Putty

Do go check out Tad Spurgeon’s excel­lent site. Since the last time I had been there, he’s really fleshed out a method for mak­ing “putty” with var­i­ous heat bod­ied oils and dif­fer­ent chalks. These put­ties form a thick, dull grey medium that is mixed with reg­u­lar paint to adjust it’s trans­parency and han­dling char­ac­ter­is­tics. Although the putty is grey all by itself, it has no color when mixed with reg­u­lar pig­mented oil paint.

Painters such as Velazquez and Rem­brandt rou­tinely added such mate­ri­als to their paint. Tad seems well on his way to recre­at­ing some of their methods.

Aside from this, Tad has lots of great info on oil paint­ing, includ­ing a well-written and use­ful intro­duc­tion for begin­ners. Go there now.