art suppliers

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Suppliers page

5 July 2009 in art suppliers by David | No comments

I’ve added a page list­ing sup­pli­ers of art mate­ri­als whose prod­ucts I like and who pro­vide good ser­vice. Call it the All the Strange Hours seal of approval. Over time, I’ll expand the list.

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Suppliers

5 July 2009 in by David | 1 comment

Here are some providers of art sup­plies that I’ve found to be espe­cially good. Alas, I get no kick­backs if you buy their stuff.


Blue Ridge Artist Mate­ri­als*
Oil paint.

Nat­ural Pigments
Lead oil paint­ing ground, bris­tle brushes, bad­ger brush set, curd soap for brushes, oil paint.

Real Gesso**
Gesso and linen panels.

Robert Doak and Associates
Oil paint (espe­cially the blues), wal­nut oil, rab­bit­skin glue.

Stu­dio Products
Oil paint, ugly dog brush soap, glaz­ing medium.

Williams­burg Artist Materials
Oil paint (espe­cially the earths).


Full dis­clo­sure:

*I’ve received free sam­ples from this com­pany (although I’ve also bought stuff from them with my own money).

**The Real Gesso folks have been nice enough to give me a dis­count on orders. I get no kick­back when you order from them, however.

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A few items from Natural Pigments

21 May 2009 in art materials, art suppliers by David | No comments

I’ve bought some art stuff lately, so I thought I’d post some mini-reviews, of which this is the first. Here is some stuff from Nat­ural Pig­ments. Alas, I get no kick­backs if you buy this stuff. I also bought some lead white primer, but I haven’t used it yet so you’ll just have to wait.

Bad­ger brush set

Bad­ger hair is tra­di­tional for mak­ing brushes used for blend­ing oil paint, so I broke down and bought this set from Nat­ural Pig­ments. There is a fan, a round, and two sizes of flats. So far, I’ve just tried the round, but for blend­ing it is just lovely. I had been doing most blend­ing with a syn­thetic round, and wow! The bad­ger beats that by a mile. Highly rec­om­mended if you paint in a style that involves ren­der­ing. I wish I’d bought these a long time ago.

#2 Bris­tle flat brushes

These were cheap, so I bought a few. The han­dles are nicely laque­red in a nat­ural wood color. The fer­ules are firmly set and dou­ble crimped. The brush hairs are well set (flags fac­ing inward), with the annoy­ance of a few stray hairs that needed trim­ming. The brushes hold their shape under heavy use and have the right level of resis­tance when mov­ing paint. These are an excel­lent value for inex­pen­sive brushes.

Velazquez medium

This is cal­cite ground with a blend of bod­ied and refined lin­seed oils. I’ve made basi­cally the same stuff myself, but it’s con­ve­nient to have some already made up in a jar. It’s light gray and the con­sis­tency of oil paint. Mixed with paint it adds no color, but makes it more trans­par­ent. This is a good medium for velat­uras and for mak­ing strongly tint­ing pig­ments less strong with­out los­ing body. I haven’t noticed that it has much effect on the brush­ing prop­er­ties of the paint. They have a sim­i­lar medium that’s specif­i­cally for impasto, but that’s not how I paint. This stuff won’t mag­i­cally let you paint like Velazquez, but it is use­ful and inexpensive.

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Where to find medium supplies

23 May 2008 in art materials, oil painting by David | 7 comments

In the com­ments to this post, Jeff writes:

What would you rec­om­mend as a good source for pur­chas­ing canada bal­sam / stand oil / spike?

First let me note that these are nat­ural mate­ri­als. Any sup­plier can get a bad batch. That I got qual­ity stuff five years ago does not guar­an­tee that you will get high qual­ity mate­ri­als from the same com­pany now. That’s the nature of the market.

That being said, if you want to get Canada bal­sam, spike, and stand oil, these are sup­pli­ers I’d rec­om­mend tak­ing a look at:

  • Stu­dio Prod­ucts. I’ve pur­chased all three of these ingre­di­ents from these guys and the qual­ity has been excellent.
  • Sinopia. Great pig­ments and other sup­plies. They are now the sole dis­trib­u­tor for the Euro­pean art sup­ply com­pany Kremer.
  • Nat­ural Pig­ments. They sell some stuff made by Stu­dio Prod­ucts and many other art sup­plies, includ­ing a line of oil paints made with some very old-school pig­ments. They also sell heat-bodied oil in var­i­ous vis­cosi­ties. Stand oil is one grade of heat-bodied oil. That would allow you to exper­i­ment, if you liked.
  • Kama Pig­ments. They have Canada bal­sam (at a very good price) as well as oil of spike (which they call laven­der oil). I have never ordered from them, but have heard good things from oth­ers, despite the truly awful design of their web site.
  • Robert Doak and Asso­ciates. They have var­i­ous pre-made medi­ums, as well as bal­sam, spike, and stand oil. Don’t let Robert tell you what you have to buy from him.

