Blog

Beginnings.

Purchasing the Trade Emulsion paint was my first challenge.  When you are at the paint department of a box store you have a difficult decision to make.  There are literally thousands of potential colors to select from.  my first colors would be the primaries and white.   I searched very carefully for colors that matched those I have been using for over forty years, Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow, and white.  As everyone knows; you can potentially create every color with these colors, or so I believed. 

A New Learning Experience

It turns out that everything I knew about Oils, Acrylic and watercolor would be totally challenged by Trade Emulsion.  In the usual basic color wheel, Yellow is your lightest value, Red is closer to a medium value, and Blue is your dark.  However when I got the colors home and started to use them I discovered that these thoughts were not true.  Trade Emulsion or house paint is all made from a white base.  My darkest color was created using white.  There was no way I was going to get a nice dark with colors saturated by white.  The colors mixed well and were very fluid but still they were not the typical darks you could get from oils.

At the Easel

My first work pictured here, was wonderfully freeing.  The paint I purchased was in 8 oz bottles.  This abundance allowed me some freedom when applying with the brush.  It could be thinned with water.  Like acrylic it dried fast maybe too fast, it tended to dry quicker, and the colors darkened slightly when dried.  The techniques were different.  Brush marks were clumsy and tended to fade after  application.  It required much layering and glazing one color over another.  The whole process required much more forethought than usual.  Overall I was pleased with the immediate results.  Drawing with the brush was a bit of a challenge compared to oils.  As a project the experience helped me slow down and be more detail oriented.  The Trade Emulsion paint is latex based and people with a latex allergy should not use it.

Next week:  Part #3  Painting a Seascape in Trade Emulsion.