Good grief, I do have to agree with Mike here!:eek:
49 days?
I may not live that long, I have paintings to do!
~~Kathleen

I don’t really think it works as well with acrylics, the light doesn’t pass through the layers in the same way as oils do so you don’t get that living glow that you would with oils. With acrylics you better off using a glaze and a satin of gloss varnish to bring out the colour more.

Acrylics seem to lack the depth and lustre oil has when layers of thick paint are applied.

Even when you’re using transparent glazes?

howyadoin?

howyadoin graphics

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I think there was a misunderstanding here. A lot of flemish painters used thicker opaque paint over the dead layer not simple transparent glazing which acrylics are quite good at. But Acrylics don’t seem to let the light pass through the opaque layers in the same way oils do.

Hard to explain. I started with oils about 20 years ago. changed to acrylics because it was convenient during my degree, and then stopped painting for about 10 years. Just recently I’ve started again and experimented with both acrylics and oils. Oils behave very differently with the 7 layer technique than acrylics do. It’s almost night and day.

With acrylics only really thin transparent layers let the light through to the top opaque layer whilst with oils light passes through opaque layers too and the light seems to spread in these inner opaque layers making that old masters look.

I’ve been following the alexei anatov videos see
http://artpapa.net/content/view/15/79/

there’s a video that shows the entire video in a short sequence going over the layers.

Oils and acrylics come out comepletely different.

Hi Adriantmax,

I hear what you’re saying. But prior to the Renaissance, oil painters, built up exquisite works in repeated layers of paint, and these were often glazes, thin layers of opague paint. The dead layer was generally over tempera.

I’m not understanding why acrylics can’t offer the same thing, in transparent thin glazing layers. Body color for the oils was generally applied in a free painterly way and precise, the detailed glazes added later. Acrylics the same for glazing.

A bright yellow glazed over with a transparent red will give you an orange, but different from mixing the colors beforehand. General commonly accepted
understanding of glazes is that light travels through the one or more layers of transparent pigment particles hits the ground and bounces back through the paint film. The actual however deals with the refractive index rather then the light actually passing through the particles. Closer the pigment’s index comes to the medium that surrounds it, the more transparent it will appear. Titanium white which is opaques has an index of 2.7, greater then typical binders of oil or acrylic (1.4) so it scatters a maximum amount of light and offers excellent hiding power. Ultramarine is highly transparent. The best colors for glazing will always be those that have a relatively low refractive index.

Smaller pigments will offer as well a greater surface area to light. Acrylics can produce a fuller range of luminous effects than any other medium available. Acrylics can successfully emulate these effects, has a greater range of freedom in application, and better long term clarity and flexibility. And in a fraction of the time required by oils, an acrylic painter can more easily develop complex passages of translucent color.

So I tend to disagree that oils and acrylics are like night and day, I think acrylics have to their credit a great potential to emulate whatever the artist desires. To paint in oils or acrylics seems more like merely a personal preference in the feel of the paint, not in what can be achieved only in oils or acrylics only or better. However just my thoughts.

Elaine

I think there was a misunderstanding here. A lot of flemish painters used thicker opaque paint over the dead layer not simple transparent glazing which acrylics are quite good at. But Acrylics don’t seem to let the light pass through the opaque layers in the same way oils do.

Emphasis here on the ‘seem to’ part.

Oils and acrylics come out comepletely different.

As was established in the recent discussions on this, individual mileage varies.

I am interested in the 7 layer painting tech but cannot use oils cos my wife and baby don’t like the smell so I have recently switched to acrylics. I now live in Egypt (but from UK) for the past two years and the best acrylics I can find here are: VAN GOGH acrylics.

For what it’s worth these are very much student-quality paints so some things are going to be difficult, perhaps even impossible, to do using them.

What is burnt bone?

Bone black. This is commonly sold today as Ivory Black, but nearly any black will substitute here.

And is red ochre the same as light oxide red in acrylic?

It’s the closest you’ll get in that range.

The exact pigments aren’t critical for this, all you’re looking to do is create a roughly monochromatic base. You don’t have to be creating perfect neutrals and you may actually find you specifically don’t want to, either over the whole painting or in selected areas.

And how do I apply it over the burnt umber layer? Do I apply it as a wash, a glaze or thicker.

You apply it thickly enough that it looks right. I appreciate this is an unsatisfying answer but it’s not the thickness of the layer(s) that’s important, just what colours you get.

With thinner, relatively low-pigment paints like Van Gogh you’re going to have to use more layers and/or thicker paint to achieve the same effects, compared to a good artists’ acrylic.

Einion