how to get oil paint to "glow"

[llawrence]

Make a bunch of mud, different varieties, and paint with it. Then, put some cleaner, more saturated color in certain strategic spots. It will glow.

[acadianartist]

Thanks llawrence. Seems there are as many opinions about this as there are painters! But I'd like to pick up on yours because I think this may be a more effective technique, at least for me. I am working on a painting now, of some colourful boats in Belize (I was recently there and took this picture which I knew I just had to paint) and some very interesting architecture in the background. Lighting conditions were not the best as it was a flat, overcast day. But I increased the colour saturation in the photo and started painting with the goal of keeping my colours "pure" or less muddy with some transparent glazes. The results were not believable to me. Of course that may just be because I am not used to painting a lot of architecture and made it too straight and rigid rather than loose and painterly which is how I like it. But the colours themselves appeared too saturated to me and I didn't want the buildings in the background to jump out at the viewer. The buildings were yellow, reddish and off-white.

So I waited for everything to dry, then laid down an ultramarine blue glaze over all of the background buildings, making sure not to touch the hulls of the boats which I am reasonably happy with. Everything is now greyed down a bit, pushed back, and the boats jump out more. All I have to do now is paint the masts, which are very tall and the brightest parts of the whole photo. I hope to create a bit of "sparkle" by laying in the odd bright cad yellow/titanium white highlight and will try to soften the edges so it appears to glow. If I think I am successful, I will show you the end result. If not, then I guess I need to go back to the drawing board. Again.

[marcdalessio]

Hi all, I saw this thread in my blog stats.

As to getting paint to glow, it's something I've thought about a bit.

Someone mentioned medium above. When you go through the baroque/rococo painting section of the Louvre there is an incredible glow they get with their paint (not the Fragonard and Boucher formula stuff, I'm referring to the naturalistic work). It culminates in the room with Greuze and his student's work. The next room is David and the beginning of the academic painters and the glow is gone. Clearly there is a different medium being used in the 18th century, which the academic painters rejected.

In portraiture Sargent's paintings don't glow like a Lawrence does, and we know Sargent just used linseed oil. In fact if you look closely at a Sargent edge, he would sometimes 'fake' the glow by actually painting a slightly lighter value at the beginning of the background. Rupert Alexander does this well in his portraits: http://www.rupertalexander.com/

For landscape painting, I think the best way to get a painting to glow is to paint looking in the general direction of the sun. It's hard to get a painting to glow if you have the sun on your back.

The English school, Edward Seago, and today David Curtis (http://www.djcurtis.co.uk/DAVID_CURTIS/galleryx.html) are great to look at for 'glowing' landscapes.

[birdhs]

Nothing to add here, but a Thank You for asking such a great question. I have certainly added to my knowledge.

and also big THANX to all who have contributed their experience.

always learning,

life is good

Greg