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Tag Archives: oil

Oil Painting
In: News

RUSART Naturals Oil Brush Cleanser in Use

We’ve already talked about different ways how to clean brushes fro oil paints. Most ways are either toxic, or messy, or both. Elena, RUSART’s owner, is very sensitive to turpentines and solvents. Even a short exposure to those chemicals “rewards” her with sever headaches that last a day or two. Working mostly with oil paints, Elena developed a very simple and efficient formula for cleaning brushes – RUSART Naturals Oil Brush Cleanser.

Just three simple natural ingredients:

  • Lemon essential oil
  • MCT coconut oil
  • Glycerin

Mixed in right proportion, they provide amazing results. This all natural medium cleans your oil brushes in seconds and keeps them soft, flexible, as if they are brand new. It’s a cleanser and conditioner at the same time.

We recommend to use gloves while cleaning, as lemon oil (as well as many citrus natural oils) applied on skin and exposed to the sun may form pigmentation in your skin.

Watch this short video that shows how to use it:

How to Clean Brushes from oil paints
In: Practice

How to Clean Brushes From Oil Painting?

Here we’ve collected many ways how to clean brushes after oil painting and prolong their life.

What artists really don’t like about oil painting is that it’s messy. Cleaning brushes, maintaining workspace neat takes much more efforts than when you work with watercolours or acrylics.

Rinsing in turpentine or white spirit, or mixture of both

Turpentine and white spirit are  quite different, when we’re talking about painting. However, when it’s about brush cleaning, we can treat them as the same substances. Technically, they just break up oil and that’s how your brush comes out clean and neat. As both turpentine or white spirit are toxic, never pour liquid into toilet bowl or sink. Recycle properly, when possible. If special disposal or recycling is not available, just pour liquid into a jar, fill it with paper towels or cloth enough to absorb most of the content, close your jar tightly and dispose.

Pro’s:

  • easy to get and use
  • cheap
  • can be used during painting process, as well as for final brush cleaning after use

Con’s:

  • very toxic
  • can be smelly
  • requires special disposal
  • can damage delicate hair (kolinsky or other soft hair)

Rinsing in vegetable oil

If you’re lazy and paint frequently, you can use just regular vegetable oil for cleaning your brushes. Fill a glass jar with with 2 inches of oil and simply rinse your brushes there. Remove paint residue with paper towel. To prevent brushes from hardening, keep your brushes immersed in oil until the next use. Oil can be reused as paint will simply settle down on the bottom of the jar. Make sure that your brushes are suspended and don’t touch the bottom of the jar with oil to prevent brush damage.

Pro’s:

  • easy to get and use
  • cheap
  • can be used during painting process, as well as for final brush cleaning after use
  • non-toxic

Con’s:

  • doesn’t clean your brush in full, so you should keep your brush soaked in oil all the time

Rinsing in vegetable oil and freezing

If you’re planning to make a long break between oil painting, or don’t want to keep your paintbrushes soaked in oil all the time, after rinsing your brushes in oil you can wrap them with a plastic bag and place in a freezer. 

Pro’s:

  • easy to get and use
  • cheap
  • can be used during painting process, as well as for final brush cleaning after use
  • non-toxic

Con’s:

  • doesn’t clean your brush in full, so you should keep an eye on your brushes

Cleaning with dish soap

As dish soap is a good degreaser, you can simple wash your brushes in it. After full cleaning, leave your brushes horizontally to dry completely before the next use.

Pro’s:

  • easy to get and use
  • cheap
  • non-toxic

Con’s:

  • can be used only after painting session
  • requires long time for full drying before the next use
  • doesn’t work for delicate brushes (kolinsky etc.)

Dry cleaning with paper towels

Some artists use just paper towels and wipe the brushes until they get completely dry and paint removed.

Pro’s:

  • non-toxic
  • can be used during painting process, as well as for final brush cleaning after use

Con’s:

  • requires a lot of paper towels, so this method is not environment friendly
  • doesn’t work for delicate brushes

 Different  manufactured brush cleansers

Please refer to their instructions for pro’s and con’s.

RUSART Naturals Oil Brush Cleanser

If you really care about your brushes, try RUSART Naturals this easy-to-use cleanser for oil paint brushes. This all natural medium cleans your oil brushes in seconds and keeps them soft, flexible, as if they are brand new. It’s a cleanser and conditioner at the same time.

How to use Rusart Naturals Oil-Based Brush Cleanser:

  • Wipe paint residue from your brush with a paper towel or cloth
  • Shake a jar well before every use
  • Wash your brush in this solution for 5-10 seconds or until clean
  • Remove product leftovers with a paper towel or cloth

The solution can be reasonably reused even if looks soiled. Don’t forget to shake a jar before every use.

Pro’s:

  • non-toxic
  • cleans in seconds
  • works even for delicate brushes
  • brushes can be stored for a long time after use

Con’s:

  • price
  • intended to use after work, not as a cleanser during painting.

