The Minneapolis Institute of Arts

On the Paintbrush. Part I

On the Paintbrush.  Part  I

     The paintbrush is my best friend.  Over the last 15 years I have built an industrious relationship where we both know each other’s capabilities and use each other accordingly.  Over the course of 4 posts we are going to talk about the paintbrush.  To begin, we will go over the basics of brush type, use, and care.  Then we will go over each type of brush individually and what I use them for.  There are many brushes available to the oil painter these days, and the type the artist uses is not just a personal choice, it is a commitment. 

Regardless of the tools the oil painter comes to use in his discipline, the oil painter must first learn to control the paint brush.  The paint brush is the single most recognized tool used to create works of art, but the artist must never be limited to its use solely for the application of oil paint.  Although it is the classic tool of the oil painter, it must not be considered the most important.  All tools as a matter of personal choice are simply a discipline to learn.  The artist will simply know what tool is best used to achieve each intended concept.  Within compositional oil painting, the intended concept of an oil painting supersedes personality and inevitably decides what tools should be used.  Only the indented concept and communication of the work of art dictates what tools to use in its creation, as the artist and their work both know this and listen to their work’s whispers.  Through the path of both self and external discovery, the oil painter will use other tools to create works of art.  Later, as the oil painter matures, he will return to the use of the brush.

  Lets address the basics of the paint brush first.  Paint brushes are made up of three basic parts: the head, the ferrule, and the handle.  The head consists of the hairs or bristles of the brush.  The head has three parts: the toe, the belly, and the heel.  The shape and bristle quality of the head determines the nature of the stroke that it will make.  

  The ferrule is the metal cylinder, preferably seamless, that attaches the head to the handle.  Ferrules with seams immediately should tell the artist that it is a poorly constructed brush as seam type construction are used to cut corners and save on production costs.  I say a ferrule with a seam will fall apart quickly as its strength is in its wrap around of the handle and not in its crimp connecting the handle and bristles.  Also a ferrule with a seam has way too much glue on the bristles to hold them together, and if they used a seam, you know they used cheap glue too!  The use with oil solvents will quickly dissolve the cheap glue and your brush hairs will fall out.  A ferrule holds the bristles in place, keeping their intended shape and keeping them connected to the brush.  A seamless ferrule really is only maintaining the shape of the brush.  

  The handle, typically made of wood, is self explanatory in its purpose and use.  The professional oil painter should only use a long wooden handle, as the oil painter has more control over the paint.  The short handled or plastic brush is for the hobbyist.

  When it comes to bristle choice, neither natural hair or synthetic bristle paint brushes are better than the other, as there are benefits to using both bristle types.  The outer casing of natural hair, the cuticle, is covered with tiny scales that help the bristles retain moisture.  Natural hair brushes also have a hollow tube within each filament, called the medulla, that allows the hair to absorb moisture.  These features make natural hair vastly more absorbent than synthetic hair, and therefore will always hold more color than its man-made counterpart.  Natural hair paint brushes work with any medium and become more attuned to a single medium’s use.  Synthetic bristle paint brushes are far more durable, making them longer-lasting, resistant to wearing out, and to being damaged by use with solvents and harsh paint.  Synthetic hair bristles are easier to clean because they lack the ultra-absorbent qualities of natural bristles.  As a result, synthetic brushes are better suited than natural brushes to use with oils due to their resiliency to the paint's caustic effects.

  As a preference to which bristle type is best to use, I say natural hair brushes.  The professional oil painter should use the finest grade of natural hair paint brushes.  Keep them clean and care for them, and the will outlast a synthetic brush.  Also, natural hair is simply better because it is natural.  There is a physical and metaphysical connection between the painter and his materials and tools.  That connection is somehow stronger if the materials and tools are natural rather than synthetic.  

  There is a company that makes synthetic bristle brushes that are the closest thing to natural hair bristles that I have ever used.  Princeton Art and Brush Company.  They are so good that I have used their brushes for the last 10+ years.  Princeton brushes are not the cheapest on the market, but they are very affordable. 

  The question of the expense of a paint brush is always in debate.  I tell you now, cheap tools equal cheap results, and the oil painter that cannot tell the difference between a cheaply constructed paint brush and an expensive one, is not a professional and subsequently their opinion on the matter is without merit.

