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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

I'm Going To Paint A Rothko

11:45 / 13.03.03

I can't tell you how much I love how that sounds. I keep saying this to people who don't get that I'm being funny-pretentious and think that I'm just pretentious.

So anyway, I need a painting for my living room and I'm going to paint a Rothko. Here's a pretty good catalogue of his work. What I want to do is something like the classic paintings, the floating blocks of color.

So what do you think I should use for paint? I want build up layers of transparent colors. Todd, I remember that you said once that you use layers of glaze in your painting? Is there a particular product that you use? The only glaze that I'm familiar with is the kind you use for faux finishing. I wonder if I can use that. What other painters are on this board? Lentil I know, and Saveloy, and Suede... help me out a bit, pretty please?

11:57 / 13.03.03

I've never done anything remotely that size (I'm assuming this is going to be monumental in scale), so I'm not sure what would be cost-effective. I either use premixed mediums or mix different kinds of linseed oil, turpentine, varnish, and some other stuff together. I barely ever use the same thing twice, but for finishing I usually use linseed stand oil, which is exactly not the look you're going for.

It occurs to me that it should be relatively easy to find out exactly how Rothko did his work - there's a chapter in Bright Earth where Ball mentions Rothko, and the fact that because of the type of paint he used and the surface he used (raw canvas, IIRC), some of his paintings have badly deteriorated. There was one example of a painting for the Harvard Library (again IIRC) that didn't even last a year before it had to be shut up in a dark room to preserve it. So, if you do paint exactly like him (which I think would be a wicked good idea - if you're going to do a Rothko, you should do it exactly how he did it - fun!), make sure no direct light will shine on it.

12:34 / 13.03.03

Most of the interweb sites recommend a mix of linseed oil and turpentine for oil paint glazes. I haven't done any oil painting for years, but my memory tells me that while turps can give you a thinner glaze than linseed oil and one that will dry super quick, it tends to dull the colours. Is that right, Todd, anyone? I think if you go too thin, like water-colour thin, the paint will eventually crack and flake off. I remember linseed oil being a lot nicer to work with generally, and the only warning I can find against it on the interweb is that it causes yellowing to occur over time.

Doing a google search on rothko technique paint yeilds loads of sites but none that I can see that go into it in depth (though I can't say I've looked at them all). Lots of potentially useful snippets, such as this one taken from a classroom exercise:

"Paint was applied very thinly with sponges and cloths to avoid leaving any visible brushstrokes."

And, erm, another site says:
"The darkened palette continued to dominate Rothko's work well into the 1960s, when he developed a "painstaking technique of overlaying colours until, in the words of art historian Dore Ashton, 'his surfaces were velvety as poems of the night.' ""

Might be worth seeing what happens when you apply layer after layer of the same thinly mixed colour.

13:12 / 13.03.03

I think, if I were doing it, I'd use mostly turpentine (what type of turpentine is appropriate, I really don't know), mixed with very, very little color, and then, as Saveloy sez, apply with a big sponge or maybe even some kind of roller ( y'know, like one of those funky "trading spaces" rag rollers). Although you do get more brilliant color if you use linseed oil, the surface will also be shinier and more elastic, which I don't think is the Rothko way. Many, Many, very thin layers of paint would have to do the trick. If you avoid using linseed oil (much), you also avoid the "fat over thick" quandaries that plague those of us who tend to fling different mediums into a single painting. You could also probably do a coat a day, as it would dry very, very quickly.

As I cautioned before, I believe rothko used raw canvas, and supersaturated with turpentine this will likely disintergrate. A thin coat of gesso (which you can tint, too) would prevent this)

13:17 / 13.03.03

You don't really have to worry about getting cracks if you use just use turpentine as a medium, no matter how thin you go - UNLESS, you put a thin coat like that over a coat that has more oil in it. Then you have an immediate mess, or something that will be a mess later on.

18:53 / 13.03.03

OMG, I can't stop laughing about this...

I'm assuming this is going to be monumental in scale

I do believe that I could live for three days without food, water, and just your faith in me, Todd. I'm eyeing this picture and thinking, Fuck, how tall was Rothko? Five-two, five-three...yeah? I totally have the space for a big, big painting. I think I don't want to fuck up on that large a scale right in the beginning, though.

I really have to get that Bright Earth book...

So, if you do paint exactly like him (which I think would be a wicked good idea - if you're going to do a Rothko, you should do it exactly how he did it - fun!), make sure no direct light will shine on it.

This is such a beautiful idea, too. Of course I am using this painting to correct a small interior design problem, id est we had the living room painted & at night it is a lovely El Dorado Tan, but in daylight it's pinkish-beige... it's like living in a frickin' Band-Aid. So I'm going to be taking colors from, like, my couch and accent pillows. Could I wallow more in the wrongness of this project?

surfaces ...velvety as poems of the night

Oh, yes, right on. Trading spaces rag rollers, here I come...

Thank you, I love you both.

21:18 / 13.03.03

ooh! I think this is great - I'm just sorry I didn't get here in time for the materials fetishism. Actually, I do have one little point to add - pure turpentine won't dull the pigment, but white spirit or any other general purpose thinner will.

ahhh

So what colour are your couch and pillows? Is it going to be *soothing* or *broody*? And will you show us when it's finished?

21:20 / 13.03.03

That's *broody*

01:09 / 14.03.03

Oh, gah... this is the materials fetishism extended remix, I went out to The Art Store and bought this book called Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Art Materials. It explains fat over thin, too; so now I know what you're talking about. I saw some English distilled turpentine there. Is that pure turpentine? It was Winsor & Newton brand. Although it says here, "Turpentine is the most harmful of all thinners and solvents." How harmful are we talking? What about Turpenoid? It says here that it dries more slowly, I probably don't want that...

That grey color in "soothing" is just about the color of my couch, perhaps a little less white. I am thinking about using that as the background/border color. Although I think I like that sort of background effect better than a very frame-like border...no, I like them both. Anyway, I saw a four-pack of small primed canvases for only $16. That's not bad, only $4 per canvas. The paints are so expensive, though. How far do you think one of those tiny tubes will go, considering I'm going to stretch them very very thin?

15:58 / 17.03.03

Where it says that turpentine is harmful it may be referring to its potential harm to you through contact, inhalation or ingestion as much as its effect on materials, although as noted above it will rot raw canvas. Don't know anything abut turpenoid, but as you say, slow-drying is not what you need.

I find that better quality paints do go pretty far because they have a higher pigment intensity, and I do often work with thin layers, although not as extensively as you'll be with this one. That sounds like a good price for those canvases though.

21:22 / 17.03.03

WRT the Bright Earth material on Rothko - the reason his paintings at Harvard have faded is not that his technique encourages fading, but that the pigments he used weren't stable (especially his reds, which have faded to a nice light blue). So you should be OK with decent light-fast pigments, though of course light and paintings don't really mix as a general rule of thumb anyway...

Winsor and Newton are generally quite reliable (but don't trust their calligraphic inks as far as you can throw them - you'd be much better off using watercolour or gouache - this is the voice of bitter experience: they are NOT lightfast in the SLIGHTEST).