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Originally Posted by tech.knockout
how long does it take you to mull, say a standard 40ml of earth and/or cadmium pigment paint until the globs of paint arent obvious?
I hear something like a standard tube it takes an hour, and someone who PMed me (bagwash) says that bit took several hours to mull curelean blue 
are these claims far fetched and made by perfectionists, or is true that it takes hours to recude the no. of globs to negligable levels? |
The time required to mull paint is different for different pigments and different amounts. Ultramarine (PB29) for example is done in a jiffy, and more importantly : it
should be done in a jiffy because the longer you mull it, the stringier it gets. Typically you don't even use a muller for it. Only the palette knife. Most pigments are relatively easy.
Some of the "problem pigments" I have are Aureolin (PY40) and Naples Yellow (PY41). It takes a long time to get them smooth. For Aureolin : if you don't get it smooth then it will look "blistered" when dry. Small particles come to the surface (I guess they are forced to the top by the drying of the oil). It takes quite some force and time to get it right (= perfectly smooth).
Cerulean Blue is also a little bit like that. I have a couple of them and when not made smooth it will get a coarse paint film. You can feel it when you go over it with your fingers, it's covered with little particles that came on top. But it doesn't look as bad as Aureolin (perhaps because Aureolin is transparent and Cerulean Blue is opaque).
It's important to get all these hard particles (which are actually little clusters of pigment particles) out by breaking them up in the mulling process and make the paint smooth. I there's a little hard particle in your paint then it will scratch over the paint of your brushstroke.
It never took me
hours though. But I have to add that I use a lot of force. I also combine methods. I mix with the palette knife, spread it out lightly, squeeze the paint with a trembling motion (the whole table shakes when I do that), spread it out thinly, press the muller very hard on the paint and move it around, I might use a mortar and keep repeating this all until the paint is very smooth, I only want to see smooth paint, not a single particle anymore. Only using a muller won't do it, it's a combination of things.
Of course this I only do for the problem pigments. Others are very easy (and some are very messy like the organics :-)
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