When I first read about impasto, I probably didn’t expect that a single technique could enlarge the beholder’s experience of witnessing one’s art with such variation. Previously, I had several questions before reading about impasto too, like how to ginger up the emotions and texture in the painting. Even now, I have several questions about the technique itself, for instance, can you really add illusionism or atmospheric perspective through it, or can you do light and shadows with them efficiently? Besides these questions, it is significant to understand how other artists used them to paint efficiently. You all have seen The Sunflowers by Van Gogh, where he literally put those buttery strokes to depict his own emotions. Monet used a similar technique in his Haystack and Cathedral series by overpainting layers of colors in an irregular thickness as if there was a motion on the surface. Rembrandt and Bonnard used a thick impasto in a very different feature. Hence, impasto is different for each artist, foretelling an individual character of their own paintings. In this article, I am telling you about the basics of the impasto technique, which will give you an in-depth idea. My only intention here is to encourage you to paint in such a way that you handle the colors to individualize your artwork, making each of your paintings more dynamic.
What is Impasto Technique?
Impasto is one of the old Italian techniques of art that can transform your oil paintings through the addition of exciting texture and lively color vibrations. Through this, you can give your subject an individual personality by creating a luminous effect, conveying mood or atmosphere, and closer details, directing the viewer’s eye to something mesmerizing.
Before we move on to learning how to make an artwork through this style, let me first give you the essential list needed for painting in impasto.
Material List of Impasto Technique.
Starting from the studio setup, you first need a portable French easel, so that you can paint where you love to. Then, you can always arrange your equipment and things on the table neatly. Talking about studio lighting, which is a really significant part, you can always choose to move your setup to the western direction to use a warmer light.
1. Colors.
Speaking of the colors, you can have as many paints as you like of different brands. However, I am adding a list of colors that are a must. Also, please note that this list of essential colors is taken from the book of David Lyle Millard (linked in the further section).
- Cadmium Yellow Light or Cadmium Yellow Pale.
- Yellow Ochre (Winsor and Newton or Utrecht).
- Cadmium Yellow Medium or Cadmium Yellow Deep or Cadmium Yellow-Orange.
- Cadmium Orange (you can also mix red and yellow to get this color).
- Quinacridone Red (Liquitex acra red or Winsor and Newton Permanent rose).
- Cobalt Violet (LeFranc and Bourgeois or Winsor and Newton’s).
- Permanent Green Light (Two or Three greens at a time, or you can make your own by mixing yellow and blue).
- Rembrandt Phthalo Green.
- Winsor and Newton Cobalt Green.
- Viridian or Phthalo Green (Phtalo is dark; you can always use sevres green).
- Turquoise Blue (Liquitex Brand).
- Cerulean Blue.
- Cobalt Blue (Ulrecht Cobalt Deep).
- Ultramarine Blue or Phthalo Blue.
- Permanent Blue (Winsor and Newton).
- Raw Umber.
- Venetian Red (bellini and Liquitex).
- Rouge de Puzolles (LeFranc and Bourgeois).
- Burnt Sienna (Winsor and Newton or Blockx).
- Burnt Umber or Ivory Black.
- White (Titanium/zinc combinations or Winsor and Newton foundation white).
Now, you can always upgrade the colors according to your painting palette. In case you buy more paint, to check for a good quality one, you can use the Lamotte technique. It simply means you unscrew the cap and spread a little bit of color on your thumb through the nail to check the luminosity of the color. If it’s too opaque, oily, or weak-looking, don’t buy it. Now, this technique is also from the same book I mentioned above. Quite Helpful it is!
2. Brushes.
For brushes, you need to have at least four- one for warm light colors, another for warm dark colors, one for cool colors, and one for cool darks. Depending upon the size of the painting, you can buy larger or smaller brushes. To start, you can have bristle brushes (Grumbacher Mussini flats) and Rounds. The flat bristle brushes are for carrying more and applying more paint at one go due to their larger and longer strokes. One of the good flats is the Grumbacher Gainsborough series and 3011 red sables. Next, you can use round bristle brushes to scumble or roll on the paint or add colors to the dry areas. Among them, you can choose Grumbacher, Delta’s El Greco series, or Artsign’s Imperial series. Another one to have for your studio is Wharton, which is for tentative or poetic strokes to add an interesting atmospheric effect to your painting. You can use the ArtSign series in number 8. Monet might have used the same brush for his large water lily painting.