Thanks or checking out my blog...

...more on the paintbrush coming soon.

Current oil palette

Recently I have become fascinated with the use of triadic harmonies of color.  I tend to use them muted down and simplified with base colors remaining the same throughout the entire palette as I keep one color as a constant. 

I enjoy how a triadic harmony used with their complements set a tone of dissidence and equality within color-forms.  The disagreement between the colors evens out and a balanced harmony appears to take the forefront.   

In this palette you can see these colors...

cadmium yellow light

cadmium yellow medium

cadmium yellow deep

cadmium orange

cadmium red light

cadmium red deep

provence violet reddish

radiant violet

dioxazine violet

violet grey

radiant turquoise

kings blue deep

kings blue light

cadmium green light

and titanium white + zinc white as a toner

Kickstarter Projet

Hi,

If I haven't seen you in awhile, sorry, I have been in the studio.

I launched a Kickstarter project a few weeks ago.  Kickstarter is a backer-based grant program for artists and designers to complete their work when other funding is unavailable.  My project is a series paintings that I have been working on for 5 years, and I am finally ready to complete it.  Knowing me you have heard me talk about them at great length, since my artwork and the artwork of others is all I ever speak of.  This new work is honestly the best I have ever painted to date.  The paintings look exactly as I had seen them in my mind when I first came to their compositional and philosophical ideas in 2006. 

This series of paintings titled "BitTorrent" is the end of a search within my work that I had started unknowingly in 2002 with my "Bowling Alley" series of paintings.  It is not the end of my painting life.  It is the beginning of my life as a professional oil painter, one that’s defined day job is painting.  I have spent the last 15 years, and every dollar I have ever earned on oil painting.  My dedication to my craft has never weaned, it as never hit a block I couldn't overcome, it has never stopped.  Knowing me you know how often I paint.  I am always painting.

For my Kickstarter to succeed I truly need financial backers that believe in the achievement of my work and are willing to take a chance on it's future success.  I need this funding so that I will be able to complete my series of paintings.  There are many good reasons why I need financial backers, but all of them are irrelevant if you do not believe in or enjoy my work.  If you do enjoy my work, if you can see it's accomplishment, and you can recognize why investing in my work is a good choice, then please become a backer.

I will continue to paint regardless of funding.  The difference you can make by becoming a backer is time.  Under my current circumstances it will take me the next five years to be able to afford to complete my series.  With you behind me, I will complete my work in less than a year.  I desperately need new paint brushes, linen to paint on and oil paint.  I am only looking to fund  half of what I need through the Kickstarter program.

Take a moment to look at my website, my blog, and then take some time with my Kickstarter page and become a financial backer if you can.  Pass it along to your friends that would be interested in my work.  The rewards for becoming a backer are each works of art on different tiers of affordability.  The success of my Kickstarter project is dependent on your belief in me as an artist.  

Thank you for your time and consideration.  I sincerely believe in my work as an artist, and I hope you do as well.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1027384279/a-new-series-of-paintings

Adam M. Considine

AdamConsidine.com

Adamconsidine.blogspot.com

Studio Visit Magazine

A few weeks ago I received my acceptance letter from Studio Visit Magazine, saying that I will be featured in issue 15 or 16 coming out this fall.  I'm pretty excited about this and I plan on buying a few issues myself.  When it comes out I will definitely post some pics of the mag.

I have had a few publications in my life, but this is by far the best.

The paint palette I designed.

Continuing with my series of posts about my studio equipment...

Sometime in 2005 when I had decided to take on the study of my new ideas within compositional oil painting; I found that having a dedicated paint table as my all in one palette, brush cleaner, and tool holder was essential to doing what I wanted to.

My grandfather (he was an engineer whose speciality was designing machines to solve problems for the creation of  products and meet needs of those working on the products, and he was good.) and I threw together a few designs, and finally we found this one.  

To make this we cannibalized and combined several different pieces of furniture together.  I would like to call this type of furniture building "Frankenstein Furniture"

It is made from cut oak, a piece of my great grandmothers kitchen table, cvc pipe, canning jars, epoxy, braid nails, a piece of a lamp table, and some hardware from home depot.  Then some oil based brush on paint (which changes from series of works to series of works but ill talk about that later on) and some linseed oil rubbed into the top and we have a good solid palette table for the oil painter.

