Short video about glazing by white. (Patreon)

Actually there are a lot of kinds glazing. I know at least 8 but useful in my opinion 3-4 types. And in this video I’m going to speak about one of them namely white glaze. Maybe it’s seems to be weird but actually it’s normal process for oil painting since van Eyck and even farther. As you already know artists had used tempera before oil paint became so popular. Which means glazing was significant in painting. Moreover cold pigments was pretty expensive and could react with other pigments which turned into diferent colors. So in these conditions glaze by cold white wasn’t seemed so strange. Besides it’s difficult to get some cold shade after drying oil paint because it’s turning to more gray then cold. So I use this method in cases where I need cold bright highlight or reflexes, or light on metal especially on steel surface. And this method the best way to imitate color of air in landscape, when it is on second or third plane.

So technically it’s easy. Everything what you need it’s white if you can get lead white it will be perfect, because lead white more transparent then titanium white. Actually for this task the better way it’s zinc white which is semi transparent. But I use titanium because of I don’t keep zinc white on purpose for glazing. Anyway, usually I add some ivory black and Prussian blue for making color more suitable. After making color I add medium which contain oil+dammar varnish+turpentine. Or just oil. The main thing in this action it’s cover some pretty transparent color without erasing previous. First medium contain turpentine which means that it’s will dissolve layer of paint. But oil doesn’t do that and it is definitely the best stuff for glazing. So I add medium to mixture for liquid statment of mixture. But I want to avoid excess of mixture on surface, so that why I remove paint from brush on my palet. Brush has to be semi dry otherwise your glaze won’t be attractive. And it’s includes all types of glazing. After covering I use brush for smoothing for moving glaze on surface and it’s should be, I mean movable of paint. And it’s the second reason of using oil or medium with oil. Because for example varnish becomes viscous so fast that chance to make smooth glaze is reducing.

However glazing whatever which type, turn into yellow shade without light. To avoid this problem just remove excess of paint and keep your painting on light, it’s really important. Actually this feature of glazing inherent for all products with linseed oil, including oil paint.

And last thing, sometimes glaze reduces on surface. It’s bad signal, it’s mean that layer is already loses its stickiness and in the future layer will be lost or at least it’s will disturb you during process of painting. So to avoid this process you may just cover one layer shellac or dammar varnish with turpentine ant this effect will gone.