See, these things, which I am recommending, are industry standard ones, and they can vary as per usage of the artist. Also, these are not promotional but may contain affiliate links and it is rare to find most of them online so prefer visiting an offline store. To buy a perfect bristle brush, there is a technique called the Krakusin technique. It only works for Bristle brushes. Using your non-painting hand, make a fist by squeezing your thumb over the forefinger to create a bulbous muscle shape. Brush the bristles over this muscle as though you were painting the canvas. Don’t buy a brush if it feels scratchy or rude.
3. Palette Knives.
Palette knives can have many types as artists tend to collect them over the years, depending on their art style or developing impasto. There are many kinds of knives and only you know what you want for your next artistry. However, I am giving a list of essential palette knives, which are significant for any level of painter.
- Main Knife- Teardrop Shape (Blade dimensions- 3/4” x 2 1/8”).
- Small Teardrop Shape ( 1-inch Blade).
- Small diamond shape (1-inch blade).
- Skinny Tip.
- Round Tip.
You can choose different brands but RGM Italy is a good one when it comes to handling and usability. Also, if you are buying from another brand, make sure they are light-weighted metal palette knives as plastic ones break easily.
4. Mediums and Formulas.
Usually, there are many excellent prepared mediums, which are directly available in the market like Liquitex Rapid-Set oil medium and Winsor and Newton Liquin as both of them speed dry fast. However, if you wish to make your own medium, you can refer to the book, Formulas for Painters by Robert Massey, which contains around 200 formulas for mediums, grounds, or gesso. In the book by David Millard, he gave around six mediums. One of them is Turpentine Mixture 1- The medium is a ten-to-one ratio of turpentine to linseed oil, which is poured and stirred. This is especially used for painting, which has a dry matte finish with a heavier impasto accent. You can refer to his book for more mediums and tricks.
Besides, these essentials, you will also need:
• Cloth or paper towels for wiping off knives.
• Jar of water for cleaning brushes or tools.
• Table, easel, or any sturdy surface to work on.
• Masking tape for horizon lines.
• Quality Canvas – 6” x 6” or 10” x 10” canvases.
• Pencil or chalk for sketches.
• Rubbing alcohol to remove paint.
The Preparations of Impasto.
After these essentials, it is time to learn how to create artwork with impasto. I am giving you a few steps and then will give you an example of how to do it.
1. Priming the Support.
The first thing to do before you do actual painting is prepare the prime coat and ground for the impasto texturing. It simply means you have to first create a panel or prepare the canvas to start using impasto over it. One of the painting surfaces, or support for this usage is the wood panel. They have been used for centuries but you need good carpentry skills or a carpenter to prepare them. You can use solid mahogany panels for this purpose. All you need to do is cut it in the right size and sand the edges to eliminate any sawdust. Cut them into perfect squares and allow a 1/16 inch gap on all sides for your sealing coats and primer. You can choose to have masonite, canvas, or even paper but you have to seal the paper with sellac and prime it with flake white paint. Now, one of the sealing mixtures for applying on paper is one half-cup of white shellac with 2 and a half cups of denatured alcohol. You have to just brush it around five coats with this mixture.
The second step here is to give the texture to your surface. In the case of wood panels, you can use fine sandpaper to create a subtle and delicate texture. Then, in the case of wood, seal it on all sides and edges with white shellac so that there are no green staining chemicals on the treated wood. Apply the shellac three to four times, flowing dry for about 2 days before applying next. After this step, you have to prime it with the acrylic gesso. You can use Liquitex gesso for a good matt finish.
Now, you are ready to form a painting with the impasto technique. Please note that I have told you priming on wood, rather than masonite or canvas. For them, you can refer to David’s book, which is very useful.
2. Starting With the Grounds.
In this step, we will learn a few varieties of surfaces, which is possible to create. Firstly, we are not working on any painting already, as we will first see the details of the preparation. In the above step, I told you about priming the support. That means earlier I narrated the steps to prime your support, but I am elaborating on the previous step to make perfect textured grounds here. There can be many ways to vary your grounds, but I am telling you two elementary ones to start with.
