Swiss Artist Valentin Carron Busted For Plagiarism →

Valentin CarronPhoto via: elevation1049

Valentin Carron
Photo via: elevation1049

Where does appropriation stop and plagiarism begin? The Swiss artist Valentin Carron has been accused of plagiarism for his piece The Dawn, presented by his Zurich gallery Eva Presenhuber at FIAC last month, Radio Télévision Suisse reports.

The resin sculpture, priced at a reported $67,000, is a replica of a 1977 steel artwork by Francesco Marino di Teana, L'Aube (“dawn" in French), which is displayed in Neuchâtel in front of the city's art and history museum.

Carron told RTS that he “wanted to reproduce the emotion this work provoked" in him when he first encountered it in Neuchâtel. The artist, who represented Switzerland at the last Venice Biennale, described the process as one of “appropriation."

“The copy is so exact that it becomes a forgery," retorted the son of the artist, Nicolas Marino. “It's complete plagiarism."

Valentin Carron, The Dawn at FIAC 2014 (L), Francesco di Teana, L'Aube, 1977, Musée d'art de Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Valentin Carron, The Dawn at FIAC 2014 (L), Francesco di Teana, L'Aube, 1977, Musée d'art de Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Marino has made clear he intends to sue Carron. He is supported by Jean-François Roudillon, the director of Paris's Galerie Loft, in charge of Francesco Marino di Teana's catalogue raisonné.

“I am saddened and shocked that an international art fair like FIAC facilitates practices that force the artist's heir to go to court to protect his rights and his father's reputation," he said in an open letter.

He continued: “Are contemporary artists so lacking in ideas that, rather than being inspired by the work of their predecessors, they cast copies?"

Several art world personalities have come to Carron's defense, including Christian Bernard, the director of the Mamco in Geneva. Talking to RTS, he insisted on the difference of material between the two pieces. Carron's resin piece “denounces itself as an imitation, presents itself as a replica," he said. “The simple fact that it has the same title shows that it's an appropriation and not a theft."

“Appropriation," he continued quoting the work of Elaine Sturtevant, “is a process that has been legitimated by art history. Valentin Carron has pursued this process and brought something new to it. Accusing him of plagiarism is showing that one ignores everything of today's art."

Bernard said that he was ready to defend Carron's work in court.

Pierre Keller, the former director of the Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL), has also stepped in to support his former student. He said that Carron had been influenced by his professor at ECAL, John Armleder, who is famous, in part, for his appropriations. In his view, Marino's lawsuit “is already lost."

Is Having Your Art Appraised a Good Idea? →

ArtBusiness.com is a consumer resource website for people who own art, people who create art (aka artists), fine arts professionals, and anyone else with a love of or interest in art. The site receives thousands of requests for art price information annually and provides all manner of appraisal services so people can intelligently buy, sell, trade, insure, donate, value for legal purposes, or otherwise transact in original works of art. The following art price information is for each and every one of you who wonders whether you can effectively and accurately evaluate art prices with little or no knowledge of the inner workings of the art market... or whether under certain circumstances, art appraisers, consultants or advisors are actually worth paying for.

To begin with, the art business is totally unregulated. Anyone can call themselves an art dealer, anyone can call themselves an artist, anyone can open an art gallery, anyone can sell whatever they feel like selling and call it art, and anyone can price whatever they call art however they please. As long as they don't engage in fraud or misrepresentation and operate within the law, they can arbitrarily price a work of art at $1000, $10000 or even $100,000-- whatever they feel like-- and regardless of whether the art would appraise for anywhere near those amounts. Believe it; it's true. On the upside, the overwhelming majority of art dealers, galleries and artists price their art fairly-- but not always. And that's why we have art appraisers and advisors-- professionals skilled at accurately evaluating art, determining fair market values, and making sure you have the most up-to-date understandable price information possible.

