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Flemish style
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Message
Posted
Having read the thread about trad oils V soluble, a new artist turned up at the Bournemouth show yesterday and displayed a good varied selection of oils. Figures, animals, landscapes etc. He only took up painting in the last year, but luckily his dad was a fine oil painter who suffers with old age, a stroke and other stuff. Dad taught Jason to paint in the Flemish style which as I understand is many layers. He was moaning about the time it took him and drying time. It is rare I would have thought to be taught that way these days, but he was doing some good work and was keen to prgress, maybe trying acrylics.
I told him about this site and he might join in.
Posted
To paint in the truly Flemish style, you need lead white, which is hard to get. However, it can be done. I wonder if it would work with some of the lead white replacement paints, but as they contain Zinc - back to our apparently departed friend Mats Wilander - I'm not keen on them.
http://www.isleofwightlandscapes.net
http://wightpaint.blogspot.co.uk
Posted
Flemish style is the earliest, and incidentally the most long-lasting form of oil painting it was usually done on a wooden panel, prepared as if for egg tempera yet without the tooth that was usually included to facilitate silver point drawing. A detailed underpainting was done with tempera, that is pigment mixed with a glue size medium upon this. After it was thoroughly dry many thin transparent veils of oil colour were then applied over each part of the painting building the chroma in a gradual and painstaking process, allowing each to dry thoroughly. No thick colour was used and as a consequence there has been very little degradation over many centuries. You can see this by Van Eyck, Memling, Hugo van der Goes and Bosch to name but a few.
Hope this helps
John
Edited
by johnk7
Posted
Hi Derek
Hope you had a lovely time in Bournemouth, visited the place some years ago, remember enjoying a really good meal at a Mexican restaurant their.
On a whistle stop tour of Holland, we managed to visit Haarlem's impressive art gallery, full of amazing Flemish artist.
They were all formally taught, really paid off.
Posted
A very good summary by John. As to whether the technique is still being taught, I suspect it may be, but in very few places - precious few of us are likely to use egg tempera now, although for the lazy blighters like me, Daler Rowney did sell ready-made tempera in tubes: I wonder if they still do, and I must check. You can of course still buy tempera pigments, and make up your own paints, and to really get the best out of this whole process that's probably what you should do. I wonder if those who know more about it than I do - I've never employed the genuine technique - would think you could achieve a similar effect by using acrylic, or even casein, paints, perhaps using the clayboard supports we now have available from the USA (I've forgotten the brand name for the moment ... Ampersand!) and glazing thin oil over the top. I wouldn't trust that on canvas, I don't think, but on a rigid surface I wonder if it would be worth a try. I'd still worry about the quality of modern oil whites - ideally, you'd need a quite thin white to pick out highlights, but of course much of the light colour would be achieved by glazing with thin colour over white tempera. You could until quite recently get a lead white called Flemish White in this country, but for the moment supplies aren't obtainable because the company selling them has been clobbered by the bureaucrats and told they can't sell it in tubes. It may be that the US manufacturers will be able to resume supplies in different packaging though.
Of course, there will be those who argue that we should move on to more modern materials - but this method produced unique results.
http://www.isleofwightlandscapes.net
http://www.wightpaint.blogspot.co.uk