(c) RUSART

How to choose right canvas
In: Practice

How to choose right canvas for your goals – Part I (Canvas)

When you paint on canvas, the canvas itself is the first thing to take care of. There is no one best canvas for all the goals as all they have different properties and price, but you can always choose something that fits your goals and budget. 

First of all, canvas itself as a fabric. Here we have different options: linen, cotton, polyester and different blends.

Choice here is not straight forward, as always, but generally speaking, the thicker the fabric the more weight it can hold, meaning the more paint and medium you can apply without risk of deformation.

Polyester canvas – when to use?

Polyester or cotton-polyester blends are the cheapest options that you can find even in dollar stores. They are very thin and usually have bigger gaps between threads leading in quality loss. Polyester is technically plastic and can’t absorb anything, meaning sizing and primer may not get a proper binding with the fabric. On top of that this canvas is usually very fragile and rips off easily. So, this kind of canvas is a good choice for children’s paintings, playing with paints or doing exercises and practicing some fast techniques. This kind of canvas is not working for any painting that you want to keep for a longer time.

Cotton or linen canvas?

Cotton and linen canvasses normally is a good choice for professional paintings, provided canvas is thick and properly treated before and after stretching. We’ll talk about that in separate topics. Generally speaking, we’re looking for thick canvas preferably with double thread. That’s something you can check on the back of the canvas (see the pic.).

Double-thread canvas is kind of weaving where one or two threads are doubled. For painting the best option when longitudinal thread is thick and single and weft thread is thin and double. This kind of weaving provides the strongest support, is thick and have smallest gaps between the threads. 

Normally linen canvas is thicker than cotton one, and that’s why more expensive. Not all artists can afford painting on linen. But it’s also not always necessary.

If you’re painting in layering techniques and not using heavy paints, a proper-quality cotton canvas is a very good choice. However, for heavy impasto painting linen canvas will provide a better solution as it’s stronger and more durable.

How to choose right canvasFine grained or coarse grained canvas?

There is no one universal recipe here either. Choice of texture depends on your techniques. If you’re working in fine layering and glazing techniques, the smoother the surface the better. Especially that’s very important for portrait painting. So, fine grain and even extra priming would be the right option here.  

For impasto techniques as well as working the involves different pastes, and textures as well as for palette knife painting coarser surface will fit better. The smooth finish is incapable to hold a large amount of paint.

Although, many mediums now can be applied on canvas, we’ll take a closer look at acrylic and oil paint application as the most traditional ones nowadays.

Choosing canvas for acrylic painting

Acrylic paint is quite universal and easy-going, so most of the canvas will work well for acrylic. Choose the material, finish, size and priming that fits your goals for this or that particular painting and enjoy your creative process. Acrylic forms one non-separable layer with primer on canvas, which makes painting process seamless.

Choosing canvas for oil painting

Oil is the most complex medium and requires more skills, knowledge and experience. Here the way how the canvas was treated and primed matters a lot. We’ll have a separate article on this matter too, but for now let’s assume that the canvas is well sized and primed.

Here we have two different kinds of primers that can be used: acrylic or oil. Acrylic primer is universal and can be used for both acrylic and oil. However, to create a better binding with canvas and to prolong the life of finished oil painting (increase time of polymerization) in this case we’d suggest to start the first layer with underpainting that will create a shield between canvas and your actual paintwork.

Acrylic primer normally contains a lot of chalk inside, which is very porous and “drains” oil from painting layer. To prevent this we should create a layer that links acrylic and oil. It should be a painting layer containing  gums inside, that “seals” the pores and crates the perfect adhesion for oil paints.

However, based on my experience, the best primer for oil paints is oil primer. As oil priming doesn’t work for acrylic and also takes much longer time for canvas preparation at manufacturers’ side, less and less of them offer this option. Oil primed canvas has a lot of misuse that also forces manufacturers stop making them.

Oil primed canvas should be treated as an oil painting that is standing alone for a long time. That means if you choose oil primed canvas, treat it with retouching medium first for a proper adhesion.

That’s a very basic information regarding choosing canvas for your painting. In Part II we’ll pay attention to other aspects of canvas, such as support for it. You’ll get answers on the following questions: What is the difference in use of stretched canvas and canvas on board? How do proper stretchers look like?

(c) RUSART

Why oil paints separate
In: Paints

Why oil paints separate?

Most oil paints separate and there are many reasons for that, good and not really. There are few myths around it, that I (Elena Nahum Leroy) am going to start with. I’m working with oil paints as an artist, tester, seller and manufacturer, so I have a good chance to get full oil paints experience from different sides.

Myths about oil paint separation

Myth: Oil paints separate because they are old

Truth: Separation in some oil paints can start as soon as in a few days after they are made. 