Let's say you either inherit or have owned art for years and decide to sell. Without current appraisals, you make an easy target for unscrupulous buyers. You have no idea what your art is worth; they do. You can sell way too cheaply without any idea you're doing so, and the bad news is you have little or no recourse for recouping your losses. Appraisers and consultants protect you from that happening.

Think you can appraise art yourself? Think again. Figuring out how much art is worth and, based on those values, whether to buy, sell, trade, insure or donate-- those are by no means easy tasks for people who are unfamiliar with how the art business works, including buyers, bidders, donors, collectors or inheritors... and even artists. The job of qualified appraisers and advisors is to protect anyone who has questions about art values by providing the prices they need according to the situations they're in, in order for them to make informed intelligent decisions. 

Art appraisers evaluate art prices in much the same way that stock brokers evaluate stock prices or real estate brokers evaluate home prices. A qualified art appraiser studies a variety of characteristics of a work of art and the market for that art before valuing it. A typical evaluation includes assessing the artist's exhibition history and career accomplishments, studying and analyzing the artist's recent auction and gallery sales histories, and examining particulars related to the work of art itself including it's size, subject matter, detail, quality of craftsmanship, ownership history, age, condition, and so on. We're talking technical here.

If you're not experienced at pricing art, contact an appraiser or advisor anytime you have questions about value. This is no different than consulting a doctor when you have a medical question or an attorney when you have a legal question. Paying a few dollars for accurate art price information up front can easily save you hundreds and often thousands of dollars later. Believe me-- it's true. Here are some additional pointers on when and how to use appraisers in "art and money" situations.

** If you own original art and you've never had it appraised or you lack current price information, have an appraiser value it.

** Avoid getting appraisals from the people who sold you the art. A gallery that sells you a work of art, for example, has an obvious conflict of interest, and a tendency to appraise high in order to make that art, its artist, and their gallery look good.

** Avoid free appraisals. Free appraisals are rarely free. Please-- for your own good-- avoid free art appraisals. 

** Use a qualified art appraiser to value your art. Don't use your friend who's an artist or your aunt who has a booth at the local antique mall. 

** Update appraisals every three to five years, or before changing the disposition or ownership of any work of art that you own. Art prices fluctuate over time.

** Use art price guides, auction records, online art prices or art price databases and other art price references for entertainment purposes only. Unless you know how to analyze and extrapolate their data, leave those jobs to the pros. 

** Never accept spontaneous or unsolicited cash offers from anyone to buy art that you own. These kinds of offers are usually low. Get appraisals first. 

** If you're not an experienced collector, get an appraiser's or consultant's opinion before buying works of art from dealers or galleries that you don't know or have never done business with. 

** If you're not an experienced collector, get an appraiser's or consultant's opinion before buying art by artists whose names, artwork, or market histories you're either unclear on or not familiar with.

** Get an appraiser's or consultant's opinion no matter what kinds of art bargains sellers tell you that you're about to get.

** Unless you're an experienced auction bidder and buyer, ask an appraiser or consultant to inspect art that you're thinking about buying before you bid on it. This is especially true when buying at online auctions. Online auctions are extremely risky places to buy art.

** No matter what kind of art buying situation you find yourself in, if you're not totally 100% sure what you're doing, ask an appraiser or advisor any questions that you have about the art, artist, or circumstances surrounding the purchase beforeyou buy, not after. You'd be amazed at how many people don't ask questions until after they've spent hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of dollars.

** Never give away, throw out or otherwise get divest yourself of any art that you own, no matter how bad you think it is, what you think of the person who gave it to you, what condition it's in or how unimportant you think the artist is. Always have a qualified appraiser or consultant inspect it first. 

Dislike Abstract Art? Try it again with a Less-Cluttered Mind →

(Photo: Denis Kuvaev/Shutterstock)

(Photo: Denis Kuvaev/Shutterstock)

The last time you visited an art museum, did you find the abstract paintings sort of … annoying? Were you drawn to the landscapes and portraits, but turned off by the squiggles and dots?

