Gamblin Oil workshop by Andrea Harris at Artist & Display Saturday 11/15/08

This was an excellent workshop & I really enjoyed it.

Andrea Harris, http://www.andreaharris.com/. Gamblin artist representative taught the workshop and did an excellent job.

We learned about and used

• the Neo Megilp medium which suspends and supports the oil paint in a soft gel providing luminosity, an atmospheric effect like William Turner, http://www.j-m-w-turner.co.uk/ , is good for indirect painting and
  
• Cold Wax medium which allows you to create impasto or direct painting techniques and can be used as a final varnish. Andrea spread a very thin layer of cold wax on her substrate, added paint directly from the tubes and blended right on her substrate. A rigid substrate is needed to prevent cracking if you use more than 30% coldwax medium. Galkyd gel improves flexibility of coldwax.
  
• Neo Megilp is shiny while Cold Wax is a less glossy, matte finish. Both mediums extend your paint. Modern oil paints are a lot thicker than in the days of the "Masters".
• Discussed Gamvar which is a removable with Gamsol varnish.
• Gamblin mediums are balanced while cold wax is lean. Linseed oil, safflower and standard oil are fatty. Need to paint fat over lean? or thin to pastelike. Gamblin mediums dry by evaporation not oxication. She starts sketching by using artist color like raw umber and a lot of medium. Oil over acrylic sketch may result in poor adhesion of oil.
  
• Gamblin has a special black called chromatic black which made by mixing quinacridone red (cool red) with pthalo emerald (warm green), 2 colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel, allowing you to have more lively, shear, not muddy black. You can use it to darken colors without muddying them. mix it with TiZn white to get a beautiful gray which can be used to tone down colors.
  
• Someone in class mentioned the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend http://www.wisconsinart.org/

We painted still lifes of fruit using 3 color pallettes, Old Masters, Modern and Impressionists colors, http://www.gamblincolors.com/oil.painting.techniques/palettes.html over Ampersand gessobord panels, http://www.ampersandart.com/ . They're really easy to work on and archival too. I really enjoyed painting in oil with how easy they blend and allow you to get exactly the color you want. My husband liked the paintings and has them now while they are drying.

Old master paintings were all about value & used a limited mineral based palette. Impressionist (see painting with orange background) paintings were about color and had more mineral based colors created during the industrial revolution. Modern (see painting with black background) and the spectral palette is about intensity.