It is a simple design, at the height that matches my easel chair.  I can reach it with ease while sitting in front of my easel.  As you can see here, its not really that tall.  Standing at 24" tall

It has a 3/4 inch thick oak top.  I keep my paint colors separated and organized just as the color wheel.  It allows me to mix my oil colors quickly and without mistakes.  Which leads us to the color of the table itself.  Right now the table is painted black.  I need my mind to be trained toward darks below lights and the kind of depth that cartoons or screen prints have, solid colors of varying grades of color to elude to depth and light source.  Before the repainting of black the table was neon green because I was working with colors in complement to neon green.  I have had this table painted so many colors its surface is getting pretty thick, but its necessary for me to unconsciously work my oil color.  I believe that the color I surround myself with influences my work, just as the color of my palette table influences my work.

After a session of painting I clean up the top some and put all my brushes used that day into one of the canning jars.  

The canning jars are perfect for this because the top is open, and threaded for the glass.  I used epoxy to get the top rings in place.  Then I used 4 braid nails on the inside lip of each top to secure it further and avoid it from ever popping out of place from use.

The canning jars just twist up into the table and stay there firmly.  There are 6 jars, one for each basic color of the color wheel. (Blue, red, yellow, orange, violet, and green)  Each jar is evenly spaced from one another.

I can remove them and take them up to the house to clean my brushes in the sink.  That very simple feature makes it so I can clean my brushes with ease.  Lest be honest we all hate cleaning brushes and having to transport them around is a pain and messy.  really oil paint is like leprosy, once its on one thing its on everything.  So this idea helped me keep my brushes clean.

I have some cvc pipes that I cut up to match my palette knives, scrapers, and other random tools that I use.  Sometimes, when I am working on something complicated and using an extra large amount of brushes at once I'll use these for keeping my brushes separate from one another as I am working.  

A small hook for my tube roller.

From these picture you can see that there is paint all over the sides.  After a session of painting, when I have to clean my brushes off I just start wiping them on stuff.  I just do that i always have and I'm not really sure why.  I guess its like marking your territory or something primitive, either way there is paint on everything its kinda annoying.  

So to stop from ruining my things, I only wipe my brushes on my palette tables or painting chair, or painting couch. (yes, I have a painting couch and it rules.  Seriously ever painted in the comfort of a couch, you should its like going to a spa with out the smug -opulence and art all in one.)

I wipe them off in a very specific pattern on my palette table, following the color wheel and matching the layout of color on the palette top.  I find it useful to always be surrounded by the color wheel in as many different ways as possible.

When I have finished a set of paintings, normally three works, I will sand the top off then repaint the rest of it to whatever color I am trying to put into my subconscious to work with.  

Currently i am working on another palette table for Phillip Hoffman.  He has very special needs as an oil painter just as I do, so we designed a palette table for his needs.  I will put up a post about that when we are finished with it.

Mothers day.

I would like to just for a moment show some respect to my mother and her mother.

My Mom Barbara, is pretty cool, as all our mothers are.  She has supported my decisions to become an artist every step of the way.  She sent me to art camp in the summer (at the arts high school), put me into programs at school that would develop my talents, bought me art supplies when I needed them, and worked a crappy job she didn't like to pay for everything.  Mom has gone farther than that, she taught me how to run a business, how to earn a living with my artwork, and how to plan for tomorrow and still accomplish what i want to today.  Without the guidance of my mother I wouldn't be a professional oil painter.

Her mother, Virginia, is a landscape and wildlife oil painter.  I spent the majority of my youth at my grandparents place.  And although I vaguely remember, family constantly tells me of how I would ask her to draw pictures for me all day every day.  I would ask her to draw an animal, or car or tree or whatever came to mind and she would draw it out for me on the table.  I started doing this to her as soon as i could form words and apparently went on from until I was 6.  Then I got into her art supplies.  Grandma taught me how to use oil paint, let me paint with her, and watched the Bob Ross painting show on PBS with me.

I have always been painting for as long as I can remember.  I have been able to do so because of these two...

...Mom, Grandma, I love ya both.

The glazing wall easel I designed.

A few years ago I built a glazing easel with my grandfather Greg.  We designed it simply to just meet my needs exactly, and then we added some flare.  

