why oil paint?

"Glossary Term: Oil Paint Oil paints were invented in the 15th century by a Flemish painter, Jan van Eyck. Before oil paint, most painters used tempera paint, which dried very quickly and didn't allow the artist to make changes or corrections. The invention of oil paints allowed artists to paint much more realistically and experiment with different brushstrokes and styles.
Oil paint is a mix of ground pigments and linseed, poppy or walnut oil. Since oil dries slowly, artists could take more time to work on details and capture the textures of skin and fabrics. Oil paints could also be built up in thin layers which better reflect light.

...able to achieve products that resemblesd photos... so close to reality

In the 19th century, a new range of artificial colors in airtight tubes made oils even easier to use. Oil paints remained the most popular kind of paint for 500 years until the invention of acrylic paints in the 1950s. "
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vs.
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"Glossary Term: Acrylic Paint In the 1930's, Mexican outdoor mural painters needed to find a new durable paint to stand up to wind, rain, and high humidity. They began to experiment with chemical or synthetic resins as paint binding agents (binding agents, such as egg or oil, are mixed with dry pigments to make paints). By the mid-1950's, researchers in Mexico and the United States had developed a way to mix resins with water, which created a paint that was almost identical to oils, yet was more durable and dried quickly. Acrylic paint also made it possible for artists to work on any unprimed surface such as cement or concrete. Acrylic paint will not crack over time and can be mixed and cleaned up with water.

diego rivera famous mexican muralist... fridas husband..."
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about the paints.. makeup
"This earliest and still most commonly used vehicle is linseed oil, pressed from the seed of the flax plant. Modern processes use heat or steam in order to produce refined varieties of oil, which contain fewer impurities, but cold-pressed oils are still the favorite of many artists.[3] Other vegetable oils such as Hemp, poppy seed, walnut, sunflower, safflower, and soybean oils may be used as alternatives to linseed oil for a variety of reasons. For example, safflower and poppy oils are paler than linseed oil and allow for more vibrant whites.
Once the oil is extracted additives are sometimes used to improve its chemical properties. In this way the paint can be made to dry more quickly if that is desired, or to have varying levels of gloss. Modern oils paints can, therefore, have complex chemical structures; for example, affecting resistance to UV or giving a suede like appearance."
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"Pigment
The color of oil paint derives from the small particles mixed with the carrier. Common pigment types include mineral salts such as white oxides: lead, now most often replaced by less toxic zinc and titanium, and the red to yellow cadmium pigments. Another class consists of earth types, e.g. sienna or umber. Synthetic pigments are also now available. Natural pigments have the advantage of being well understood through centuries of use but synthetics have greatly increased the spectrum available, and many are tested well for their lightfastness."
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***why i use oils and likely why others do too... they layer beautifully i personaly love building up my paintings, assentially combining hundreds of pieces to make one final. Oil paint allows you to shift you object, add light and darknes and with all of this create depth and a great sense of deveopment in your painting.
why not go back to the orginal way... maybe they did it right the first time. putting this amazing diverse or versitile medium.

acrilic paints are very opaque... once you lay down a layer the on underneath often disapearns never to be seen again under this plastic cover. With oils you can choose weather to put them down thick and opaque or add additional mediums to thin them out or even give them more mass.

water colors are surprisingly similar to oils however a layer of you painting can come back to life if it comes in cantact with water again, so building up the painting is more difficult.

portraits

Kiki Smith

Frida Kahlo
Frida

These are very literal portraits, and i enoy that aspect of these paintings. They convey stong, straight forward messeges. Frida creates a serealist scene by literally placing the different people, events, locations and materials of her life on her body. Taking these things out of context of a landscape or a crowd and placing them along side her body or her face. She paints her husband Diego on her forhead, a literal statment of his precenece in her thoughts and her constant mental awakness of her love for him. This statements, are simple and beautiful, she paints collages of the influences of her life... creating masterpieces.

Kiki Smith has also portrayed herself in a very literal. Smith puts herself directly on the canvas, stripping her natural skin from her body and stretching it across the stretchers. Ths is a beautiful and natural portrait.

I enjoyed these artists styles, for their simplicity and strong opinions. Not questioning their ideas and being direct in conveying their thoughts.

a sense of place

     

These are both paintings by Edward Hopper, a master of setting a mood and creating a sense of place where you can not only see the figures but even the air that the room holds is given a value... a texture... a feeling.  These paintings both hold one figure in a room, but although they are made with very similar styles the feeling conveyed is completely different.

The woman on the bed sits looking out the window, breathing in the fresh morning air as the sun streams into her room and warms the surface of her bed and her cheeks on her epraiser face.

The girl at the table seems chilled sitting in a room with a miniscule raidiator that does not seem to be warming the room at all, she grasps her tea cup for warmth and looks down at it pondering the heat that it holds.  She is bundled up in her heavy jacket and although she seems to have found comfort in her seat as she huddled up around warm things the chilly, dim room overpowers the small offset of warmth that she presents.  

-body language of the woman... one open to the presumably warm air around her 

and the other a bit more closed off and small, her white skin given goose bumps by the cold air of the room

-color... the light of the painting on the left is yellow and warms the room

while in the painting of the cafe the light is artificial (it is night and lamps light the room) but is does not shine yellow or orange it is white light like that of a winter day when the air is cold.

-the imagination could carry... the woman on her bed hears the sounds of morning, the streets awakening and the occasional chirp of birds. A much brighter atmosphere than that of the that of the cafe that would be somewhat quite, cold with quiet chatter of other customers and the clinking of tea and coffee cups.

where i am now

I have learned alot from Oil Painting, with the freedom, independence i have been able to work and explore while doing so. Oil Painting as a medium has added to this expirience because i have been able to layer my work and go through many trials to reach a final piece. The most challenging bit of all of my work has been reaching a state of completion, i am always looking at my painting and seeeing more possible improvements and differences form the subject. There are many possible directions to go in and i am having trouble wrapping up the project and making the piece feel cohessive.

I think that i have progressed most in my ability to put colors down how i see them. In the past i have not had as much of an opinion as an artist and i feel that as i continue producing work and practicing in the medium i have gained more freedom. I feel more confident as a painting and enjoy producing work very much.

i think that obsserving art history is useful and effects artist today because in looking back at any history we are able to learn from those who came before us. We can pick an choose from the styles and inspiring ideas as we please. Looking back to the succesess of the past is a great way to fuel yourself in producing well rounded work with depth.