Art Supplies: Oil Paints

Until the mid-1800s, artists had to buy the ingredients separately and mix their own paints. This involved grinding colored minerals into pigments and mixing them with oils. When oil paint became popular in the 1500s, some artists made improvements. They added other ingredients to shorten the long drying time and prevent the paint from darkening when it dried.

Today, oil paints come pre-mixed in tubes like acrylics and some watercolors. Colors that used to be very expensive to use because the mineral was rare and expensive, like blue, can now be man-made.

Oil paints are glossy and can be transparent (allowing light to pass through) or opaque (blocking light from passing through) depending on the color you choose. The transparent colors seem to glow while the opaque colors are richer. Oil paints colors are very bright, the brightest of any type of paint.

They take much longer to dry than water colors or acrylics. This is useful because it allows the artist to take paint off the canvas easily using turpentine and a rag. Because oil paints dry through a chemical reaction, they continue to dry (and to change) for years after the paint is dry to the touch. In fact, conservators of art (whose job it is to keep art looking the way the artist intended) consider an oil painting to be in the process of drying for up to 80 years! Click on Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring and you will see cracking across the girl’s face. Next time you visit a museum look for cracks in the paint; you’ll see them everywhere.

Oil paints are different from acrylics and watercolors in that they form a hard shell on the canvas. This shell can crack when the painting is moved and you’ll see fine lines forming through the painting. From the 1500s to the 1800s, it was popular to paint with oil on panels of wood. The wood would sometimes warp though, and this created even more cracking in the paint. To avoid cracking, the paint should get oilier with each layer. This was probably very easy for artists who made their own paints but would be quite difficult for someone today just starting out as a painter.

Oil paints are also harder to clean and will stain if you spill them.

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Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett

Chasing Vermeer, by Blue Balliett, is an exciting mystery about the quest of two sixth graders, Petra and Calder, to save a work of art from a thief. Through a series of coincidences too related to be accidental, the two collect clues and learn about Vermeer’s art along the way. Even Brett Helquist’s chapter illustrations contain a mystery. This book never fails to involve the audience. It even includes a secret coded language that the reader must use to understand parts of the book.

You don’t need to know anything about the seventeenth-century Dutch painter, Vermeer to understand and enjoy this thrilling story. Blue Balliett tells you all you need to know in this novel meant for readers 9 years and older. If you’d like to learn anyway, please read yesterday’s article, Artist Profile: Johannes Vermeer.

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Artist Profile: Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch painter, born in Delft in 1632. He began his career in the arts when his father died and Vermeer inherited the family art dealing business. He continued to work as an art dealer even after he had become a respected painter because he needed the money.

Vermeer married a Catholic woman named Catharina Bolnes, even though he was a Protestant, and went to live with her and her mother in the “Papist corner.” Catholics in Delft lived in a separate neighborhood than the Protestants and the members of the two religions did not usually spend much time together.

Vermeer and his wife had fourteen children but not nearly enough money to support them all. Catharina’s mother gave them some money and let the family live with her but Vermeer still had to borrow money to feed his children.

In 1653, Vermeer joined the painters’ trade association, the Guild of Saint Luke. This allowed him to be taken seriously as an artist.

Later, Pieter van Ruijven, one of the richest men in town, became Vermeer’s patron. As patrons do, Ruijven bought many of Vermeer’s paintings and made sure he had canvas, paints, and brushes so he could work. Having a patron meant that Vermeer could use the color blue in his paintings, a very expensive color in the 1600s because it was made out of the semi-precious stone, lapis lazuli. And use blue he did. Look at the headband on this famous painting, Girl with the Pearl Earring.

Today, we have given Vermeer credit for 66 paintings, though experts are only sure that 35 of them were actually painted by Vermeer. Another Dutch painter, Han van Mergeren, wanted to prove that he was a good artist so he painted in the style of Vermeer, making an unknown number of fakes.

Nearly all of Vermeer’s paintings show indoor scenes. One exception is View of Delft, shown below. Most have a single window on the left side of the painting which provides the light. (For example, The Milkmaid, picture to the left.) Vermeer created a smooth but thick painting by applying a thin layer of paint, letting it dry, then adding another thin layer of paint, and continuing until he was happy with the artwork. His subjects ranged from very poor workers to rich nobles.

EDITED TO ADD: Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett, book review

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