New research suggests this preference may reflect your personality. But it also may be a sign that you’ve simply got too much on your mind, or that the physical environment—the gallery itself—leaves something to be desired.

An Italian research team led by psychologist Antonio Chirumboloreports people with a strong need for cognitive closure—that is, to have quick, definitive answers to vexing questions—are less likely to appreciate abstract art.

While that’s not surprising, the researchers note that while this desire for certainty is a constant for some people, it can be induced in others. If environmental cues are unwittingly prompting this mindset, they are effectively making people less open to abstract art.

“Curators of exhibitions of modern and abstract art should take into account environmental factors which may induce greater need for closure in visitors, and thus negatively affect viewers’ implicit evaluation of the artworks.”

In the online journal PLoS One,Chirumbolo and his colleagues describe two experiments. The first featured 60 women between the ages of 19 and 30, none of whom had any training in art or architecture.

After filling out a questionnaire designed to measure their dispositional need for closure, they completed an Implicit Association Task in which a series of images (abstract and figurative) and words (positive and negative) flashed onto a computer screen. Researchers noted how quickly and accurately they categorized each word and image.

Overall, “participants tended to exhibit an implicit preference for figurative art over abstract art,” the researchers report. But this tendency was exaggerated for those with a high need for cognitive closure.

The second experiment featured 54 women between the ages of 19 and 28, again with no art training. After their baseline need for closure was established, they were randomly assigned to a “high cognitive load condition” in which they were instructed to memorize nine numbers, or a “low cognitive load condition” in which they told to memorize one number. They then completed the same categorization task.

Again, those who were inherently inclined to seek closure showed an implicit dislike for abstract art. But so did those who were distracted by the need to memorize nine numbers. Indeed, the effect of the cognitive overload was distinct from, and stronger than, the participants’ baseline need for closure.

Chirumbolo and his colleagues explain that in situations where “information processing is more costly and effortful, the desire for unambiguous and stable knowledge predominates, and anything which runs counter to this is perceived as unpleasant and displeasing.”

In other words, if distractions are soaking up too much of your brain power, you have little tolerance for ambiguity. You want to get a strong sense of what you’re looking at and move on.

With this in mind, “Curators of exhibitions of modern and abstract art should take into account environmental factors which may induce greater need for closure in visitors, and thus negatively affect viewers’ implicit evaluation of the artworks,” the researchers write. Anything that reduces viewers’ cognitive load, from simple-to-navigate galleries to clear, understandable explanatory labels accompanying the works, will help.

“Beauty is not an intrinsic characteristic,” Chirumbolo and his colleagues conclude. “Judgments about beauty are individual and subjective, and depend on psychological factors.”

So if you hated that Jackson Pollock exhibit, think back to your state of mind on the day you visited the gallery. If your mental to-do list was long and distracting, you may want to go back in a more relaxed state. You may find the experience much more enjoyable.

Studio Visit: Corey West Watson

Corey's passion lies with painting "layers of texture" through mixed media abstract paintings. "My work is about pattern, layering, texture and the details within the bigger image. My work is approachable and meant to be touched, which makes it unique". Her work is created using layer upon layer of acrylic, ink, soft pastel and papers. Found objects or fabric can also be found hidden within the layers. 

 

Corey in her studio in California. Working on a few pieces images captured by her husband 

check out her site here

Artist Uses Fire and Soot to Paint Elegant Illustrations →

Québec-based artist Steve Spazuk uses fire to create elegant illustrations out of soot. As he demonstrates in the video below, the fire painter manipulates the flame from a candle or a torch to mark a sheet of paper with trails of soot, which he then etches into using delicate tools like feathers, styluses, and fine-tipped paintbrushes. By sweeping away soot to create negative space, Spazuk transforms smoky swirls into intricate, expressive forms.

Many of his most recent soot paintings are part of his Ornithocide series, which depicts inky, phantom-like birds juxtaposed with manmade pesticides that have the unintended consequence of killing birds as well as insects. Using the bird as a symbol of freedom and hope, Spazuk writes, "Like a dark mirror, the death of millions of birds forces us to see the threat we pose to the planet and all living systems, including ourselves."

