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Help With A Technique
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Message
Posted
Hello all,
Would it be possible to oil paint an image like this?
If so what would be the best way to go about it to achieve the texture?
I was thinking of painting the whole canvas black then use a sponge brush light to high pressure to achieve the grain / gradient effects.
I'm open to any ideas that would make it any easier to achieve
Thanks in advance!
Edited
by Alex Jones
Posted
Anything is possible, but this is almost certainly a digital manipulation from a photograph.
Frankly, the image is pretty awful. Its been distorted and blurred!
Trial and error is needed, just experiment but you won’t be able to achieve that exact effect in oils! In fact probably nowhere near, unless you’re particularly skilled in using oil paints - I could probably get somewhere near with a fair bit of experimentation!
Edited
by Alan Bickley
Posted
I hoping you are not one of those new people who post and never come back but won't be surprised if I'm talking to myself here. Neither would I be surprised if this is an ai post. However I'm going to answer. I'm assuming you are asking about a technique to produce a similar soft blurred image as opposed to re-creating this image, which is as Alan said, dreadful. I would say you could do this with an airbrush. You can airbrush with oil paint but it is not commonly used. You have to thin it enough for it to be the consistency of a high flow acrylic. You have to mix it perfectly. It is ESSENTIAL that you have a full respirator mask and really you should also have extraction. This is not something to be taken lightly, the health risks are enormous. This is not something for a beginner.
Edited
by Collette Hughes
Posted
It's possible - if you want to do it.... Well, clearly you do; just because I wouldn't is irrelevant (he said, more to himself than anyone else). With thin paint, and one of those silicon devices for spreading it, plus plenty of medium (probably; it'd be interesting to try it without), you could do something like it, maybe. On a black canvas - hmm. Well, good luck with that, but I can sort of see how it might be done.
Collette mentions oil via airbrush - I have no idea if the technique could be achieved that way, but I wouldn't risk the hazards ... it'd be hard, I think, to do it without some sort of solvent, and I wouldn't want particles of such a mixture getting anywhere near my lungs (could be messy, too - no use for my restricted environment).
Leaving aside the quality of the image above and its distortion - many artists have used distortion, from Picasso to Bacon - it has a smoothness which I imagine is what made Collette think of airbrush: if you were after that effect, you'd need a very smooth surface, such as an Ampersand board.
When I say "you" could, in any of the foregoing, I don't mean that I could, by the way.
Posted
It's possible - if you want to do it.... Well, clearly you do; just because I wouldn't is irrelevant (he said, more to himself than anyone else). With thin paint, and one of those silicon devices for spreading it, plus plenty of medium (probably; it'd be interesting to try it without), you could do something like it, maybe. On a black canvas - hmm. Well, good luck with that, but I can sort of see how it might be done. Collette mentions oil via airbrush - I have no idea if the technique could be achieved that way, but I wouldn't risk the hazards ... it'd be hard, I think, to do it without some sort of solvent, and I wouldn't want particles of such a mixture getting anywhere near my lungs (could be messy, too - no use for my restricted environment). Leaving aside the quality of the image above and its distortion - many artists have used distortion, from Picasso to Bacon - it has a smoothness which I imagine is what made Collette think of airbrush: if you were after that effect, you'd need a very smooth surface, such as an Ampersand board. When I say "you" could, in any of the foregoing, I don't mean that I could, by the way.Spot on, I was confused about the image being dreadful comment when I enjoy Bacons work and style a lot. I will probably like to mix the medium of airbrush and oils as did he (but he did use aerosol not airbrush, similar effect) I was just asking in regards to the effect of the image, I wouldn't necessarily create a piece like this but merely the texture and feeling it gives almost like film grain which is also nowadays used as a artistic preference to give a certain kind of nostalgia, haunting quality.
Edited
by Dromemf S.
Posted
I’ve got a decent quality DeVilbis airbrush and compressor, you can’t use oils with it satisfactorily, and if you did, it would be a nightmare to get clean - bad enough using inks!
There’s a big difference between comparing Bacon’s work (which I admire), with this very simple and not particularly inspiring (to me at least) photo manipulation - which takes seconds to do!
I can think of several avenues that I would explore in order to achieve this feathered out or blurred effect, but as for a film grain texture, that’s down to the support/surface that you start off with! And I know of nothing available like that…
Posted
No - Ampersand boards offer a range of smooth surfaces, but I'm in some doubt as to whether this degree of blurred technique would work on them; still, can but try, if that's what you want to do. I don't use airbrush, and have never been tempted to, but can imagine the ineffable joys involved in cleaning them if one were to use oil paint in them: as one not over-fond of hard labour, I fear I should recoil.
I wonder if this is a case in which the metallic surfaces might work - the Aluminium compounds, or even copper. Has anyone tried those? Having looked at the price, I'm not in any hurry to - the snag with even a smooth surface is that it's got to have a degree of tooth, or drag; the Ampersand boards have that. I realize the image shown is a constellation or two distant from Bacon, but it was the dragging, smearing technique which interested the questioner - so maybe it would be instructive to read up on Bacon and his techniques, if one could find anything helpful; snag there is, art critics rarely write anything useful (that remark could stop there, and still be true!) about materials and methods.
An exception, to digress, was Waldemar Januszczak, in a relatively recent TV programme - e.g. he pointed out how important paint in tubes, and the development of flat brushes, was to painters in the late 18th/early 19th centuries - which is easy to overlook. The medium isn't the message, but the medium is important for its conveyance. That's my Delphic utterance of the day....