Glazing is a technique I use in oil painting where I apply a very thin layer of oil-color to the entire surface of my painting in order to change the value of the color slightly and smothly.  It is an extremely useful technique for transitioning from one color to another where the change becomes almost undetectable.  At times it can seam as if all the layers of thin oil are visible at the same time, as they give off a blended appearance.  There is a lot of blending in my work, and within each glaze, as I work mainly in opaque colors.  Traditionally its a transparent layer, but I go both ways and spice it up with an opaque set And transparent set of colors.  I start out laying small amounts of the opaque colors, then after the opaques have dried  I hit it up with the transparent pigments, and back to the opaques...

...over and over and over until I am satisfied with the results.  

I do this, I just do.  Glazing makes my work look as if it were glowing, and reduces the chances of the oil paint from cracking from age in the future.

In order for me to glaze an oil painting properly, or as I want to, I need my painting to not move an inch, not a wiggle. Glazing is a vigorous process for me. i use enough force behind the brush to move the painting if it isn't secured tightly.  So together Pop and I built this easel.  It is perfectly balanced, and solid.  Once installed, its not going anywhere and neither is the work once its fastened down.

The easel is 75" tall, and can hold a 63" tall painting edge easily.  In this picture it is bolted to a support system I framed a window with in the studio.  The support system can be replaced and adjusted if I need to, but its a lot of work to do that so I like set it up once and leave it.  The easel is made from cedar, milled aluminum, and some tightening knobs we bought from the hardware store.  Everything is made by us except the tightener knobs.

the top support is 32" long...

 the bottom support is 45" long...

This knob sits under the bottom support and is useless at the moment.  When the easel is used with the back riser it lets me raise the bottom of the easel as high as 8 feet.  That lets me move the easel up and out of the way when I am done working on it.

Back riser...

When we built this we decided that it would be great if the entire easel wold be able to adjust vertically at the same height as the total height of the easel itself.  We built a second runner beam and when mounted the entire easel so it can slide up and out of the way leaving you with the extra wall space to work with.  It helps to protect the work of art between glazes as it drys.  You need 15 feet or more to really use this feature and at the moment I only have 10 feet of wall-space.

 This is Flare, it was an unnecessary design element that made the easel look good.  The angles of the outer edges of the supports don't add the the function of the easel at all.

When I said that this easel was perfectly balanced, I meant it.  This is a picture of a large painting just resting on 1/2 of the bottom support.  As you can see the painting is a full inch away from the easel.

Top support...

Bottom support...

Even though its not tightened down with the top support, I could leave my painting there indefinitely and it would never move.  It does not lean forward or backward, the painting just rests wherever you place it.  That is perfect balance.  

Here it is with an unfinished oil painting on it.  The painting is 48" x 36" and this piece has gone through no less than 20 (more like 25, i just cant remember at this point since I have been working on this thing for months now.) separate glazes.  You can see how comfortable the work sits on the easel.

I will more than likely edit this post as it sits here over the next day or two.  There is a great deal to say about this simple easel and i didn't get to it all tonight.  I really enjoy designing my tools as i can tailor them exactly to my needs.

Artwork of the month: 5 favorite nudes at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

I admire these works for their beauty, their composition, and their important historical value.  They are also nude, which i believe we all like.  Anyway, enjoy them.


My 5 favorite Nudes at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Francois Rude

French, 1784-1855

"Hebe and the Eagle of Jupiter"

1853-1855, bronze

Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse

French, 1824-1887

"Undine"

1912, bronze

Louis Corinth

German, 1858-1925

"Nude Girl"

1886, oil on canvas

 

 

Aguste Rodin
French, 1840-1917
"The bronze age"
cast 1906, bronze 

Guess?




"I have no problem with nudity. I can look at myself. I like walking around nude. It doesn't bother me. I see all the people walking around nude; it doesn't bother me."
-Ursula Andress

Andromeda and the Sea Monster Cetus.

Once again, here is my retelling of the story of Andromeda...

BitTorrent #10 "Andromeda"

Oil on linen

24" x 36"

2011

Here is the sculpture that I studied for composition and content...

Andromeda and the Sea Monster

Marble

Domenico Guidi (1625-1701)

Italian (Rome), 1694

These are mostly my notes in my sketchbook that I took as I was learning about the character Andromeda as fully as I could.  Any conclusion as to the impact her story has on our culture today is completely conjecture and the opinions of a very eccentric man.  