Check out more of his work here

Emil Alzamora’s Distorted Human Figures Appear to Melt, Morph, and Defy Gravity →

Artist Emil Alzamora (previously) explores the human body through his figurative sculptures that distort, inflate, elongate, and deconstruct physical forms in order to reveal emotional situations and narratives. Alzamora works with a variety of materials including bronze, gypsum, concrete, and other ceramic materials to create pieces with smooth, almost non-descript surfaces to instead draw attention to shape and scale. Born in Peru, he began sculpting in the fall of 1998 in New York at the Polich Tallix fine art foundry, and has since exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, most recently at Expo Chicago and the International Sculpture Symposium In Icheon in South Korea. You can see more of his work on Facebook and on Instagram. (via Dark Silence in Suburbia)

Pop Art Movement →

"Pop is everything art hasn't been for the last two decades. It's basically a U-turn back to a representational visual communication, moving at a break-away speed...Pop is a re-enlistment in the world...It is the American Dream, optimistic, generous…

"Pop is everything art hasn't been for the last two decades. It's basically a U-turn back to a representational visual communication, moving at a break-away speed...Pop is a re-enlistment in the world...It is the American Dream, optimistic, generous and naïve." -Robert Indiana

Pop art is now most associated with the work of New York artists of the early 1960s such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and Claes Oldenburg, but artists who drew on popular imagery were part of an international phenomenon in various cities from the mid-1950s onwards. Following the popularity of the Abstract Expressionists, Pop's reintroduction of identifiable imagery (drawn from mass media and popular culture) was a major shift for the direction of modernism. The subject matter became far from traditional "high art" themes of morality, mythology, and classic history; rather, Pop artists celebrated commonplace objects and people of everyday life, in this way seeking to elevate popular culture to the level of fine art. Perhaps owing to the incorporation of commercial images, Pop art has become one of the most recognizable styles of modern art.

  • By creating paintings or sculptures of mass culture objects and media stars, the Pop art movement aimed to blur the boundaries between "high" art and "low" culture. The concept that there is no hierarchy of culture and that art may borrow from any source has been one of the most influential characteristics of Pop art.
  • It could be argued that the Abstract Expressionists searched for trauma in the soul, while Pop artists searched for traces of the same trauma in the mediated world of advertising, cartoons, and popular imagery at large. But it is perhaps more precise to say that Pop artists were the first to recognize that there is no unmediated access to anything, be it the soul, the natural world, or the built environment. Pop artists believed everything is inter-connected, and therefore sought to make those connections literal in their artwork.
  • Although Pop art encompasses a wide variety of work with very different attitudes and postures, much of it is somewhat emotionally removed. In contrast to the "hot" expression of the gestural abstraction that preceded it, Pop art is generally "coolly" ambivalent. Whether this suggests an acceptance of the popular world or a shocked withdrawal, has been the subject of much debate.
  • Pop artists seemingly embraced the post-WWII manufacturing and media boom. Some critics have cited the Pop art choice of imagery as an enthusiastic endorsement of the capitalist market and the goods it circulated, while others have noted an element of cultural critique in the Pop artists' elevation of the everyday to high art: tying the commodity status of the goods represented to the status of the art object itself, emphasizing art's place as, at base, a commodity.
  • The majority of Pop artists began their careers in commercial art: Andy Warhol was an highly successful magazine illustrator and graphic designer; Ed Ruscha was also a graphic designer, and James Rosenquist started his career as a billboard painter. Their background in the commercial art world trained them in the visual vocabulary of mass culture as well as the techniques to seamlessly merge the realms of high art and popular culture.

