MITRA Forum Question Details

Hello there,

I think the old masters relied a little more on lead carbonate than calcium carbonate to ground their paintings.

Five days for a linseed oil without driers to dry is optimistic at best. And depending on the filler loading, it will crack badly later on. The alkyd would insure it some flexibility once dry and probably replaces the lead in that purpose.

Remember also  the fat over lean general rule. Meaning be dead sure it's fully dry before use and if you're using "just oil" in your ground, 5 days and 5 days drying time sound overly optimistic to me personally. Without driers I'd give it a month between each layer at least.

Good priming to you,

Lussh

It's not too far from an early ​"old masters" ground, but not one of the better ones.  The highly transparent nature of the calcium carbonate can be prone to darkening agents.  Such as relining glues. Even the binding oil itself will display it's full dark yellowing.  

The National gallery of London​​ released a technical bulletin revealing that Titian used grounds like these and they darkened, resulting in the belief for centuries that he used dark brown grounds.  When actually he used a layer of either calcium carbonate or gypsum bound in linseed scraped across the weave to mostly flatten the surface. Followed by a thin layer of warm pale grey made of mostly lead white, with red lead and carbon black. 

Later old masters replaced the calcium carbonate with an ochre sometimes with a small addition of lead white as a first scraped layer.  Perhaps for this reason, or because it was less prone to cracking, they then followed this with a similar lead white warm grey layer.  When the displayed weave became more accepted later on, the ochre layer was foregone.  Using a transparent or pale light brown as a first scraped layer made sense as if lead lead white is used instead, the raised weave points can be obvious as darkish dots requiring further layers of lead white.  More layers than just using one over the flattened ochre layer, where the ochre and weave high points ghosts through more evenly to better visual effect.

Marc.​​

Hi Lussh.

Thanks for the response.

Do you then believe the second approach, with the alkyd resin, would be stable enough, if I waited 6 weeks between coats? Do the substantial cracking issues apply to both versions, or just the one sans alkyd?

If yes, what alkyd resin do you believe would be most stable for this use?

(Also: I know this isn't any real imitation of old masters' techniques  -- my interest here is just in the increased drying time and decreased toxicity.)

Thank you!

Thanks, Marc, for the detailed breakdown. 

I’ll be sure to do some more research before making any rash moves. I am actually just after a faster-drying ground option that is compatible with oil paint. It is not necessary that it be a verified, old masters’ style method; this for me is not important in and of itself. I just thought these above approaches, in allegedly being “old masters-inspired,” perhaps lent themselves to being a more reliable method/recipe (in terms of structural longevity).

A solution to my needs could be fully contemporary; I just wish for it to be tested and confirmed as fully compatible with oil paint, have low toxicity, and dry in a period shorter than one year (preferably much shorter)​

Maybe the answer is just to stick with the acrylic gesso. It hasn't failed me personally, but the more I read, the more I panic about potential future issues with any work that's oil on acrylic gesso. I have concerns that now I should allow for my acrylic gesso dry for at least one month, and up to four months due to shrinkage, and am experiencing slight despair that I hadn't known to wait that long a period with acrylic gesso before, with previous work, etc.