Why you Should Enhance Your Home with an Oil Painting

There are many reasons why people buy oil paintings and other works of art from a gallery. Many of these reasons are practical, and they make perfect sense. For instance, you have a special occasion coming up, such as your wedding anniversary or the birthday of a loved one, and you want to commemorate it with something nice. You want to enjoy yourself this day, so why not go out to a gallery and take in some beautiful oil paint pictures of your subject matter. It is a sure way to make your day memorable and more enjoyable.

Another reason for buying an oil painting or any other kind of canvas art for that matter is that you like to look at art from a historical perspective. Some of us feel that contemporary art does not have the appeal that it had in the past or lacks the quality of the paintings that were created in the past. We love the idea that oil paintings date back hundreds of years to our ancestors’ time and still hold value today.

Many various artists have created oil paintings over the centuries. Some of the famous painters’ names are Monet, Greco, Sotheby, Titian, Braque & Gris. Of course, there are others, but these are the most common. Some examples of canvas from the early or mid 19th century would include Mary Cassatt’s “Old Gazelles,” Degas’ “Fountain,” and Jean Baptiste Camille’s “Waterlilies on a waterside.”

Today you can find oil paintings made from different types of canvas materials including, paper, canvas, fiber, wood, terracotta, ceramic, jute, and mineral spirits. These various media will have different qualities and therefore appeal to different types of buyers. So the quality of a painting will vary depending upon the medium it is made from. For instance, if it is made from canvas, it will have a different appearance than if it were made from wood or fiber.

One of the earliest methods of transferring an oil painting onto a new surface was called glazing. This was done by dipping a brush into the varnish and gently working the varnish into the image to cover it. In the early part of the century, this process was often referred to as wet painting. It was the forerunner of the modern varnish. Glazing techniques were refined in the late nineteenth century by the inception of the contemporary paint department.

Two types of varnish existed during the early years of the 19th century: the first layer was simply a thick, stiff paste made from substances such as silks and stiffened gum, called clays, and applied over a base of moistened cottonwood that was left to dry overnight. The second layer was a thinned paint applied over the first layer that contained the plans. This was sometimes combined with a primer before the painting was framed. The painting was then rubbed down with a brush or scraper to remove the dry top layer.

Two main types of varnish existed in the early 19th century: the first was a thinned paint called the glazing paint or chalkboard paint, and the second was a paste made of ground walnut shells, known as shellac or walnut bark. Oil paintings used these two types of varnish. Between these two major styles, there were three basic kinds. The first used small amounts of both chalk and shellac, which dried more quickly and left behind more prominent lines. The second method used the only shellac; however, the lines did not appear as smooth as the first style lines.

The most popular method was to use a technique called lamination. Pigments were melted over a silver frame that was then baked in an oven. After the painting had cooled, the silver would be removed, and the gold-toned lamination would then be applied. The technique was used in European oil paintings from the 7th century until the Renaissance when flat silver was used instead of gold-toned lamination. Metal-based gold-toned lamination was reserved for the Italian Renaissance when flat silver became commonplace.