 

Myth: Oil paints separate because pigment is heavy and it sinks to the bottom of the tubes

Truth: It’s partially true. Some mineral pigments such as titanium dioxide, cobalts etc. are really heavy and it’s a challenge to keep them “floating” in the oil without “sinking”. However, in a modern paint technologies a lot of pigments are manufactured and in fact much lighter than oil and separation still happens there. 

And now, real reasons…

 

Oil paint separation from deep inside

Oil is a quite complicated medium. I’d say it’s the most sophisticated art medium that I’ve ever used and tried. Apart from most of other mediums, painting in oil requires knowledge of chemistry and painting technologies to succeed. History knows so many examples of oil paintings made even by great and famous artists that were ruined with time because of wrong application. We’ll talk about that too, in other articles. Now, back to the point.

Generally speaking, oil paints have binder (oil), pigments (natural or synthetic), most likely will have fillers, and may have gums, solvent, beeswax or other additives. And separation can be caused by reaction between any of these components. So, even at this point it’s clear that everything is much more complicated than it seemed before. We’ll cover just most common (not all) reasons for separation in oil paints.

Wrong pigment/binder proportion

If you mix pigment with oil that wouldn’t be enough to create good oil paints, because the pigment is not connected to oil yet. We need to apply pressure and physically bind pigment and oil together with a muller (hand-processed) or a roller machine (industrial method). Some pigments require 5 or even 8 cycles to bind with oil properly. And here we have the first reason of separation.

Different pigments have different oil absorption rate. For example, titanium white takes up to 30 g of oil for every 100 g of pigment, while pyrrole red absorbs up to 70 g for every 100 g of pigment. That’s their normal absorption rates. 

However, even the same pigment may have different grit for a reason (read about that in our special topics). And finer pigments require more oil to fill gaps between finer particles to create proper binding and make paints look and feel smooth and even. But absorption rate remains the same, it’s chemistry. So, in fact we have to add more oil than needed and then we have to remove this extra oil. Else, extra oil will separate from the paint with time.

Why oil paints separatePoor grinding

Another very common reason for oil separation is poor grinding. Different pigments require different number of grinding and milling cycles and even if oil-to-pigment proportion is observed well, insufficient time of grinding may cause quite fast separation.

Weight of pigments

Some pigments are much heavier than oil. These include titanium dioxide, cadmiums, cobalts and some mineral pigments extracted from semi-precious stones, such as lapis lazuli or amethyst. With no fillers added they will separate naturally and this doesn’t mean the paints are bad. However, to create a better look, these pigments will be most likely “diluted” with fillers to create smoother consistency that, when properly done, will technically prevent separation.

Why oil paints separateFillers

However ,the leadership in separation causes belongs to fillers. Oil naturally makes colours look brighter that creates a temptation to add a paste, colour it and sell as a tube of oil paints. This temptation goes stronger, when legislation doesn’t  to disclose the full list of ingredients. As a result, some paints (student grade) have just 3-5% pigment load, for example. 

Barium Sulfate is most popular filler for oil paints due to its low cost and physical properties. First of all, it’s very heavy, which makes it the perfect adulterant for oil paints. Due to its weight Barium Sulfate make tubes feel heavier simulating a high pigment load. Also, its oil absorption rate is just 11, meaning for 100g of the powder we’ll need just 11 g of oil to create a good mixture. So, added to synthetic pigments Barium Sulfate will take extra oil and make oil paints look thicker, imitating higher pigment concentration. That’s another thing that buyers love – thick paints.

However, this trick also have a flip side. Barium Sulfate is very heavy and settles down dragging pigment with it and causes separation. 

So, there could be many reasons why oil paints separate and separation is not always a sign of old or poorly made paints. Test paints, compare them and choose the right ones that work better for your goals. Price here is not always the main indicator.

Titanium White PW6 pigment
In: Pigments

Pigment Guide: Titanium White (PW6)

Let’s take a closer look at pigments that we’re using and what properties they have and how they affect your paintings. 

Colour Index: PW6

Colour Constitution Number: CI 77891

Food colour index: E171

Titanium White As Pigment

Titanium white is one of the most used colours in acrylic and oil as we use it for mixing colours, as is and as a colour extender for some colours. The pigment itself looks like a brilliant white powder that due to its heavy weight and other characteristics reminds extra fine feta cheese by appearance. 

Chemically speaking, it’s just titanium dioxide (TiO2). Mixed with oil or acrylic gives pure opaque white colour with slightly cold undertone. Titanium dioxide has remarkable optical properties, with a very high refractive index close to that of diamond.

White colour is one of the most essential colours in oil and acrylic painting as artists use it a lot for mixing most of the time. An average painting contains over 60% of white, that’s why the right white colour choice is very important.

Titanium White History

Titanium white is quite new type of pigment, compared to many other historical colours, like ochres or umbers. It replaced most other kinds of white only in 1916, when became part of mass production. 

Thanks to titanium white “discovery” oil painting moved from “toxic” medium to a safe one. Before titanium white  was discovered artists widely used lead white that caused mental health and body disease, including cancer. Lead white settles in bones and accumulates with the time,. However, this fact helped historians find Caravaggio’s remains.

