Hey, everyone, wanna paint with crushed glass? Lots of Renaissance painters, like Vermeer and Rembrandt, did just that, turning to smalt as a cheaper alternative to azurite and ultramarine for their underpaintings. Smalt was made from ground cobalt glass, specifically. The particles had to be coarse because they would lose their color if ground too finely. In linseed oil, it would turn olive green. It faded and streaked. I can’t even imagine painting with that. I cringe just thinking about what it would do to my brushes. Louis-Jacques Thénard invents Cobalt blue Finally, the French government ..read more

Some of you have already been stuck at home for a week or two in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. You may be running out of ways to occupy yourself. You’ve cleaned, tried new recipes, read books, played games and binged on Netflix and Hulu. But how long can that keep you going? Many people are compounding this problem by consuming too much news. Yes, we need to check in regularly to find out what’s changing and what we’re supposed to do. But staying glued to the news for hours every day will only keep you in a sustained state of stress. Prolonged stress can screw up your brain, your b ..read more

Have you ever wanted to paint on leather but didn’t know how to approach it or felt intimidated by it? It can be tricky. You need to treat the surface appropriately to avoid paint adhesion problems like cracking and peeling later on, as you can see in Golden’s acrylic tests on raw leather. In this post, I’ll walk you through the process of painting a pair of leather boots. I’ll wear these throughout the fall and winter months and subject them to cold, rainy and snowy conditions. And I’ll show you exactly how to do that. Through the course of their life cycle they’ll be cre ..read more

Ever wonder why your paint gets frothy sometimes? Curious about why some colors are transparent and glossy while others are opaque and matte? Maybe you just like to know how things work. You probably have some idea that the paint that squirts out of the tube onto your palette has at least two ingredients – pigment and whatever it’s mixed with that makes it brushable. But there’s a bit more to it than that and knowing how these ingredients work can answer some other questions you might have. It can also help your process. So let’s squirt some useful information into your brain. The four main ..read more

Photo by Aleksei Алексей Simonenko Симоненко on UnsplashA wall of paint tubes is a glorious vision. Who could resist stepping closer and basking in the shifting frequencies of one chroma melting into another? But when you pick up a tube of paint, the label is crammed full of data meant to tell you what you need to know about the pigment, but you’ll likely ignore this code unless you know how to read it. What’s in a color name? Humans like semantic names like Indian yellow because they’re familiar and not hard to pronounce. Everyone trips over Quinacridone, but at least it ..read more

Hey, everyone, wanna paint with crushed glass? Lots of Renaissance painters, like Vermeer and Rembrandt, did just that, turning to smalt as a cheaper alternative to azurite and ultramarine for their underpaintings. Smalt was made from ground cobalt glass, specifically. The particles had to be coarse because they would lose their color if ground too finely. In linseed oil, it would turn olive green. It faded and streaked. I can’t even imagine painting with that. I cringe just thinking about what it would do to my brushes. Louis-Jacques Thénard invents Cobalt blue Finally, the French government ..read more

Some of you have already been stuck at home for a week or two in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. You may be running out of ways to occupy yourself. You’ve cleaned, tried new recipes, read books, played games and binged on Netflix and Hulu. But how long can that keep you going? Many people are compounding this problem by consuming too much news. Yes, we need to check in regularly to find out what’s changing and what we’re supposed to do. But staying glued to the news for hours every day will only keep you in a sustained state of stress. Prolonged stress can screw up your brain, your b ..read more

Have you ever wanted to paint on leather but didn’t know how to approach it or felt intimidated by it? It can be tricky. You need to treat the surface appropriately to avoid paint adhesion problems like cracking and peeling later on, as you can see in Golden’s acrylic tests on raw leather. In this post, I’ll walk you through the process of painting a pair of leather boots. I’ll wear these throughout the fall and winter months and subject them to cold, rainy and snowy conditions. And I’ll show you exactly how to do that. Through the course of their life cycle they’ll be creased and tou ..read more

Ever wonder why your paint gets frothy sometimes? Curious about why some colors are transparent and glossy while others are opaque and matte? Maybe you just like to know how things work. You probably have some idea that the paint that squirts out of the tube onto your palette has at least two ingredients – pigment and whatever it’s mixed with that makes it brushable. But there’s a bit more to it than that and knowing how these ingredients work can answer some other questions you might have. It can also help your process. So let’s squirt some useful information into your brain. The four main ..read more

Photo by Aleksei Алексей Simonenko Симоненко on UnsplashA wall of paint tubes is a glorious vision. Who could resist stepping closer and basking in the shifting frequencies of one chroma melting into another? But when you pick up a tube of paint, the label is crammed full of data meant to tell you what you need to know about the pigment, but you’ll likely ignore this code unless you know how to read it. What’s in a color name? Humans like semantic names like Indian yellow because they’re familiar and not hard to pronounce. Everyone trips over Quinacridone, but at least it tells you wh ..read more