Virgil Elliott's Traditional Oil Painting

This standard reference book was first published in ca. 2007.  It's been re-published last year, and is available from Echo Point Books, in the USA.  I ordered the updated copy last week, and - astonishingly to me! - it's here with me already. I can't review it properly now, because am still working through it, but - Virgil Elliott knows more about oil painting than just about anyone presently alive, and this is a fantastic resource.  It's fairly expensive, but worth every single penny you might spend on it.  Be advised, Mr Elliott is a great one for lead white oil paint - I know it's difficult to obtain in Europe, but it really isn't impossible, if you know where to look (and if you don't, I can tell you).  Lead white is the best basis for permanent paintings, insofar as anything in this world is permanent; and yes, it's toxic.  So is bleach.  Are you going to banish the latter from underneath your kitchen sink?  No.  Because you know how to deal with it.  Well, read this book and you'll know how to deal with hazardous pigments, too.   Frankly, even if you shrink from lead white, just get the damn' book!  You'll not find a more comprehensive resource however hard you look: and the information in Traditional Oil Painting is on a level almost celestially above anything you'll ever read in How-to articles in any magazine (even ours...) or popular art publishers' productions.  Old age isn't for cissies - and this book isn't either - but if you're serious about oil painting, you're handicapping yourself without this book; and why would you want to do that?  

I'm no millionaire, Alan, but I got my copy by ordering it from Echo Point Books in the USA directly - and as I said above, it arrived in days.  I understand you can also buy it via Amazon's USA site - not from the UK one.  Get it while you can would be my advice!

Well, I've now read the book through.  It's back on the shelf, but I'm likely to be pulling it down again and again, because it's invaluable.   The first chapters are taken up with describing the old masters' techniques, in the course of which Elliott dismisses the idea that there's some secret formula of medium that the old chaps used which, if only we could recapture the recipe, would transform us into geniuses of the brush.  Truth is, they used various things at various times, but the basis of their medium was Linseed Oil, or Walnut Oil - then as now, the best oils for painting.  He points out something I'd never even have thought of - all you need for glazing is transparent paint: adding oil, or 'glaze medium', isn't necessary; what IS necessary is that the underlying paint is dry.   The later chapters are about methods of painting today - the differences between the colours available in the pre-Impressionist era (in which he takes the most interest) - the dangers of added Zinc to paints, and the array of modern paints that contain it - he is not fond of water-miscible oils, because he doesn't believe there's a necessity for them.   He is very good on the dangers of solvents to ourselves, whether they're limonene (citrus) based or so-called Odourless Mineral Spirits.  He's an advocate of lead whites - Flake, Cremnitz, etc - but doesn't actually bang this as firmly home as I was expecting, presumably because he's well aware of their toxicity and the fact that many of us prefer to avoid them for that reason; but the fact is that lead white makes for the most resilient paint film, and base for further painting.  He covers painting on wood, canvas, what the Americans call Masonite, and we call hardboard, and MDF, plywood etc.   Finally, he makes the point that knowledge doesn't stand still, and his is not the last word: oil painters in particular, but all painters, need to keep an eye and ear open for the latest research - much of which I might add is being done in the USA rather than here, which is in many ways a pity; but it's important that it's being done somewhere; and it's my view that too few of us take an interest in it - granted, I find the chemistry very hard work, and others just want to paint and trust the makers to get it right: but the makers cater for leisure painters, hobby painters, and those who might find the 'clever' stuff off-putting - and frankly, if there's a profit in an unsatisfactory material, most of them will still keep selling it.   Perhaps we can indeed just please ourselves and not care about the future if we guarantee never to sell our work: but if you do sell it..... you need it to be of sufficient technical quality to last at least a generation or two - and that's where this book really matters. Should you get it (when you can: it may be that ordering goods from the USA is problematic right now)?  Yes - if you want to know facts and cut through unsubstantiated (or unsubstantiable) opinion; if you want to ensure your painting practice is as sound as it can be; if you've any interest at all in the history and practice of oil painting.  This book was out of print for over ten years, until - after much pressure from Virgil - being picked up by the US firm Echo Point Books, from whom I bought my copy; so grab it when you can, because I suspect it'll be in heavy demand from traditional oil painters; and you don't want to miss out on the chance to get it; and it ain't available on the Kindle.   Incidentally - it's very readable.  not always the case with books that major on the technical, with philosophical points about the whole purpose of painting thrown in.   

I wouldn't say it's horrendously technical, but - you've certainly got to be interested in the qualities of oil paint to find pleasure or information in reading it ....... I would say, buy it; hoard it in your must-read books list; and dip into it gradually - if I were a beginner, I'd hold back from trying to digest it in one.  But -  actually, it may well mean more to them than to more experienced painters, it's just that those who have been slapping the paint around for half a century or more could gain - in our own way - as much from it as they could.  

By the way, Facebookers can talk with Virgil Elliott directly, on his Traditional Oil Painting (same title as the book) page.  He's quite a fierce old gentleman in his way, but never rude - just firm in his dealing with those who put daft advice on his page.... which, really, is what you want; and very un-Facebook, which on other pages is so crammed with utter rubbish, especially now - with Covid-19 providing fertile ground for cranks and those home doctors without so much as a GCSE in elementary virology..  (If you want to really set him off, ask him what he thinks of the Wet Canvas website!)