Just reminding you a short story of this great artist, who influenced Velazquez, Rembrandt and other famous artists and masters. Entered Rome in his 18-19, he apprenticed some artists, changing them quite fast, learning new things. Sometimes in 7-8 years he started his own career. With a good luck and great talent, Caravaggio worked for some of the most important patrons of the day, including Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani, Cardinal Scipione Borghese and the banker Ottavio Costa. They commissioned a lot paintings and promoted Caravaggio as an artist.

How all these related to lead white? Being a genius artist, Caravaggio had a very unstable temper. Some researchers relate this to lead white exposure. So, after many smaller violent incidents where Caravaggio was involved, it happened that he killed a man during a street fight. He got arrested and as punishment he had leave Rome for good. 

Caravaggio and lead whiteCaravaggio moved from one place to another across Italy, begging pardon and a chance to return to Rome. Eventually, he got granted this right in exchange of all the paintings he ever done. A deal is a deal. But then for some reason (was it just a bad luck accident or a planned action – nobody knows), a ship with all his paintings left to Rome before Caravaggio boarded. So he got stuck in Port’Ercole. After that moment his life and death was a mystery.  And here lead white helped find Caravaggio’s body. In 2010 body remains were identified as Caravaggio’s based on time, locale and lead concentration in bones.

And now, back to titanium white – it was such a relief for painters when a better and safer white was discovered. In oils titanium white is pretty stubborn, when you try to make paint from it. It forms very tacky and heavy clamps that not easy to bring to a smooth paste consistency. That’s why manufacturers often mix titanium white with zinc white or some fillers. And here another story begins…

Titanium White Additives

There are no legal requirements to indicate the full list of ingredients on a label. That’s why titanium white can have many other filling agents inside that may even make a tube feel heavier. So, Titanium white may include:

  • PW3 Basic Lead Sulphate White
  • PW4 Zinc Oxide White
  • PW7 Zinc Sulphide White
  • PW10 Barium Carbonate
  • PW18 Marble Dust or a lower grade chalk composition
  • PW19 Kaolin
  • PW21 Barium Sulfate

Titanium White Manufacturing and Toxicity

What about toxicity, titanium white as is in paints is non-toxic. Its stability caused a very wide range of use beyond art materials. Only 28% of titanium dioxide is used for paints, 10% used for plastic, and about 6% for bleaching paper. The rest 56% belong to other industries, such as food, sun screens, other cosmetics (toothpastes) and other. Ingested, TiO2 has been identified as possibly carcinogenic, but this doesn’t stop manufacturers from using it in food.

Where titanium dioxide is coming from? It’s extracted and processed from natural minerals, either ilmenite, rutile or titanium slag. Titanium pigment is extracted by using either sulphuric acid or chlorine. The rutile contains up to 95% of TiO2, while ilmenite has only 45-60%.

What about the main manufacturers, here market belongs to China. About 2.3 million metric tonnes a year is produced there. That also explains why Chinese paints go much cheaper than ones made in other countries. The second place belongs to South Africa with about 1 million metric tonnes produced. Canada takes the fourth place here (680 thousands) and the USA produces just 100 thousands metric tonnes a year.

Titanium White Properties

And now, finally, practical use. Titanium white is opaque, which is very beneficial when you’re working with light tints or when mixing colours that require great coverage. Some manufactures add titanium white to yellow colours to increase their coverage properties, as well as to many other mixes.

Titanium white also makes wonderful greys and many other tints. Lightfastness is excellent.

Drying time in oil depends on many factors, but generally speaking it dries moderate slowly. Titanium White works well with most oil mediums, containing gums, petroleum products or turpentines. The dry film is thick and flexible, without tendency to cracking.

(c) RUSART

Elvira Kravenkova
In: Artists

Featured Artist: Elvira Kravenkova

Elvira Kravenkova (FB: https://www.facebook.com/ekravenkova) became part of RUSART team in 2017 as an art teacher and art instructor of special courses. Now, Elvira is still with us testing our products and helping us improve our formulas.

Elvira’s background

Elvira Kravenkova is a Russian-born Canadian artist, based in BC.

Elvira’s painting style is still influenced by traditions of Russian realism and impressionism; the styles she loves.

In the early 1990s, she started to exhibit her paintings as an emerging artist in Moscow, Russia.

In 1998, Elvira relocated to Canada where she continued her art education with amazing artists and instructors. Learning from Anatoli Badriashvilli (Badri) at his studio and Mandy Boursicot(Classical Realism Atelier) enhanced Elvira’s progress in graphics and painting.

Elvira’s career

Elvira teaches in her studio and was invited to instruct students on fundamentals of drawing and painting and Human Anatomy at private art school in Vancouver.

Since 2013 she is a Member of The Federation of Canadian Artists.

Since September 2013 she became a member of The Vancouver Life Drawing Society.

