
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Message
Posted
hi
I want to create lines of thick paint on the canvas by pouring the paint from the tube onto the canvas as I move my hand slowly over the canvas.
In this photo I did a small test on paper. The lines are a few mm thick/tall and wide.
It takes a while for the paint to dry but I'm ok with that.
I will cover a very large canvas with lots of squiggly lines.
This will consume a lot of paint so want to ask for advice.
Is there a more economical way to achieve this?
thank you
Edited
by Yoni Alter
Posted
As you mention canvas, I’m assuming that you’re using oils or acrylics.
You don’t pour paint from a tube, you have to squeeze it out!
Frankly, in my opinion this isn’t a great method of producing artwork, and you’re going to need an awful lot of tubes.
If you’re hell bent on painting in this style, try a more liquid water based paint and either splatter it on with a brush or pour it on from a tin or whatever.
Posted
Economical way of doing it - no, I think not. You would need a heavy-duty paint, like Daler-Rowney's Cryla; or perhaps Winsor & Newton's Artist Quality; or Golden - and none of these is among the cheaper ranges of paint.
You could lay colour over previously applied PVA, or acrylic medium (the name of which I've forgotten, but you can find it on artists' suppliers websites, like Jackson's) - the type which is used for building up heavy layers without using paint in the first instance: I wouldn't have called THAT especially economical, either; but it would be cheaper than using just paint. There are also mediums which thicken acrylic paint, but I doubt they would offer the flowing properties you're seeking.
Squeezing thick, pasty paint from a tube is going to be expensive, and quite difficult, however you do it. It would be physically easier with oil paint than with acrylic, (depending on the paint you used), but the cost would be phenomenal.
Posted
There are squeezy bottles of acrylics, Sylvia, aren't there? I'd avoid them through sheer meanness - but they might be the answer in this case. I must say that the potential cost would have me heading for the hills with squeals of panic. Point here though - those squeezy bottles surely don't have the structural integrity which this artist is looking for - I can see that you could squeeze them out in thick lines, but I can't see the integrity of their structure - i.e., I think most of them would just spread across the surface and you'd lose the distinct lines.
Still - haven't done it: don't know. I still think though that if I WERE to try this, I'd go for, especially, Daler-Rowney Cryla heavy-bodied acrylic: and wince, cringe, and despair at the cost.
Posted
The Galleria range of acrylics come in plastic containers with a sort of spout, I’ve got some and they can be squeezed out!
250 and 500ml if I’m not mistaken, but they still aren’t cheap.
I’m also not totally sure of what the expected end result the author is after, I can visualise it, and it’s not getting me particularly excited!
Posted
I've not used Galeria - what I'm wondering is whether any but the most expensive paints would actually stay in these snake-like lines: Galeria is pretty fluid, isn't it?
Can't say the prospect of an artwork completed in this way thrills me much, either. Each to their own, but I have a vision of something resembling plasticine - I have a very vague memory of something the late Tony Hart did with thick paint, years and years ago..... Wonder if I can find it.
I know people think that acrylic dries very hard, by the way - but its surface is actually soften than hardened oil paint (one reason why oil paint can crack is that it dries so hard that there's little flexibility in it). You can certainly paint very thickly with acrylic, but there's quite a danger of it just falling off the canvas if it's thick beyond a certain point. Still - just an aside.
Posted
Not what your asking but you could make the shapes you want with tubes of filler then several costs of the paint colours. This would give you the surfaces you want and I would think will be much cheaper to do . Having never seen a painting like your suggesting I don’t know if the will give you the desired outcome. I will be interested to see what you do and the finished painting.