Note that you should not have to buy a lot of medium sup­plies, because you should not add much medium to your paint. Unless you are mak­ing a lot of paint­ings, which would be excellent.

Please share any expe­ri­ences you might have with these sup­pli­ers or other places to get these materials.

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If you are interested in silverpoint

27 May 2007 in art suppliers, art technique by David | 2 comments

This web site seems like a great resource for those who would like to learn to draw with sil­ver­point (or any other sort of metal-point).

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Oil painting without solvents

29 December 2006 in art materials, art suppliers, art technique, oil painting by David | 49 comments

I am for­tu­nate in hav­ing no par­tic­u­lar sen­si­tiv­ity to the aro­matic sol­vents such as spir­its of tur­pen­tine and oil of spike often used in oil paint­ing. I take rea­son­able pre­cau­tions while paint­ing to avoid over­ex­po­sure and ensure good ventilation.

Some peo­ple are specif­i­cally sen­si­tive to spir­its of tur­pen­tine, but are able to use alter­nate sol­vents such as oil of spike. Oth­ers are very sen­si­tive to aro­matic sol­vents, but are able to tol­er­ate mod­i­fied sub­stances such as odor­less min­eral spir­its. (I don’t like using OMS with oil paints because I don’t like the way they inter­act with paint. I also have a slight skin sen­si­tiv­ity to min­eral spir­its.) Note that not all spir­its of tur­pen­tine are the same. Most mod­ern gum tur­pen­tines are made from boiled tree stumps, which makes a nasty-smelling prod­uct. Look for stuff that doesn’t have a foul odor.

But there are some indi­vid­u­als who just can’t be around any of the sol­vents that are use­ful for oil paint­ing. And even peo­ple with no sen­si­tiv­ity may find them­selves tak­ing a class or in some other sit­u­a­tion in which sol­vents are not allowed. I think it’s use­ful, there­fore, to dis­cuss strate­gies for work­ing with oil paint with­out solvents.

I’d first like to note that, for the first 100 years of oil paint­ing, there is scant evi­dence of sol­vent use. Paint­ings from that period often exhibit very fine detail, demon­strat­ing that just about any sort of paint­ing in oil is pos­si­ble with­out sol­vents. Since those paint­ings have often lasted very well (with­out exces­sive crack­ing or yel­low­ing), it also demon­strates that multi-layered solvent-free paint­ing can be done with­out hav­ing to dilute the paint with exces­sive oil or by egre­giously vio­lat­ing the prin­ci­ple of fat over lean. Read the rest of this entry »

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Doak’s cristallo medium

23 December 2006 in art materials, art suppliers, oil painting, painting by David | 5 comments

So I called up Robert Doak over the Sum­mer to order some paint. As he does, he asked me about how I paint and started sug­gest­ing addi­tional things for me to buy (he’s a very good sales­man). One of the things he pushed was his new medium, “cristallo.” At $12 USD for a 40 ml tube I decided to splurge and pick some up.

Mr. Doak says that the pri­mary ingre­di­ents in cristallo are leaded glass pow­der and sun-thickened wal­nut oil. It also con­tains small amounts of cold-pressed wal­nut oil, beeswax, and lead drier. It is based on recent research indi­cat­ing that 16th cen­tury Venet­ian painters added more pow­dered glass to their paint than was pre­vi­ously thought, although he makes no claim that this is the “redis­cov­ered” medium of Tit­ian, Gior­gione, and Tin­toretto. He sug­gests that it is best used by spread­ing it thinly onto the sur­face and paint­ing into it. He also sug­gests that it is a good replace­ment for var­nish on a dried paint­ing, but I am dubi­ous about that appli­ca­tion and have not tried it.

