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Peter and Steven,
Very well put; both of you. I'm glad to hear someone finally comment on the myth of the Dutch old masters' "building up layers of glazes". The old Dutch/Flemish "rule of three" techniques would not work if they had, in fact, used nothing but a series of glazes, as some people suppose they did. It is true that they might have used a number of relatively oil-rich layers, but that is not necessarily the same as a glaze.
As Steven pointed out, a glaze can be--and is--used to unify parts or the whole of a painting, once it is more-or-less completed. There are times when you need to strengthen this part, or warm up that one, and it makes more sense to do it as a glaze rather than re-paint the whole passage. But that's about as far as you can go to correct errors using a glaze.
To Joseph: think of glazing as simply "a transparent darker tone laid over a lighter preparation" period. A scumble is the same thing, except it's a light tone over a darker one. I usually use the term "glaze" to mean either of these; the main point being that these are transparent paint applications. In any event, the key is to keep a glaze thin. The transparency is acheived through the thinness of the paint or by using naturally transparent pigments, or both. If you use the latter, you need not add too much oil in order to make the thing transparent, so the paint layer may be stronger. The oil needs the pigment in order to dry properly and form a tough film. The pigment particles act as a matrix for the oil to bond with. It's something like a concrete floor slab that is made stronger by the addition of a metal grid over which the concrete is poured. Without the metal grid, the concrete slab is weak and prone to cracking.
You can keep a glaze relatively lean if you use a more-or-less dry brush technique to apply the paint. I use this a lot and I use my fingers to spread it around, too. In this way, I keep pretty good company because Titian was said to do this endlessly (spread thin paint around with his fingers.)
Anyway, experiment a bit and best of luck to you. Hope this is useful, too.
Juan
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