Elvira started to show her artworks again since 2013. Since then she participated in many Canadian and International shows, including juried shows, where she’s got several International Awards.

Her works are in private collections in Australia, Canada, the USA, Italy and Russia.

You can find Elvira’s works in 33 Contemporary gallery on Artsy  , in Federation of Canadian Artists gallery as well as in Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art (WMOCA), Wausau, WI.


Lean more how to become our featured artist >>

water based paints and water soluble paints
In: Manufacturing

Why water-based paints are not water-based

Now we can see more and more labels saying “water-based paint” or “water-based varnish” or “water-based medium”. In fact, only few kinds of products can be truly called “water-based”. Let’s look inside “water based paints” meaning.

Why company use “water-based” for their labels?

All these comes from the times when acrylic paints started to appear on the art supplies market and when a massive campaign against oil painting began. Wherever possible acrylic paint advocates poured a bucket of dirt on oil painting manufactures claiming that oil paints are toxic, not safe, and acrylic paints are much better, because they are water-based. Then the market was roughly split into “toxic oil-based” products and “safe water-based” ones with the big lie started.

Now manufacturers have many reasons to call more and more products “water-based” because:

  • “water” means natural and “water-based” attracts customers
  • “water-based” is a clear statement and easy to understand
  • labelling paints as “water-based” is a simple way to stay apart from alcohol- and oil-based ones.

Water-based vs water-soluble paints

A true meaning of “water-base” is a mixture or solution of pigment, dye or tint in water. We use these fluids for tinting plaster, paper, gesso or primer and other mediums. You can find tints at our shop too.

Manufacturers also use pigments dissolved in water for fresco painting, where wall plaster serves as a binder. For any other cases we need a binder to “glue” pigment particles together and keep them attached to a support, such as paper, canvas, wood etc. Binder is a base for any paint. So, water based paint meaning is very narrow. And talking about “water-based” paints we should rather say “water soluble” paints.

Water soluble paints include a very wide range of products:

  • watercolours (based on Arabic gum)
  • acrylic paints (based on acrylic dispersion or emulsion )
  • Latex paints (based on acrylic resin)
  • Water-soluble ink (based on acrylic dispersion)
  • Gouache (based on Arabic gum or acrylic dispersion)
  • PVAc tempera paints (based on poly vinyl acetate)
  • Casein paints (based on casein and oil)
  • Finger paints (based on dextrin, starch and other sugar-glue binders)

As you see, a spectrum of “water-based” paints is very wide and it doesn’t always mean “water plus pigment only” pair.

Potential other ingredients for water-soluble paints

Depending on kind of paint and its intent to use paints will have some other components beyond just binder:

  • Fillers – to make a tube look bigger and replace expensive components like pigments
  • Enhancers – to make paints spread easier, enrich colours or achieve other properties, like opacity/transparency, increase viscosity, add gloss or matt finish, reduce or increase drying time and other
  • Preservatives – to prevent mold growing and extend shelf life
  • Humectants – to prevent paints from drying 

And here we can find some harmless components, such as honey, clays, marble dust, corn syrup, starches, dextrin, essential oils, resins, silica, glycerine etc. 

On top of those paints most likely will contain one or more of those: isopropyl alcohol, white spirits, solvents, ammonia, formalin, phthalates, xylene and other.

Always check list of ingredients, especially if work indoors. Manufacture safety data sheets do not disclose all information.

You can read more about different ingredients of paints and how they contribute into your art and your health in our knowledge base. And get updates to your email with our newsletter.

Art lessons with a professional artist - all levels to advanced welcome
In: News

“My goal is to help you discover yourself as an artist” – Elena NL

Elena Nahum Leroy is an art instructor, teaching drawing and painting art lessons since 2009 (in-person and online). Here you can find the most frequently asked questions regarding her way of teaching and what to expect from the classes with her.

What is Elena’s teaching experience?

Elena has been teaching classes since 2009 and she has crossed the line of 2000 students since that time. In winter 2020, right before COVID-19 restrictions, she had about 80 students she was personally teaching on weekly basis and her school RUSART Fine Arts Co. had over 200 “weekly” art students in total.

What are Elena’s mediums?

There are many 2D art mediums:

  • acrylic,
  • oil,
  • watercolours,
  • soft pastel,
  • oil pastel,
  • drawing,
  • ink,
  • markers,
  • coloured pencils,
  • collage,
  • mixed media.

Depending your level, Elena can help you with the mediums.

Art classes in Ottawa region - children, youth, adults, portfolio preparationBeginner’s level means you have never used this or that medium before or had some experience playing around (like paint parties). Elena can introduce you absolutely all listed mediums all the way from the beginning to upper intermediate level.  

Upper intermediate means you can freely work in a certain medium, but you still need professional advice on your ideas, material use, colour balancing and finishing your project (like portfolio preparation). Starting from this point Elena can help you with

  • acrylic,
  • oil,
  • watercolours,
  • soft pastel,
  • oil pastel,
  • drawing,
  • coloured pencils,
  • collage,
  • mixed media.

