Color--the thick and thin of it


"Colour is my day-long obsession, joy, and torment" Claude Monet

Transparency & Opacity, and why to think about it

 Recently, I have been thinking more about the properties of my oil paints, and choosing for relative transparency to opacity to achieve different effects on a painting. Transparent colors are going to give more luminosity generally, and opaques will give weight or mass to the painting.

  Any paint will be more transparent if you thin it with mineral spirits, but there won't be luminosity unless you use a paint that is transparent or semi-transparent to begin with. If you choose to use glaze layers over more opaque layers, you have to use transparent colors in the glaze to get a good, luminous effect.

  I like the look of thickly applied opaque layers for some areas of a painting, when I want to convey mass as in these shoreline rocks, which were done with a palette knife.



  In an abstract painting, using both thin luminous areas to play against opaque passages seems to me like an opportunity for many paintings just on that idea alone! I wonder if that alone could enliven a space and make some push and pull in a painting.

  Don't overlook the properties of your white. Zinc white is very transparent, while Titanium is more opaque. You can mix those two whites for further effects. Flake white is both opaque and very thick and a good option for surface textural effects.

  So I am in a place of thinking about these paint effects and how I might find and use them in my work, I am sure there are very many other ways to think about transparency and opacity and I hope you find your way around these ideas and many more.
"Apple and Peel", with transparent color
Transparent colors in my rotation now:
Zinc white
Hansa yellow
Lemon yellow
Alizarin crimson
Quinacridone red
Quinacridone magenta
Dioxonine Purple
Sap green
Pthalo green, and/or Blue
Transparent earth red
Transparent orange


Opaque colors in my rotation now:
Titanium white
Yellow ochre
Mars red, and other mars colors
Cobalt bluep
Cerulean blue
Cad red deep
Italian earth colors: red, orange,sienna, green

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