Transparent Glazing  Technique #5

.As mentioned in the Ten Point Techniques Test, glazing is often poorly taught.  So often 'art teachers' tell their students that glazes are used like a wash.  This is terribly limiting.

Glazes which use transparent paint are extremely creative, and can be used in any area no matter the size, to produce dramatic results.  What makes them work is the texture of the painting underneath - and how light or dark that paint is.  We often create a foundation using empowering and refining techniques purely to have them come alive with a transparent glaze.  This can also change the color of the work - another reason advanced techniques liberate you with the use of color.

If you were to look at the surface of an advanced painting sideways, you'd see texture has been created for very special purposes.  You'd see also that the texture is very meaningful.  Looking at the painting sideways, the texture juts out from the canvas like small mountain ranges - there are hilltops and valleys.  When a Transparent Glaze is applied, the paint fills the valleys and the brush polishes the tops, so in one very quick stroke you have created a magnificent effect of detail.   This is a quality of detail which far surpasses what you'd get if you try to paint detail with small brushes.

Because the paint is transparent, light which enters the painting bounces back out and the result is that light comes from within the painting.  Imagine that!  A painting lit from within!   So not only have you changed the color, and developed an image, and created incredible detail in milliseconds - you've captured light in your art.

There's more this technique achieves for you, too, which we explain in detail and step by step for you in the Fine Art Techniques DVD Triple Pack - your essential painting toolbox.  It's best to see the technique being made, with moving footage, to obtain the full advantages of this sensational technique.  

Opaque Glazing  Technique #6

You're in the upper levels of Fine Art painting when you're using Opaque Glazes - and you're entering realms where the finesse of capturing light effects, and fog and mist and spray or even ectoplasm and spirit energy happen beneath your fingertips.

Learn this technique well.  It's not hard to make mistakes with it, and ruin your work, too.  But you'll only make that mistake once, because it really is very easy to do.  The secret, which we always take care to explain: is use plenty of medium.

You may already have been told never to glaze with opaque paint.   Around the world art schools and art groups are filled with artists and teachers who say this.   Sadly, this illustrates yet again how poorly art techniques are so abundantly and often taught.  Imagine having one of the greatest gifts art can provide, denied to you.

No more. Get to know this technique - it produces majestic results in ways you'll amaze yourself, let alone viewers and buyers.  It creates many more effects than just described above.  And it does something else, for which you'll be forever thankful - as you use this technique in your advanced work, you'll see that you can create works of art far beyond what you earlier thought possible, and each time you do so, you'll envision more in your mind.   So what happens is the Opaque Glaze technique captures more and more advanced images on canvas which in turn enable and inspire you to imagine more and more advanced images.  

You never thought you had an abundance of rare talent?  The Opaque Glaze, in combination with other advanced techniques, through this natural process, will show that you naturally do.

This is not just career-changing, it's life changing.

Creative Knife  Technique #7

Goodbye art societies.  Goodbye art groups.   Goodbye standard painting.  This is new universe time.

Welcome to the worlds of top shelf power.  And don't say you don't have fun anymore - this will thrill you to bits.  Stay in touch with us after you learn the Creative Knife, because we want to see where you go with your Fine Art.  You could go anywhere!  This will blow apart your normal painting and lift it into realms that might take a bit of getting used to.

You can do it gently, of course, and make only subtle changes.  But the power is here if you want it.

Let's not be frightened of power.  After all, you do want to have your art affect people.  And most of all, you want to create, and you want to be thrilled by what you do.  

This technique works on a very simple process.  Medium is added to the paint on your palette, you pick the paint up with the knife a particular way, and whooomph.  In milliseconds you've created effects which are so alive and so full of detail, potential and possibilities that you will just want to paint pictures for the rest of your life. 

The photograph above shows three very quick Creative Knife strokes.  The three of them have taken only a quarter of a second to do.  Again, because it is not a moving picture, what the photograph doesn't show is what happens next.  In another quarter of a second those strokes are altered with the knife (or you can use a rag or brush, or your hand) to 'set the stroke' into the work. This takes away its rawness and gives the technique meaning, which you'll see in the DVD.

Half a second - no more, is the secret, though you can work this technique over and again (unlike the Dagger Stroke, which dies away with more work).  But you cannot help but apply this technique quickly, because the paint will run off the knife if you delay.  The purpose of the Creative Knife is to empower your canvas with even more creative energy as you continue through the stages of your work.  It brings ever more detail, ever more light, ever more movement or stillness, mood and atmosphere, color, and every other artistic attribute of a Fine Art painting.

And wow it's fun to do.   No photograph can do this technique justice.  It does need moving pictures to see how dramatically it changes a painting - and then how wonderfully it sets into the image, no longer raw and crude, but perfectly thrillingly happy in its new level.

Not to be confused with the Painting Knife technique, the Creative Knife is used if you want or need to during stages after Day One.   It is without doubt the most powerful oil painting technique on the planet, and try to see it being performed if you can.

Scumbling  Technique #8

Made famous by Grand Master Titian, of course.  This is one of the techniques you've probably been taught well.  It takes a bit of practise to perform it so it actually does what you want it to do, but that doesn't take long.

In many ways this is a later-stage version of the Caress Stroke.  The brush as you'd know is held flat to the canvas, and the texture of the painted surface pulls the paint from the brush.  Like the Caress Stroke, the Scumble alters the color and texture of that area (or enhances what's there), and it can be left as a finished stroke, or used to create a foundation for other techniques.

It's probably the latter which hasn't been taught.  Again, each technique acts in combination iwith other techniques, in ways which you choose simply by doing what you like and not doing what you don't.  But the scumble does act as a brilliant foundation for later applications, and it's that place in the creative process which only advanced painting teaches.

For example, you can apply a scumble on top of another scumble, once the first one has dried.  And another, and so on, and end up with a combination of effects making for high detail.  Or you can set a scumble back into the painting with a Transparent Glaze, letting the texture of the scumble work magic into that Glaze.  An Opaque Glaze can be applied over the scumble to have your softer look bristle with life. 

Knowing how to do the scumble is one thing.  Discovering this age-old technique's place in the advanced creative process is really where the technique comes into its own. 

Sensitive, wise and delightful, the true value of the Scumble will always deliver.  It's a much more controlled stroke, but amazingly versatile in its simplicity.  

NEXT PAGE →

Techniques Help 3

-   Latest technology...-   ...You can now download the Fine Art Techniques DVD Triple Pack - much cheaper, and by individual discs of your choice.  See the Downloads page for details 

Click here to go to Robert's personal art studio website:  robert-bosler-studio.com 

.