And if you need assistance at Advanced level, when you can freely work in a certain medium, but need deeper knowledge of techniques, materials, pastes, archival properties etc., Elena can help you with:

  • acrylic,
  • oil,
  • watercolours,
  • drawing, and
  • mixed media.

Oil Painting Lessons for Youth and Adults in OttawaWhat is Elena’s goal of teaching?

“I’m sure that if you decided to take art classes you’re already an artist inside and my role is to help you to find yourself.” – That’s what Elena is saying about her way of teaching.

Art is not a science and what works there may not work here. Yes, there are a lot of rules to know, but following the rules is not the key. For example, we can find “mistakes” in master pieces by Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Eduard Manet, Edgar Degas and many other masters and famous artists. But their work are masterpieces regardless “mistakes”. The soul, not the rules, brings a picture to life and makes it look remarkable. So, the goal of art sessions here is to let another artist – YOU – to appear.

How your regular art lesson will look like?

You with your teacher will choose a project for your art lessons together. A project that matches your tastes, goals, and skills. Elena will tell you different ways of how this project can “go” and you choose which way looks better to you. Elena will explain what to do step-by-step to create your very own artwork in YOUR WAY. You’ll learn basics of composition, perspective, material use, and mixing colours.

The more projects you make with Elena the more styles and techniques you’ll try and learn. The goal here is to introduce as many styles and techniques as possible, so in the future you can choose what you like better and find yourself in arts. Even if you find this or that style too challenging or not a good match to your personality, at least you tried it and made a choice. Normally students prefer starting with realism (academism) as the classical way to study.

Pencils Drawing Private Lessons in ON and QCWhat about homework and independent practice?

Sometimes you’ll be asked to start painting or drawing from what you see, with no instruction for a short time, but with a thorough feedback from Elena. It may be a little bit frustrating at first to work on your own, but only this helps develop observation skills, wake up your mind, reveal your artistic personality, and eventually will make you independent.

If a painting or drawing implies repetition, you may be offered to do repetitive things at home, provided you have time and space for the homework. Yes, we’re trying to save your classroom time.

Does Elena paint for her students?

You may see big improvements after the first sessions or it may take some longer time, but you’ll definitely see progress from the first lesson. It may parents and friends think that Elena is drawing or painting for her students. This myth was completely gone after she switched to online art
lessons during pandemic times. There is no way she can touch your work via zoom.

But still she can make some demo on your work when it’s really needed or she can make finial touch if asked by a student. All these are the same for both kids and adults.

Does Elena help with portfolio?

Elena’s students get awards, participate in art shows and even sell their paintings! And yes, Elena also helps prepare portfolios for universities, colleges and art schools.

Where can I learn more about Elena Nahum Leroy?

 

In: News

Rosa Gallery Oil Paints: Unique Paints from Ukraine

You can find Rosa Gallery oil paints in Canada at our RUSART shop only. Let’s see what’s interesting bout these paints and why you should take a look at them.

How Rosa paints were formulated

Rosa Gallery oil paints are quite a new product. When ROSA formulators were working on selection of colours and their performance, they decided to collaborate with professional artists. They were preparing samples of different colours with different pigment load and combination of pigments and gave them to artists for “blind testing”. Artist were choosing colours based on a better performance and other characteristics. And these choices formed ROSA Gallery palette.

Special Binder: Linseed Stand Oil

ROSA Gallery oils paints have linseed polymerized stand oil as a binder. Stand oil here is close to liquid honey by texture and colour. Benefits of stand oil is shorter drying time, thicker texture and higher viscosity. Once dry paints have moderate glossy finish. We see ROSA Gallery oil colours perfect for all prima techniques, when you paint and finish your painting within one round.

Read more about oil use in our other articles: How to choose linseed oil for painting?

Pigments Used

ROSA Gallery Paints contain both orga­nic and inorganic finely ground pigments. Combi­ning carefully selected pigments with polymerized linseed oil they obtain pure bright colour with natural look. Cobalts and Cadmiums here are hue. Rosa oil paints are manufactured in Ukraine. So, pigments there are different from what artists use in North America. That’s why ROSA Gallery oil paints can become a good complement to any modern artist’s palette.

Signature Colours

There are few special colours in ROSA Gallery palette that were formulated by artists from scratch. One of them is Flame Orange by Petro Bevza. This orange is so pure and so intense that makes it work perfectly for glazing and final touches.

Serhiy Savchenko is creator of another very beautiful colour – Azure Black. It makes very unique hues and shades. Definitely worth to try.

