The Painter in oil

I have seen pictures go to pieces within a month of their painting - bad paint and bad
combinations. Of course you can use good colors so that the picture will not stand. But
that will be your own fault, and it is no excuse for the use of colors which you can by no
possibility do good work with.
Good paints. - The three things on which the quality of good paint depends are good
pigment, good vehicles, and good preparation.
The pigments used are of mineral, chemical, and vegetable origin. The term pigment
technically means the powdered substance which, when mixed with a vehicle, as oil,
becomes paint. The most important pigments now used are artificial products, chiefly
chemical compounds, including chemical preparations of natural mineral earths.
As a rule, the colors made from earths may be classed as all permanent; those from
chemicals, permanent or not, as the case may be; and those of vegetable origin fugitive,
with few exceptions. Some colors are good when used as water colors, and bad when
used in oil. Further on I will speak of the fugitiveness and permanency of colors in detail.
I wish here to emphasize the fact that the origin of the material of which the pigment is
made has much to do with the sort of work that that pigment will do, and with the
permanency of the effect which is produced; and therefore that while a paint may look
like another, its working or its lasting qualities may be quite different.
The Vehicles. - The vehicles by which the pigment is made fluent and plastic are
quite as important in their effects. They not only have to do with the business of drying,
owing to the substances used as dryers, but they may have to do with the chemical action
of one pigment on another.
The Preparation. - Finally, the preparation of the pigment demands the utmost skill
and knowledge, if the colors are to be good. The paints used by the old masters are few
and simple, and the fact that they prepared them themselves had much to do with the
manner in which they kept their color. The paints used now are less simple. We do not
prepare and grind them ourselves, and we could hardly do so if we wished to, so we are
the more dependent on the integrity of the colorman who does it for us.
The preparation of the pigment begins with the chemical or physical preparation of
each pigment, and then comes the mixing of several to produce any particular color; and
finally the mechanical process of grinding with the proper vehicle to bring it to the
proper fineness and smoothness.
Grinding. - The color which the artist uses must be most evenly and perfectly
ground. The grinding which will do for ordinary house paints will not do for the artist’s
colors. Neither will the chemical processes suitable for the one serve for the other. Not
only must the machinery, but the experience, skill and care, be much greater for artist’s
colors. Therefore it is that the specialization of color-making is most important to do
good colors for the use of the artist.
Reliable makers. - If you would work to the best advantage as far as your colors are
concerned, both as to getting the best effects which pure pigments skillfully and honestly
prepared will give you, and as to the permanency of those effects when you have gotten
them, see to it that you get paint made by a thoroughly reliable colorman.