Monday Motivator: Painting an "Unsinister Alchemical Craft"

"Of all the art forms painting is the most like alchemy. It has much in common with that other unsinister alchemical craft, cookery. ... An artist’s manual, with its many recipes for grounds and glazes, its guide to the use of arcane implements and its roster of recommended procedures ... is very much like a cookery book. Completely to ignore the precepts of handbooks can lead to disaster ... yet every chef would understand Picasso’s dictum 'If I can’t find the red I use green'..."
-- British artist Tom Phillips in his blog My painting XIX

Learning technique systematically so it can become internalized and instinctive knowledge can be as tedious as measuring every ingredient in a cake recipe meticulously rather than using a rough teaspoon of this and a dash of that. If you're using oil paint or mixing media in particular, though, you'll likely come unstuck if you don't. Literally... paint cracking and flaking off.

Of course, if you're as famous as Picasso you wouldn't have to worry, it'll become some art conservator's project to save the piece. Or your faded colors could become a topic for an art student's thesis, like Van Gogh's yellows and Turner's fugitive pigments. But if you live in a country where people like to sue, maybe it's not wise to sell a painting that will fall off the canvas? Or maybe sell your paintings with a lifetime's money-back guarantee (your lifetime's).

See Also:
• Book Review: A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel by Tom Phillips
• Alchemy Symbols (From About.com's Guide to Chemistry)

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