Chicago Art Gallery Paintings

Watercolor Art

Watercolor is usually the first type of paint a child is introduced to. It is, of course, easy to clean up, and it lends itself beautifully to allowing light to pass through the binders to look transparent or translucent. Binders for watercolor paints are water-based and are substances like gum arabic, glycerine, sugars or even honey. Watercolor painting can look different as there are a multitude of techniques to produce wonderful effects: such as, blotting to lift various parts of the pigments or binders if done immediately form the paper sub-strata. Soft Sable brushes are best for watercolors since the work is often done on archival quality paper, that is delicate and not prone to being rubbed vigorously or scrubbed. Since the use of soft bristled brushes are common, the most often seen painting style is layering. Layering is when there are a number of delicate washes, or passes, of color to the same area. This allows for the settling of pigments into different wells on the paper and create a robustness and richness in the final look. The type of tube or block of pressed pigments don't usually define the painters choices. Many different styles of painting are used, and it can illustrative or graphic novel type, or it can be in a loose and freely abstracted style. The tight styles of acrylics are rarely used with watercolors.

Oil Art

Oil paint is pigment mixed with various types of binders. These binders are oils, and they can be walnut, linseed, or a multitude of other molecular long and short chain oil structures. Oil paint is pretty thick and viscous, but you can thin it down with turpentine or a mixture of turpentine, oil or sometimes just mineral oil. The key is to use a turpenoid solvent, and preferably not a petroleum distillate. Artwork that is completed with oils are loved for their vibrant, colorfulness, and deeply translucent rich tones. It has been used for centuries, and can be considered the classic medium of choice. Oils are slow to evaporate and oxidize. It can be weeks just for the surface to dry or become tacky to the touch. Only after a 6 month period can you begin to consider adding a protectant varnish. Depending on the thickness of your painting layers you can even wait up to a year. Solvents can eat up oil paints, this includes the turpenoids, turpentines, mineral spirits, orderless mineral spirits, and petroleum distillates.

Gouache Art

Gouache paints are used in artwork that needs each layer of paint to be an individual. That is the layers are quite opaque. This is from the water based binders that consist of chalky, white, residues. The other reason it is opaque is that the actual pigment particles are a little bigger than watercolors (which are wonderfully translucent). Most of these paints consist of gum arabic, dextrin, and a wetting agent. You would just add a some dry powder pigment to mix it up. But overall, you need a good waterproof binder or it will not last long. It's not easy to get a smooth consistency with gouache paints, not can you layer the paint. Well, you can layer it, but the translucent effects of acrylics, watercolors, or highly oiled oil paints will not be present. When texture, layering, or lighting effects are not desired gouache is used. (Think re-prints: such as, posters, commercial artists, and illustrators).

Acrylic Art

Acrylic paint are just fun to use and lend themselves well to the creative individual. They dry super quickly, but you can add various mediums to create a huge amount of variety in the end result. You can make them dry faster, or slower (extenders) like oils. You can add mediums for viscosity to create thickness (impasto) and textures, or mediums for thinness and watercolor effects. Mediums with particles such as mica for shimmer or black lava for rough texture. There are mediums, gels, and liquids for shine (sheen), matte (flatness), and satin looks, and enhanced additives for transparency or translucent effects. The Acrylic binders are emulsions which dry in a molecular fashion similar to plastics in long strings of polymer repeated molecules. It can be used as a glue for collages, and mixed on or below oils and other mediums since it is flexible. You can have fun with creativity by painting wet-in-wet, or sit a few seconds and have an additive effect by layering paint on dry. Acrylic is permanent, but you can use a mineral spirit or alcohol based solvent to lift a few layers off. Although, to facilitate mixing of colors on the canvas (cotton or linen), or paper there are new interactive (atelier), or Open (Golden) acrylic paints that have a wonderful reopening ability. This comes in handy when you decide to go back and refine an area for overall tone or cohesiveness. Acrylic, when wet, can be wiped up with water and soap.

The next three groups of paints are ones that are mixed with odd mediums and binders. Such as cows milk, egg yolks, and hot wax. But the effect are beautiful, and they existed in cheap forms during the ages.

Tempera Art

Tempera paints are used with non-artists on posters when mixed with white glue or a flour base. But, it has been used in the ancient (think medieval times and during the boon of the renaissance) past with egg yolk. Once again the protein based binder will not allow for a sheen or luster, and will dry with a dull matte effect, but there are numerous varnishes that can be used with Tempera to give the artwork the desired look (satin, gloss, semi-gloss). Just as casein was used under murals, tempera was used under oil paintings. It is easy to create (although you can purchase cheap tubes for your artwork). There are different types of egg tempera manufactured nowadays, with the archival varieties being the most popular. Tempera is another type of paint that is introduced to children early on. If you remember the gallon jugs of "poster" paint with the hand-pump tops then you have used Tempera paint before. There are many new fluorescent, and interesting colors, being created, but tempera allows for easy emulsions and has dominated the color spectrum with choices.

Casein Art

Casein is just that: the protein from the milk of a cow. Look at your next package of cheese and you will notice casein in the ingredients. This mixture will also dry opaque, but in a little easier to use fashion than gouache paints. You do not need as much practice to get a smooth finish with Casein paint. The odor from casein paints are definitely one-of-a-kind. Large public paintings (or murals) can use this as a coating underneath the more expensive paints, they help the artist line up all the elements correctly or get a coloration to the overall feel of the artwork. Since this is a protein that is water-based you can thin out the paints with water (or you can just add more emulsion). You can apply a protective finish to casein to stop the smell and protect it from the elements. Canvas, in general, needs to be treated well in order to save it from erosion, and casein is just another degrading material to the canvas. Therefore, it is used often on Masonite or acid free boards. Which also heightens the smooth finishing effect that casein already has. Another things to note, is that casein does not have gloss to it, it's quite matte and dull, but you can add a glossy varnish to it once it has dried. If you purchase a casein piece of artwork, but sure that you are aware of the NON flexible aspects of casein.

Encaustic Art

Encaustic painting is super cool to use! It's actually a very different art creation technique than traditional and classic art design. The color pigment is mixed into hot wax, and stirred until the wax creates an emulsion with the pigments. This hot/warm mixture is then applied to the art and hardens as it cools. Each artist will formulate their own mixture of waxes (short and long chain molecules) as they get accustomed to the properties of each wax, and the combination of waxes. The waxes can be made from natural bees-wax, different types of oils (such as linseed oil, and different types of hardened resins.) Pigments can be added in powder form or it can be added from an oil paint tube. For the easy method you can purchase cheap blocks of pigments already mixed with different proportions of waxes. The tools for encaustic painting are different than traditional artwork since there are things like heat guns, metal substrates, hot plates, and all sorts of metal implements (used dental tools are the best and cheapest source). Any dents, dings, or tears can be resealed with clear wax, or just heated gently until it reforms a barrier for the pigments.