One of them is a plain textured ground. When you have roughened the masonite surface with the medium textured sandpaper, take a Grumbacher flake white and apply it with a roller. When it has dried up for two weeks, sand it again with fine sandpaper. Then, apply Grumbacher flake white by roller and allow the panel to cure for a month. There is also cross-grained untoned ground in which two coats of Grumbacher flake white should be applied after fine-sanding the Masonite surface. A vertical coat should be applied first, then a horizontal coat, and it must be cured for two weeks between coats and then dried for one month. Further, rub with a soft piece of terrycloth towel and allow it to dry for one week before painting.
Now that you have done your preparations, let us move into building up the textures through impasto following the perfect example, Van Gogh’s Inspired Irises.
Creating an Impasto Artwork: Van Gogh Irises (Inspired).
Firstly you will need a stretched canvas, a palette knife (medium size, teardrop shape with rounded tip), a palette knife (small size, teardrop shape with rounded tip), palette knife (angled top), paper towel, palette paper, palette knife (fancy tip with medium-length thin blade) and paint. For the color palette, you need to have Titanium white, cadmium yellow, cadmium red, Alizarin Crimson, Viridian green, Payne’s gray, and Ultramarine Blue.
45 Minutes 45 minutes
How to Paint Like Van Gogh?
- Preparing the colors
First lay out your colors and mix them to form a basic background color. Take a large bob of white paint, 1 teaspoon of cadmium yellow, cadmium red, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, Payne’s gray, and Viridian green. Now, drag down 1 tsp of white and 1/2 of crimson and mix them with a palette knife to form a light pink. We also need some light and some streaks of the same color, so you can add a tiny of cadmium yellow and cadmium red to do so. Do it for the 3/4th of the canvas.
- Readying the background.
Lay in your background now. Load your palette knife with one tsp of pink and start sweeping right across the canvas. Continue this movement by filling the canvas from side to side with the same gestural sweeps. Take the bit darker pink shade we made by mixing a little bit of cadmium red to sweep in the middle of the canvas.
- Dragging the colors.
Now, lay in your green ground background on the remaining area of the canvas. Drag down 1 tbs of your white with 1 tsp of the viridian green to make a light minty green color. Load this color on your palette and then sweep around the canvas from right to left, positioning it as if the tip of the knife drags through the bottom of the pink layer in a straight line.
- Sketching the subject.
Sketch an outline on the textured pattern, making a vase with a detailing palette knife. Drag down around 1 tsp of Payne’s gray and mix it to sketch a dark outline over the top of the pink and green background. Now add white to this vase. Load your knife with a white and place a sweep moving downward toward the center of the vase as if you are filling the interior vase shape.
- Last touches.
Finish it up with green stems and flowers. Now, with a similar technique, you can wipe up the palette knives and paint.
For more such projects in detailed sections, you can refer to the Palette Knife Painting: Deep Impasto by Lisa Elley if you are an absolute beginner. And for the ones who wish to learn more about proven Impasto textures and grounding methods, you can refer to Impasto by David Millard.
Final Words.
Impasto is a fine technique, which provides a nice way to broaden the scope of the artist as a painter and expand their creative potential. I tried putting the article most simply so that any level of painter could understand the article. I hope you find this information relevant.
Resources.
- Palette Knife Painting: Deep Impasto by Lisa Elley.
- Impasto by David Millard.
- Featured Image: The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, Vincent van Gogh, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Frequently Asked Questions.
Impasto is an art technique of using noticeable brush strokes and color vibrations, influencing the mood of the painting. It is one of the popular techniques used by artists like Vincent van Gogh, Édouard Manet, and Claude Monet.
Impasto is essentially the style of painting and a technique that uses vivid brushstrokes to depict the subject in a more rough yet beautiful manner. This style uses specialized colors and preparation and creates an illusion for the viewer to travel as per the focal point and view the subject, only with more attention.
Impasto uses oil paint, easily available in the market and online. The trick is to use memorable and selective pigments to create an impact on the viewer.
There are many art techniques that use balance, a proper use of line, and many elements of art to depict a moving subject, however, Impasto uses real texture, possible by its palette knives and sometimes fingers.
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