I’ve now painted with it, off and on, for a few months. It is a sort of thick, col­or­less fluid, about the con­sis­tency of ketchup. It is not sticky the way medi­ums con­tain­ing resins, bal­sams, or stand oil tend to be. It is easy to spread very thinly onto the paint­ing sur­face with a fin­ger (you can feel a slight gran­u­lar­ity from the glass pow­der, but it is barely per­cep­ti­ble) and it becomes more fluid as you move it around (i.e., it is some­what thixotropic). It is nice to paint on, pro­vid­ing a pleas­ant, slip­pery qual­ity to the paint­ing sur­face. Mixed into paint, it dilutes it slightly and gives it extra brusha­bil­ity. It doesn’t hold brush marks. It does not seem to markedly increase or decrease the dry­ing time of oil paint. So far, I like it. It does not make the paint mag­i­cally trans­par­ent or lumi­nous, but I didn’t expect it to.

If you do use cristallo or any other paint­ing medium, add only very small amounts to your paint—never more than 20% of paint vol­ume and prefer­ably much less than that.

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Update on Robert Doak

5 September 2006 in art materials, art suppliers by David | 1 comment

I wrote about Robert Doak’s oil paints back in July, when I first started this web log. Today, he called me. He had noticed my post here, looked up my phone num­ber on his cus­tomer list, and wanted to thank me for rec­om­mend­ing his prod­ucts. He also asked about my state­ment that some of his paints sep­a­rate, so that a oil oozes out of the tube when you remove the cap (I’ve only had this hap­pen with a small per­cent­age of his paint tubes).

He said that he almost never gets this com­plaint. He wanted me to know that, when it hap­pens, it does so because he uses very lit­tle stearate, which is a clear, inex­pen­sive pig­ment that paint man­u­fac­tur­ers use to pre­vent sep­a­ra­tion. It also reduces pig­ment load and (when used in excess) makes paints more thick and dif­fi­cult to work with. Cheaper brands of oil paint use a lot of stearate, to improve shelf life and reduce the per­cent­age of expen­sive pig­ments in their paint (that’s part of why stu­dent grade paint is usu­ally very stiff). I have never been con­cerned about sep­a­ra­tion with Doak’s paint, because I know it hap­pens because he empha­sizes pig­ment load and smooth han­dling over shelf life.

In the orig­i­nal post I said that the way to deal with sep­a­ra­tion was to squeeze your paint out onto absorbent paper, wait a cou­ple of min­utes, then trans­fer the paint to your palette with a knife. Mr. Doak said doing that over and over might tend to leech the oil out of the paint tube and cause the paint in the tube to harden (I haven’t had that hap­pen). He rec­om­mended instead stor­ing any tube of paint with sep­a­ra­tion issues cap down­ward, so the oil moves back up through the pig­ment in the tube. I told him I’d try that and pass on the tip.

I still strongly rec­om­mend his paint.

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Studio Products

5 August 2006 in art materials, art suppliers by David | No comments

is a small art mate­ri­als com­pany that makes a vari­ety of high qual­ity art sup­plies. They don’t try to be a one-stop shop, but instead con­cen­trate on the niche of the best, most dif­fi­cult to find stuff. They make a vari­ety of oil paint­ing medi­ums, such as Maroger’s, Roberson’s, copal, wax medium, a glaz­ing medium, and under­paint­ing medium. They also pro­vide mate­ri­als for mak­ing medi­ums, such as oil of spike, Canada bal­sam, clove oil, and black oil. They have a line of oil paint, ground in lin­seed oil, that is at least as good as any other brand I’ve tried. Some of their prices are high, but not unrea­son­able when you con­sider that they are, in fact, using the best mate­ri­als available.

Here are a few of the prod­ucts from their cat­a­log that I’ve tried.

Lead primer in black oil: this is a per­fect lead white primer. It doesn’t dry to a bril­liant white, but rather to a pleas­ant warm tone.

Black oil: This is lin­seed oil cooked with lead. Black oil is slip­pery and dries very quickly; it is an excel­lent com­po­nent in paint­ing mediums.

Glaz­ing medium: Use this by spread­ing a thin layer onto the dried sur­face of your paint­ing, then apply­ing paint thinly into it. Thick and slippery.

Spe­cial aged oil: This is a par­tic­u­lar grade of lin­seed oil, excel­lent for grind­ing your own paint and for mak­ing egg-oil emulsions.

Oil paint: as I said, I have not encoun­tered any­thing bet­ter. It has the kind of con­sis­tency you get with freshly ground, home­made oil paint. It is expen­sive, but note that their stan­dard tube is 50 ml while most of their com­peti­tors use 40 ml tubes, so it’s not quite as costly as it looks.

