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Someone commented on one of my posts:
“Very interesting watching you paint. But did you stop on and off to get an area a bit dry and continue? Or did you use a medium to make the oil paint dry quickly?”
I posted a brief reply on the website, but I thought I would elaborate as it’s an interesting topic.
I don’t use any additional medium, other than a bit of odorless solvent here and there to add more fluidity to the paint. And with most of my paintings, I do a lot of stop/starting. This isn’t intentional. It’s partly due to the time required to finish each painting, partly due to my nature, and partly because life doesn’t offer many long, uninterrupted periods these days, especially with two daughters running around.
In a perfect world, I would complete every painting in a single, uninterrupted session. This would ensure a sense of continuity and freshness. But since that’s rarely possible, I do a lot of stop/starting throughout the painting process.
As part of that, I need to account for the paint drying to some extent between sessions, both on my palette and on the painting itself. The longer the break, the more the paint will dry. There are some tricks I use to extend the drying time. Sometimes I’ll cover my palette with cling wrap. I have even put small paintings in the fridge to keep the paint wet. But for the most part, I just deal with the drying and alter my techniques.
The techniques that work wet-on-wet vary from those that work wet-on-dry. Wet-on-wet suits blending, mixing on the surface, and softening edges. Wet-on-dry suits scumbling and intricate line work, just to name a few examples.
Because of this, breaks in the painting process can cause a sense of discontinuity in your work. It can appear awkward if you suddenly change techniques in a painting. So you must be mindful of when you stop each session. Finish at a point that seems logical and will be easy to pick up from in the next session. That might mean working on an area until it is nearly complete, then stopping there. Or blocking in an area and doing intricate detail work in the next session. An example of what you wouldn’t want to do is start working on the subject’s face in a portrait wet-on-wet, then stop halfway through. Either don’t start the face, or at least block it in completely before calling an end to the session.
An effective middle-ground solution I have found is to wait until I have a decent block of time to work with before starting a new painting. Then, blast out as much as I can that day, working mostly from intuition (not slow, calculated thought). Paint as if I were painting plein air and the subject is fading in front of me. This means I can capture most of the subject wet-on-wet. Then I can tinker and refine later, wet-on-dry.
There are a few ways you can mimic the wet-on-wet feel. You could apply a touch of linseed oil to the dry surface, then work your fresh paint into that. Or you could repaint an area and work into that. But these are workarounds at best.
Keep in mind, this email is mostly relevant to oil painting. But with every medium, you should be mindful of how to deal with breaks in the painting process.
With watercolors, you might want to get all the thin washes done before you stop a session. Then you can do any intricate detailing later. Same for gouache.
With acrylics, the paint dries so fast it doesn’t really matter.
Happy painting!
Dan Scott
Draw Paint Academy
PS. Something I am going to experiment with is using clove oil to extend the drying time of my oil paints. Apparently this is quite effective. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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