The story of Andromeda is well known in our modern world, as it has been retold countless times with each retelling being slightly different.  If you are in my generation you remember the 1981 movie clash of the titans, and the unfortunate remake in 2010.  Regardless of the variations of her tale, the basics within the character and events of Andromedas myth have remained the same.

Let us first take a look at the etymology of her name to get a basic understanding of her story, as the meaning of her name does have an impact on the meaning of the tale.  The literal meaning of any name of a character of a story gives us a peek into the intention of the story.  And with a basic understanding of the weltanschauung (world view) of the time and culture where the story was first told we can then see its truth.  There is a bit of truth to all myths, and we only need understand our own myths and truths to see that of the past.  

Etymology...

Andromeda is taken from the Greek word Andromédē (Ἀνδρομέδη), which means "to think of a man," and comes from the combination of two words.  The word andrós, or anēr (ἀνδρός, or ἀνήρ)  which means "man", combined with the word mēdomai or medesthai (μήδομαι) "to think on and/or to be mindful of" and/or medea meaning "counsels, cunning, devices, and plans" depending on the context of the usage. 

Therefore the name "Andromeda" means “to think of a man” and as strange as that seams it gives us a decent idea of Andromeda as descriptive word in the story and not just a name as a context for understanding.  Say it this way; “to think of a man was chained to a rock as a sacrifice for her mothers sins.”  Regardless of what we think we know of the mind of the ancients that told this story, we can reason that the etymology of Andromeda was basic understanding at the time as it was a common name. 

The basic story...

Within the story of Andromeda, we can see the etymology of her name take its center stage.  Andromeda was the princess of Ethiopia, daughter of king Cepheus and queen Cassiopeia.  She was chained to a rock on the coast as a sacrifice to a sea monster after her mother committed hubris by saying she was more attractive than, the Nereids, who were a portion of the family line of the sea god Poseidon (There were many of nereids and they were all beautiful as goddess should be.).  To punish her mother for thinking she was greater than the gods, Poseidon sent Cetus the sea monster (and not the kraken you child of the 80’s, which is just a legendary classification of sea monsters made famous by Alfred Tennyson, 1830) to destroy the kingdom of Ethiopia.  The only way to stop the Cetus was to sacrifice her virgin daughter to him.

Andromeda was saved by Perseus who slew Cetus with the head of the gorgon medusa which turned him to stone, and then married her.  Keep in mind that Perseus was simply flying by and saw Andromeda chained to the rock, he found her attractive and went to her parents and asked if he could have her if he saved the city.  He was already in possession of a weapon, the gorgon medusas head, that could save the day so Perseus offer to save Andromeda and the city from the sea monster is purely was more for the reputation he would gain.  As an audience in ancient greece or rome hearing this play, we know Andromeda was already promised to wed Phineus.  Starting a fight over her and her wealth, Phineus and his followers were killed at the wedding of Perseus and Andromeda by Perseus use of the gorgons head.  Andromeda moved to Tiryns in Argos with Perseus and they became the ancestors of the Persians.  

When she died Andromeda was given the gift of immortality by the goddess Athena and turned into a constellation next to Perseus and Cassiopeia.  

Archetype...

The whole damsel in distress archetype can be seen over and over again as one of the most common archetypes in myth.  The damsel is always young, attractive, and incapable of saving herself regardless of what her distress is.  For a large portion of history we could simply see this as the differences between the genders and subsequently how gender is applied socially, as stories are a social affair.  As the era of the helpless woman is long gone, we see the role of hero and helpless switch genders, but the concepts of each remain the same.  If myths are an interpretation of our selves and how we see our identity, our place socially, and our potential, then we are always in need of saviors.  I could go on and on about the human condition and our need to fulfill certain roles regardless of gender, but I will simply state that we, mankind that is, has alway been as we are.

For the most part, this is just a great soap opera that pleases everyone.  Although it has a bit of who we were and possibly still are in its telling and retelling over the last 2000 years.  Even if this is a trite and meaningless discussion, we gain an understanding of ourselves by understanding what we fantasize of as myths are our fantasies.  Or at least I gain another piece to the puzzle (that I have been creating for myself) that mankind is.