Great Britain: The Independent Group

In 1952, a gathering of artists in London calling themselves the Independent Group began meeting regularly to discuss topics such as mass culture's place in fine art, the found object, and science and technology. Members included Edouardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton, architects Alison and Peter Smithson, and critics Lawrence Alloway and Reyner Banham. Britain in the early 1950s was still emerging from the austerity of the post-war years, and its citizens were ambivalent about American popular culture. While the group was suspicious of its commercial character, they were enthusiastic about the rich world pop culture seemed to promise for the future. The imagery they discussed at length included that found in Western movies, science fiction, comic books, billboards, automobile design, and rock and roll music.

The actual term "Pop art" has several possible origins: the first use of the term in writing has been attributed to both Lawrence Alloway and Alison and Peter Smithson, and alternately to Richard Hamilton, who defined Pop in a letter, while the first artwork to incorporate the word "Pop" was produced by Paolozzi. His collage I Was a Rich Man's Plaything (1947) contained cut-up images of a pinup girl, Coca-Cola logo, cherry pie, World War II fighter plane, and a man's hand holding a pistol, out of which burst the world "POP!" in a puffy white cloud. 

New York City: The Emergence of Neo-Dada

By the mid 1950s, the artists working in New York City faced a critical juncture in modern art: following the Abstract Expressionists or rebel against the strict formalism advocated by many schools of modernism. By this time, Jasper Johns was already troubling conventions with abstract paintings that included references to: "things the mind already knows" - targets, flags, handprints, letters, and numbers. Meanwhile, Robert Rauschenberg's "combines" incorporated found objects and images, with more traditional materials like oil paint. Similarly,  Allan Kaprow's "Happenings" and the Fluxusmovements chose to incorporate aspects from the surrounding world into their art. These artists, along with others, later became grouped in the movement known as Neo-Dada. The now classic New York Pop art of Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol emerged in the 1960 in the footsteps of the Neo-Dadaists.

Pop art would continue to influence artists in later decades, with artists like Warhol maintaining a larger-than-life presence within the New York art world into the 1980s. Pop fell out of favor during the 1970s as the art world shifted focus from art objects to installations, performances, and other less tangible art forms. However, with the revival of painting at the end of the 1970s and in the early 1980s, the art object came back into favor once again, and popular culture provided subject matter that was easy for viewers to identify and understand. One of the leading figures of the Neo-Pop movement was Jeff Koons, whose appropriation of pop culture icons such as Michael Jackson and mass-produced objects like Hoover vacuum cleaners further pushed the boundaries of high art. In Japan, the work of Takashi Murakami has been cited as a more recent example of Neo-Pop, due to his use of popular anime imagery in his "Superflat" style and his successful partnering with fashion labels like Louis Vuitton. Such artists continue to break down the barrier between high and low art forms, while reevaluating the role of art as a commodity in and of itself.

SOTHEBY’S $50 M. VAN GOGH ACTUALLY FAILED TO SELL IN 1990 →

Sotheby’s has put together an impressive evening sale for next week, led by two works literally guaranteed to go for above $100 million and $80 million each (by Alberto Giacometti and Amedeo Modigiani, respectively). The catalogue cover lot for the sale, a Vincent van Gogh from 1890 with the sale’s third-highest estimate, however, was actually bought in under a $12 million-to-$16 million estimate in 1990. They’re now calling it Nature mort, Vase aux marguerites et coquelicots and its current estimate is $30 million to $50 million.

The painting was acquired in 1928 by A. Conger Goodyear, the first president of the Museum of Modern Art who then gave it to his son George Forman Goodyear who gifted 60 percent of it to the Albright Knox Art Gallery before deciding to sell it in 1990. According to Artnet’s price database, it was in the November 14, 1990 sale as Vase de Bleuets et Coquelicots. (That actually makes much more sense as a title since in French would be more likely say “vase de marguerites et coquelicots” to describe this painting, depending on whatever kinds of flowers you think those are. “Vas aux” something more describes a real-life vase with a depiction of something on it, Vas aux Guerriers, etc.) In 1991 Goodyear apparently managed to sell it to an “important European collection,” the seller of this work.