Oil of spike: This is a sol­vent, sim­i­lar to spir­its of tur­pen­tine. Com­pared to turps, it evap­o­rates more slowly and is more slip­pery. It has a strong, pleas­ant smell.

Maroger’s medium: This is black oil and thick mas­tic var­nish. You can buy a pre-made ver­sion or one that you mix up your­self (it takes 20 min­utes to gel). Added in very small quan­ti­ties to paint, Maroger’s notice­ably improves the han­dling qual­ity of oil paint.

The com­pany also hosts the Cen­nini Forum, a place where paint­ing top­ics are dis­cussed with a knowl­edge­able and lively group of artists. The mod­er­a­tor is Rob Howard, whose some­times acer­bic style of forum man­age­ment does not agree with every­one. If you stick around, you’ll learn lots about paint­ing and paint­ing materials.

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Real gesso

2 August 2006 in art suppliers by David | 8 comments

If you go into an art or craft store, you can buy pre-stretched can­vases and (some­times) primed pan­els. You can also buy the stuff they use to prime them, which is usu­ally labelled “gesso.” It’s not actu­ally gesso in the tech­ni­cal sense; it’s really acrylic primer. Acrylic primer is excel­lent as a ground for acrylic paint­ing. As a ground for oil paint­ing, some peo­ple like it, but many find that it’s rough on brushes and “chat­tery.” By that I mean that paint doesn’t spread very well.

Actual gesso has been used since the Mid­dle Ages as a ground for paint­ing. It’s made from hide glue and an inert white pig­ment such as chalk or gyp­sum (it may also have a stronger white pig­ment such as tita­nium white added for bright­ness). Tra­di­tional gesso is a good alter­na­tive to acrylic primer if you are paint­ing on pan­els (it’s too brit­tle for use on can­vas). You can make it your­self, but if you’d rather not go through the trou­ble, the best com­mer­cial gesso pan­els I know of are made by these guys:

http://​www​.realgesso​.com

Their pan­els are excel­lent for oil, egg tem­pera, or tem­pera grassa. They are made with 1/4” tem­pered hard­board spray-coated with gesso made from hide glue, pow­dered chalk, and tita­nium white. A 16 × 20” panel cur­rently costs $20.80 USD, which is quite rea­son­able. They sell a vari­ety of sizes and will cus­tom cut for no addi­tional fee. Smaller “plein air” pan­els on thin­ner hard­board are also avail­able, as well as oil-primed linen glued to hardboard.

They will send you a sam­ple for free if you ask. If you’ve been paint­ing on generic primed can­vas or mak­ing your own sup­ports with acrylic primer, this is a real step up.

In a later post, I’ll pro­vide instruc­tions for mak­ing your own gesso panels.

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Robert Doak

9 July 2006 in art materials, art suppliers by David | No comments

runs an art mate­ri­als store in Brook­lyn, NY. He is an inter­est­ing old guy with very strong opin­ions about how paint­ings should be made. If you are an artist, his shop is full of need­ful things. If you call him or walk into his store, you won’t be able to escape hav­ing a very long con­ver­sa­tion about art, in which he tries to fig­ure out what kind of painter you are so that he can rec­om­mend what you should buy from him. He is some­thing to expe­ri­ence, although you should by no means treat all of his opin­ions as gospel.

He makes oil paint. It is, unlike any other brand that I am aware of, ground in a blend of lin­seed and wal­nut oil. The paint is really good stuff, highly pig­mented and very fluid. No one makes bet­ter blues than Robert Doak. It is amaz­ingly inex­pen­sive for top of the line paint. The paints are made to max­i­mize qual­ity rather than shelf life, so they often sep­a­rate in the tube. That’s OK; just squeeze the paint out onto absorbent paper, wait a minute or so for the extra oil to set­tle out, and trans­fer to your palette with a knife. It’s worth the trouble.

Robert has no web site; he only recently began accept­ing credit cards (before that, mail order was done by check, and if he’d done busi­ness with you before, he’d mail out your order on the strength of your promise). Robert Doak & Asso­ciates, Inc., can be reached at 89 Bridge St., Brook­lyn, NY 11201, or by phone at (718) 237‑1210. Call before stop­ping in, as he’s not there every day. If you are a painter in oil, water­color, tem­pera, pas­tel, or any other tra­di­tional medium, you owe it to your­self to get in touch with him. When he goes, there won’t be any more.

Updated infor­ma­tion on Robert Doak’s paint here.

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