Based on different tests that RUSART team and supporters performed, we categorizes ROSA Gallery oil paints as artist grade. Just reminding that we have 4 categories:

  • Children (high-quality paints for young artists with no harsh chemicals)
  • Casual or Studio (budget student grade paints that a less expensive, but have lower performance or light fastness. These products can be interesting even for professional artists for underpainting, rough sketching etc.)
  • Fine or Artist (high-quality artists’ paints and other supplies for every-day painting)
  • Professional (top quality supplies that any professional artist can rely on)

Check Rosa Gallery Oil Paints >>

Choose your perfect oil for painting
In: Paints

How to choose linseed oil for painting?

How to choose oil for painting is the most common question for artists, both beginners and professionals. Trying and choosing right materials determine how long your painting is going to “live” and your painting experience.

What artists are looking for in oil?

When I start talking about oil as a binder for arts, I’m getting many questions from why not to use cooking oil for painting to why oil costs so different in stores. That’s a very broad questions and I’ll give all the answers in this and other articles. But let’s begin with the beginning – what are we looking for in “ideal oil”. This concept will help us choose the best oil for painting.

What would be an “ideal” best oil for painting?

  1. Ideal oil should dry fast – you want to continue layering as soon as possible while your inspiration is still with you. You don’t want to wait for a week or longer
  2. Ideal oil should be thin – you’re using oil as a thinner for your paints. If you need to change oil texture in any other ways, there are other mediums for that.
  3. Perfect oil doesn’t yellow with time – you want to make sure that your work will remain as you painted as long as possible.
  4. The best oil for painting is not reversible – that means that after drying it’s stable and permanent and will not melt and turn back to a semi-liquid form under different temperature or humidity conditions.
  5. Ideal oil provides good adhesion – layers of paint should stick to canvas or other support and to previous layers without a risk of peeling off.
  6. Perfect oil for painting doesn’t form cracking – of course, you don’t want your painting to get cracklings. If you want this “antiqued look”, there are some special mediums for that.
  7. Ideal oil has matte finish – that’s not about tastes, that’s about practical aspect. Glossy finish is fine when you work in “alla prima” techniques, i.e. paint wet-on-wet with 1 single layer. In this case selection of mediums may be broader. However, if you work in multi-layering technique, only final layer should have gloss as glossy layers do not “glue” to each other. In other words, whatever we paint on top of glossy layer sooner or later will peel off. And “later” here is less than 5 years.
  8. Ideal oil doesn’t contain toxic chemicals – if you’re sensitive to solvents and other chemicals or work in a small space with poor ventilation, you may prefer a safer options.

We hope all these help you choose the best oil for painting. Of course, “ideal oil” doesn’t exist, but we can try to get closer to this ambitious goal.

Why refined, bleached and thickened linseed oil?

Why I chose linseed oil for painting you can read in our other articles. They explain benefits of each kinds of oil. Let’s assume that we’ve chosen linseed oil and let’s find out the processing methods that make the goals of “ideal oil” real.

  1. Drying time

    Initially, extracted oil has many components inside, from different acids and vitamins to proteins. All they are good for our health when consumed, but do not work well for painting. Some raw oil components make oil sticky, increase drying time and show low transparency. That’s why cooking oil doesn’t work for painting. It simply has a goal to provide our body with nutritions, which should be removed in painting purposes. So, the first thing to choose in oil for painting is the indication “refined”.

  2. Consistence

    Most oils that just extracted have thicker texture than desired for painting. That’s why oil needs to be refined.

  3. Yellowing / non-yellowing

    Most oils for painting have yellow colour and due to some acids that linseed oil contains this kind of oil yellows with time on your painting. That’s why bleaching is a necessary process, which can be done naturally or chemically.

  4.  Adhesion

    For a better adhesion linseed oil should be thickened. In can be done in different ways or their combinations. Normally, this includes temperature and air or vacuum conditions.

  5. Ideal oil is not reversible

    The best oil for painting should stay stable and permanent after drying, meaning the oil will not melt and turn back to a semi-liquid form under different temperature or humidity conditions.

  6. Matt finish and permanency

    Due to linseed oil key characteristics, if it’s not stand oil or if there are no resins added, linseed oil provides matte finish and non-reversible.

  7. Toxicity

    Refining, thickening and bleaching takes long time. And, of course, manufacturers want to speed up to gain greater profits. And there are many technical and chemical methods to do so. Some producers are “cheating” adding solvents or turpentine in oil to make it look more transparent and reduce drying time. However, some chemicals may cause headaches and other health issues for sensitive people. Also, turpentine and white spirits, for example, require a good ventilation to use.

How Elena’s Signature oil made?

Elena Nahum Leroy (Perelman), the only owner of RUSART, recreated naturally treated linseed oil recipes that artists were using in Russia throughout generations, until the new mass-production era began. Read what she’s saying about oils.

Elena used traditional recipes that artists were using for most precious works in Russia. Yes, it took almost a year to produce a batch, but it definitely worth it.