Why does a painting get bought in? Who knows! Doesn’t mean it’s a bad work. In fact, the auction-record-setting Van Gogh, Portrait du Dr. Gachet (1980) sold that May for $82.5 million. Should that have helped or hurt the attempted sale of this painting in 1990? Who knows! (Maybe that means the market for Van Gogh was hot at the time, or, with the sale of that painting, satiated!) Is this current estimate over-ambitious or the reflection of a booming market? Who knows! At any rate, this not guaranteed lot is definitely one to watch.

How Small Steady Actions Move Us Forward to Our Artistic Goals →

“Do not be afraid of moving slowly.  Be only afraid of standing still.”  - Chinese Proverb

Have you ever thought about the importance of the small, steady actions you take every day toward your artistic goals?

You can’t imagine how important these really are.

Most of us have a very distorted notion of how things actually get done in this world.  We think that great accomplishment only comes from great deeds in artistic goals. 

We imagine our heroes striding toward their goal in seven-league boots–writing best-selling novels in three months, building business empires overnight, soaring to stardom out of nowhere–and this gives rise to painfully unrealistic expectations of ourselves.  And yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Great deeds are made of small, steady actions, and it is these that you must learn to value and sustain in your artistic goals.

Often you feel you’ve done nothing when you’ve actually done a lot.  That’s because what you did do seemed beneath notice–it was so small that you thought it didn’t “count.”  But it did–just as each stitch counts toward a finished dress, each brick toward a house you can live in, each mistake toward knowing how to do things right.

Directed action, no matter how small, moves toward its point.   When you change your perspective, you will start to see how small steps add up.

Will You Regret Not Becoming an Artist? →

At the end of your life, will you deeply regret taking the sure and safe path instead of the road less traveled?

At the end of your life, will you deeply regret taking the sure and safe path instead of the road less traveled?

Will you live to regret it if you don’t follow your dream of being an artist? At the end of your life, will you deeply regret taking the sure and safe path instead of the road less traveled?

These are challenging questions, I admit. And you may or may not have given questions as serious as these much consideration. But these are issues that should be confronted by adults of any age.

They were issues that confronted Bronnie Ware. After too many years of unfulfilling work, Bronnie began searching for a job with heart. Despite having no formal qualifications or experience, she found herself working in palliative care.

Over the years she spent tending to the needs of those who were dying, Bronnie’s life was transformed.

Later, she wrote an Internet blog about the most common regrets expressed to her by the people she had cared for. The article and book, also called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, gained so much momentum that it was read by more than three million people around the globe in its first year.

The book outlines the top 5 regrets expressed by her dying patients.

What was the number one regret?

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

“This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it.”

Carl Jung once wrote that most of his patients knew the greater truths concerning their lives, but did not live them. And he wrote of these patients that, “Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead.”

Given this all-too-human failing, I wonder how many artists are out there in the world masquerading as doctors, lawyers or stockbrokers?  And I wonder if it is this lifelong masquerade that leads some people to end up regretting the life choices that they made?

The Difference between Acrylics and Oil paint →

What is the difference between Oil and Acrylic paints?

Do you want to learn to paint put don’t know where to start?

Get excited about all the paintings you are going to create but don’t know which types of paints to begin with?

To understand the pros and cons you need to ask yourself a few simple questions to determine which medium is best for you…

Please note: The comparison below is for standard acrylics and oil paints, not taking into account quick drying oils or ‘Open’ acrylics (slow drying)

1. Do you work quickly or slowly?

Acrylic Pros: You can paint on anything.
This is one of the key things that make acrylics a great medium to start with when beginning to learn to paint. To be able to set up quickly, start painting on anything is brilliant. Paper, card, canvas board, whatever you have to hand.

Acrylic Cons: They dry quick, I mean really quick.
You want to do some painting, so you book in a little me time. You’ve got a canvas ready, you’ve prepared your ground and now you’re ready to paint.
All is quiet and at peace with the world. You carefully squeeze out your paintings, being careful not to use too much, and then what happens?

