Glazing

[Michael Fournier]

If you want to see the good and bad effect of using glazes taken to the extreme. Look at the work of Maxfield Parrish. His goal was to match the translucent glow of stained glass with paint.(He also did work in stained and painted glass). His work is beautiful but many of his paintings are also extremely cracked and in danger of being lost. Restorers are tiring to save these works of a talented albeit very unconventional artist. If you consider he was working only as long ago as the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century the fact that his work is in such bad shape should serve as a warning if longevity of your work is a concern.

Now that said a large part of the problem was that in order to speed his work (he was a Illustrator and worked under deadlines) he used cobalt drier in his paint. It speeds drying times but also makes paint very brittle if you use too much.

Also I am sure he knew these things when he was doing it as a Illustrator longevity and prosperity is not your immediate concern getting the work to the publisher on time and getting paid is. So although we now value his work as a painting it was an illustration for income for him. And the client paying the fee did not care much what happened to the work even 2 days after it was reproduced never mind 30-100 years later.

Today there are modern fast drying painting mediums (Liquin) that if used correctly will allow you to mimic the work of Parrish with fewer of the bad side effects.

That said you must remember never put a fast drying layer of paint over a slow drying layer. That is were the term fat over lean comes from. Lean paint or paint with less oil (or a oil based painting medium like linseed oil) will dry faster then Fat paint (paint with more oil)

If you do not follow this rule and paint lean over fat then the top layer dries first but as the lower fat layer dries the top layer can