Though most of us purchase pre-tubed oil paints today, there was a time when that was just not possible. Successful artists of the past often had apprentices whose job it was each morning to mix their master's pigments according to recipe, and set them on the palette for a day's work. It is time-consuming, and most of us are thankful that this is no longer part of our regular routine.
But there is still a large segment of artists who would prefer grinding their own pigments, and their reasons for doing so should not be a mystery. The advantage to grinding paint is control: control over ingredients, control over the stiffness or flow of the paint, and control over the drying time. Rather than being subjected to the recipes of commercial paint producers, who gear their paints to the hobbyist market with the goal of making the largest profit possible, professional artists can take charge of their own materials to produce the best paints suitable to their individual needs.
But if you have never ground your own pigments, where should you begin?
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In a new DVD from On Air Video Incorporated, Larry and Sharyn Withers offer a comprehensive overview of grinding colors, from outfitting your studio, to working safely with the variety of materials available in the marketplace. It is a clear and concise visual explanation lasting 48 minutes, that afterwards, should leave even the most inexperienced viewer prepared to give the process a try.
I like the video for several reasons. The most important reason of all to me was that the video is not limited to the grinding of just one color. The host, Sharyn Pak Withers, walks viewers through mixing 5 different colors – Chrome Yellow Light, Titanium White, Alizarin Crimson, Bone Black, and Ultramarine Blue – each with its own properties, and each with its own variation in preparation. Withers explains why each pigment reacts differently to oil, and why different choices in ingredients were necessary for certain outcomes, providing the audience with a greater understanding of how they might manipulate their own paints. The filming is clear, and Withers, who has hosted several other art instructional videos, is an experienced narrator who is easy to understand.
If I had a negative comment about the video, it could only be about the transitional music played between scene changes. Why the producers chose Dixieland Jazz is beyond me; it does not fit the tone of the video, and it can occasionally be distracting (at times I was so reminded of "Yakety Sax," that I expected Benny Hill and his gang to run across the background of certain scenes). But no matter how particular I am about the choice of music, it did not in any way impact the educational value of what I saw in the rest of the video.
Grinding Your Own Oil Paint is available for $16.95 USD in 3 different formats: streaming video, downloadable video, and on DVD. For more information or to purchase, please visit the On Airwebsite, or visit the website of Natural Pigments, whose materials were used extensively in the demonstrations.