The phone rings.

Wrong number.

In this short amount of time the first blob of paint you’d squeezed out will now be dry, solid, unable to shift. So you scrape it off, squeeze out some more, ready to go and…

A knock at the door.

You put down your brushes, come back 10 minutes later and every thing has dried! Not quite the tranquil painting experience you had imagined.

The solution?

  • Squeeze out more paint
  • Add a retarder to keep the acrylics wet for longer (no more than 15% or the paint goes funny)
  • Use a stay wet palette to keep the paints moist. See my video on How to set up a stay wet palette.   

Oil Pros: Longer working time.
Because oil paints stay wet for a lot longer than acrylics it gives you the flexibility to start a painting and then come back to it the next day and continue straight where you left off. The paint on the palette will still be wet and pliable, the colours on your canvas can still be blended together. 

Oil Cons: Preparation is key
Due to the corrosive nature of the oil (in oil paints) you have to work on a prepared canvas or board. If you are going to prepare the surface of the canvas yourself the preparation time is longer. You could of course buy a pre-primed canvas and get going straight away.

2. Do you like subtle blends or hard lines?

Acrylic Pros: A Crisp edge
The crisp edges that can be achieved with acrylics can be hugely beneficial if you paint with a more graphic composition. You can mask out areas, work over them quickly, and easily cover a hard shape with thicker paint. You can achieve clean, bright colours very easily.

Michael Craig Martin

Michael Craig Martin

Acrylics Cons: Achieving a smooth blend
Blending with acrylics can be frustrating due to the rapidness of the drying time. Especially if you are working on a large scale it can be practically impossible to work the canvas as a whole to bring it all to the same finish together.

This is for a size of say 6ft x 4ft. If you are working smaller that this you can achieve some lovely blends.

You can achieve smooth blends with acrylics you just have to work quickly. You can add a medium to the paint to help keep the working time open for longer. Either use soft gel gloss, retarder (slows down drying time) or my preferred choice, glazing liquid gloss.

Pro tip: I use the glazing liquid gloss even if I don’t need a gloss finish. This is because the matting agent used in the matt glazing liquid is white when wet, it dries pretty clear but i have found it can sometimes leave the blacks looking milky)

Oil Pros: smooth blending
Oil paints are king of the ring when blending colours together. Because of the slow drying nature of oil paints they can can fantastic for creating subtle blends.

Working wet-into-wet is the sure fire way to get a smooth transition in your painting. This is especially true for portrait painting when the subtle shading of the face can need constant revisiting and tweaking. You can also add slower drying oils to your paints to create surfaces that can stay wet for weeks.

Oil Cons: Trying to create a crisp edge without it effecting the underlying colours with oils means you have to wait until the next day, or touch dry otherwise your brushstroke will pull and mix with the paint underneath it. It is very easy to achieve ‘muddy colours’ when first starting with oils due to everything staying wet and the colours mixing together on the canvas.

Solution: Experience teaches you to work cleanly.

3. Colour shift

Acrylic Pros: They are lightfast
With projected laboratory tests acrylics won’t fade in time, the colours will look the same now as they will in 200 years. The binder in oil paint – oil, goes yellow over time, this causes the subtle glow on old master paintings with acrylics they are colourfast, the binder – acrylic polymer doesn’t yellow over time.

Pro tip : The most likely cause of fading is using pigments that are not lightfast, this is true of oils and acrylics.

Acrylic Cons: They change colour when they dry.
The binder used in acrylics is usually white but dries clear (the recent binder in Winsor & Newton Artists’ Acrylics is clear, but I feel still has a slight color shift) This means it appears lighter on the canvas when you first put in on, and then dries darker as the white binder turns clear.

This becomes really apparent when painting portraits. You think you’ve cracked the precise colour, turn around and the colour has changed. With practice you can learn to judge to shift but it can be disconcerting when you begin to learn.

