Can You Gets Effects Like This Using Oil Paint?

Question

When it comes to doing abstracts I learned long ago that acrylics give you much more freedom to experiment with than oils.

The translucent effect in this painting is achieved by diluting the bright, solid colors and mixing them with clear acrylic gel. The diluted colors then become encased in the gel as the paint is applied, giving the appearance of an aura around the solid colors.

http://pics.livejournal.com/unmired/pic/00041kd8/g16

I tried getting the same effects last year with tempera and came close. But tempera is hardly permanent.

Can any of you, my fellow artists, gets effects like this using oil paint?

Julie, your paintings are pretty cool. It's amazing some of the effects you've gotten. I hope you're able to sell some of these.

Answer 1

Tempera is also opaque, so you wouldn't get the same effect at all.

Vermeer and other Dutch painters of his time made their paintings - especially portraits - luminous using the same method with oils, using numerous (read dozens) of layers of transparent pigment greatly thinned with linseed oil. They took years to complete, however. You could add an alkyd medium to this glaze (or use alone) to speed things up.

Winsor & Newton and Grumbacher (and others) make gels for oils that would give you a similar effect as well.

The trick is to use a transparent pigment (like Alizarine, Indian yellow, Cobalt, Viridian, or modern-day Phthalo, Quinachridone, Anthriquinone, Nickel/Azo's) which disperses in the oil (or gel for acrylics) without clouding, as an opaque pigment will (Cadmiums, Titanium & Flake white, & ochre/umber/sienna earth pigments).

Keep havin' fun!

Answer 2

I don't know, what do you think?
http://www.perfectbitch.net/julie/index2.html

all of them are oil.
Used with an Alkyd/linseed oil mixture, amongst other things that I won't say.