  1. Raw cold-pressed linseed oil was naturally refined 3-5 times with water to remove protein and slime. We have to say, it took 2-3 weeks depending on quality of initial oil. And we drained about 20% of oil by volume. It’s not because the oil was “bad”, it’s because the oil has tons of stuff good as food or for wood-working purposes, but not for painting.
  2. Then we slowly heated the oil for 15-20 hours to remove water residue, polymerize and thicken. It’s a very delicate process as if a temperature is too low nothing is going to happen, and if it’s too high, oil will boil and obtain amber colour.
  3. Then we filtered the oil  2-3 times to finish refining and remove residue of sediments.
  4. And the last step – we exposed the oil to the sun for 9-12 months for bleaching.

So, we used no harsh chemicals, just power or water and the sun. That is a traditional Russian recipe of oil preparation for painting used for hundreds years.

Buy Elena’s Signature Linseed Oil >>

gamblin oil paints buy online in QC
In: News

Artist oil paints by Gamblin at RUSART

Gamblin is a dedicated manufacturer of oil paints based in Portland, Oregon (USA). Their conservation colors have been used to restore some of the most revered oil paintings in the world – including a Van Eyck at the National Gallery in London – one of the earliest oil paintings ever made – as well as notable works by da Vinci, Van Gogh, and Monet.

In Gamblin paints the manufacturer uses different binders depending on colour and pigment used. What about pigment, the other crucial component of paints, they are always in search of better and innovative options available. Let’s look at pigments they use.

Yellow colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

Although, cadmium yellow is the most beneficial yellow due to its brilliancy and opacity, you can also consider the modern and more transparent yellows – hansa yellows. They are organic pigments that are semi-transparent and lightfast. Hansa yellows retain their intensity in tints and make beautiful glazes. Also, hansa  can boost cadmiums in mixes. Also, hansa yellows make more intense and cleaner secondaries, when mixed with other organic (modern) colors like Phthalo Blue or Green.

For glazing techniques Gamblin offers Indian yellow (hue). Its transparency and a glowing warm yellow bring some amber shine to your painting.

Orange colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

Even though all we know that yellow and red make orange, mono pigmented paint are always preferable over mixed colours, because one pigment means cleaner mixing and more predictable results. Here, you can find transparent orange colours, such as Mars Orange, for glazing techniques, as well as opaque strong orange, such as Cadmium Orange.

Red colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

When we talk about red colours, we usually mean cadmiums (opaque), napthol and perinone (semi-transparent), or quinacridones (transparent). Gamblin has them all.

One of the beautiful reds is also vermillion, which is mixture of sulfur and mercury. The resulting bright, opaque red was a marvel short of philosophy but a delight to painters for a thousand years. The earth red and vermillion colors were prepared by Robert Gamblin for a Smithsonian Institute research project and are NOT available from Gamblin Artists Colors, as well as Alizarine colours.

Violet colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

Violet pigment is very rare and expensive to find, thats why painters used to mix violet colours and as a result violet and purple shades faded with time. If you still prefer mixing over single-pigment colour, try Gamblin’s alizarin permanent for mixing with ultramarine blue. Or consider making violets with quinacridone or magenta, which will make a permanent purple.

Blues colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

Gamblin blue colours include the full range of blue shades and temperature: from indanthrone, cobalt, and phthalo blue  to ultramarine Blue and turquoise blue.

Greens colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

Green is a secondary colour and as well as for purple and orange. So, green can be made by mixing colours or by using mono-pigment colours. In Gamblin you can find both options and you can choose anything from transparent phthalo green and opaque cobalts.

Earthy colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

Earthy, or brown, colours are the oldest pigments that painters all over the world used for centuries. And there is a strong reason for that. Earth colours are quite easy to extract and they have the highest lightfastness.

The late 20th century has produced the first significant change in iron oxides with the invention of transparent Mars. These colors are made by hydrating earth colors, a process by which opaque colors are made transparent.

Black and grey colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

Artists are controversial about making greys. While some artists prefer to use black as is, the others think that greys made from black are lifeless, so they remove black colour their palettes.

While overusing black in a painting will make it look dirty, neutral greys made from black and white are the same as neutral greys made from exact complements. Greys made from complements are more lively because they are incomplete mixtures of one color next to another. So come back to black with Gamblin Chromatic Black, a neutral, tinting black made from complementary colors.

An interesting alternative to mixing with white, the Portland Greys quickly lower the intensity of a color without changing its Munsell value.

Black and grey colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

White colours are core in any artist palette. Between 1/2 and 3/4 of the paint on most oil paintings is white, so the white color holds most paintings together.

Gamblin Radiant White, the most buttery white, and Titanium White have the highest tinting strength. Excellent for direct painting styles, they make the brightest, most opaque tints.

The Flake White Replacement project evolved from a prominent artist’s request for Lead (Flake) White, which had been the only white pigment commonly available until titanium dioxide was produced in 1920. Not surprisingly, the artist wanted Flake White’s working properties without the lead. Challenged, Robert tested all the Flake White oil colors on the market and found tremendous differences among them.

Check our selection of Gamblin oil paints >>

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