If you add more acrylic polymers to the paint, in the form of mediums (quick dry mediums, flow release medium) the colour shift will be even greater.

If you use student quality paints that have extra fillers added, which are often white, the colour shift will be more pronounced.

Oil Pros: No immediate colour shift.
Initially oils stay the same colour when painted on a canvas. However, once the colour dries it can appear to change if the oil from the paint ‘sinks in’ to the canvas.

This can lead some areas to be glossy (still have the oil in) and others to be matt (oil has been soaked into the underlayer) to produce a deader colour. To overcome this you have to “oil out’ the area of the painting you are working on. A paint surface can appear dull and is usually caused by too little oil in the paint film due to the absorption into the ground layer (or overuse of thinners such as turpentine)

Pro tip: In classical painting you build an oil painting up in layers and one of these layers is called the ‘dead colouring layer‘ It is painted using oil paint thinned with turpentine onto an absorbent gesso ground, this soaks up the oil, speeds the drying time and gives a local colour to the painting.

Leonardo Da Vinci, Adoration of the Magi, detail.

Leonardo Da Vinci, Adoration of the Magi, detail.

Oil Cons: Yellowing
Oil paints will have a slight yellow tinge to them due to the colour of the oil (think of olive oil) As oil dries over time through the process of oxidation additional yellowing takes place. This varies in degree depending on the binder used in the paint.

“Yellowing must therefore be considered as an unavoidable characteristic of drying oils and this must be kept in mind by users.”
Professors Mallegol, University Blaise Pascal in France.

4. Do you like working with thick paint or thin layers?

Acrylic Pros: Acrylics are flexible.
If you like the idea of using a palette knife and creating thick, impasto paintings, acrylics could be the choice for you. You can paint thickly, build it up and the paint will dry. If you try to achieve the same with oils the outer surface will dry to the touch but the inner paint will still be wet.

You can also work very thinly with transparent glazes or very thickly with a mountain of paint but the actual surface quality of the acrylic remains flexible, this means your painting won’t crack over time.Thin coats of acrylic paint can be used to give a watercolour look to a picture.

Pro tip: Acrylics can crack but usually only in extreme cold temperatures.

Oil Pros: Long drying times
If you have plenty of time set aside for your painting, oils can be fantastic. You can work with thick paint, wait a couple of days for that paint to dry then add thin glazes to create luminosity in your work.

Oil Cons: To work with thick paint you need to take into account the drying time of oils. Each particular pigment needs a different amount of oil mixed with it resulting in a different drying time, e.g: Earth colours such as Burnt umber is a rapid dryer whereas Ivory black takes much longer to dry.

The solution: Add a siccative to the paint. A siccative is a medium that helps to speed up the drying process in oil paints. Traditionally this was a cobalt drier, more recently, Liquin by Winsor & Newton is a synthetic medium that can accelerate the drying time of the oil paint by about 50%

5. Do you work in a small space?

Acrylic Pros: Acrylics can be a great alternative to oils if your working in a confined space are working with kids or in a unventilated area. You just need access to water. Acrylics have no smell, and are non toxic.

Oil cons: The smell of turpentine
If your start painting with oils in a confined space the fumes from the thinners can overwhelm you, turpentine and white spirit can be really strong. White spirit can also be a irritant to the skin and turpentine rags can spontaneously combust!
I work with odourless mineral spirits or ‘Zest It‘ (a thinner made from citrus ) that have a very minimal odour compared to turpentine.

Pro tip: The odourless mineral spirit does not cut through the oil as well as pure artist turpentine and if you are using Dammar varnish in your mixes can cause problems.

 

Studio Visit: Laurie Justus Pace

This is a video made in Laurie Pace's studio following the transformation on a canvas from beginning to end. Made by a high school friend, Ken Vaughn.

In the video above Laurie shows a quick tutorial on how she paints, what she uses and talks inspiration. For more on Laurie Justus Pace visit her website here.