What good are old phonebooks?

For me they are a resource, no please don’t send me your phonebooks, let me explain.

When painting in oil, I will often use two brushes of the same basic tone/color, such as a flesh or facial color. One is for the lighter mix and the other is for the darker mix. From these two I can use the same brush to paint a range using light without having to clean my brush constantly. What’s the phonebook for - call a shrink? Calm down - I’m getting to the point here.

The phonebook is for wiping off paint from my brush prior to selecting or mixing a slight variation to my “light” mix. Works very well for me and I just flip the page for another clean page - excellent! When I feel that the brush might be getting “muddy” I then wash it in solvent, walnut oil or some such, then use the phonebook again to take most of the pigment and solvent off and away I go. A time saver, I like that.

Stevie

I'm continuing to do portraits of people at work; with students - and just about anyone else I can capture on the iPhone and then paint them in a 8 x 10 format.


It just keeps me busy between other paintings that I have going, and I think that they will make an interesting collage when I put them together. Portraiture is always about the individual, I want to make these works about the shared attributes.


I'm assured that her name is based on Stevie Nicks just to put that question to rest. 
Stevie is a person that I work with at Florida Tech.
If you send me a picture I might paint you too. Please send digital pictures to my e-mail : gec@mac.com

Brush Recovery

This doesn't happen very often. However sometimes I am really eager to clean up after a painting session. There i am - I've left my brushes in a container and inevitably at the bottom the bristles are distorted into various shapes that they were never intended. Total loss?

Not hardly. In order to recover this brush what I use a brush aid called Brush Shaper by Mona Lisa. I have no connection with Mona Lisa whatsoever.

From here I clean the brush as I normally would, dip the brush in the brush shaper and then reshape the brush as best I can. I just want all of the hairs together, if the general shape is still twisted - that's ok - the next step deals with  that.

To correct ant twisting or bending I then put it into my paper clamp and in this case use the unprinted side of a business card in order to reshape the brush back to useable. This procedure seems to work out extremely well for me. Save that brush - it wasn't the brushes' fault!