Paint Basics

Knowing Paint Better

Watercolour Paint - Daniel Smith, QoR

I have wondered for a long time about the true nature of artists paints.  I have been searching for answers to some questions about how paint functions and how watercolour, oil and acrylic paint compare.  Here is what I found out.

What makes paint dry?  What are artists paints like on a microscopic level? 

Watercolour

Watercolour paint is a solution of gum arabic (the binder) and water and microscopic-sized pigment particles.  Gum arabic is an exudate from a gum tree.  More precisely it is the sap of two species of acacia trees.  Microscopically it is a long chain that is soluble in water.  The pigment particles are in suspension in the liquid.

When watercolour paint dries the water evaporates leaving the gum arabic to become a solid which holds the pigment particles in place. You can lift dried watercolour paint because the gum arabic will redissolve in water. 

Watercolour Paint in Palette

Acrylic Paint 

Acrylic paint is a suspension of spherical polymer particles (about 1 micrometer in size) in water.  The pigment particles are also suspended in the water.  When acrylic paint dries the water evaporates, the polymer particles coalesce to form solid sheets which trap the pigment particles.  You cannot lift this paint because the polymer is now a water-insoluble solid.

Gesso is made up of water, acrylic polymer and gypsum (calcium sulfate) particles. 

Oil Paint

Oil paint is a mixture of an organic solvent like turpentine or mineral spirits and drying oil (linseed oil, tung oil) and pigment particles.  The oil is soluble in the solvent so they do not separate.  The pigment particles are so small they remain in suspension.  When oil paint dries the solvent evaporates leaving the oil and pigment on the surface.  When on the surface the oil oxidizes and becomes a solid which is no longer soluble in either solvent or water.  

Why can you put oil paint on top of acrylic paint but not the reverse?  Oil paint can be put on top of acrylic paint (or gesso) because the dried acrylic paint is essentially a plastic sheet and the oil  will bond to it.  However, you cannot put acrylic paint on top of oil paint because the dried oil paint is hydrophobic and it repels the water in the acrylic paint thus causing it to flake off.  

How do each of these paints stick to a paper/canvas substrate?  They use a process called wetting in which they form a strong physical bond with the surface.  

Why do we need gesso on a canvas before painting it?  It helps to keep the paint from absorbing into the substrate and it also smooths out the surface. 

What does water do when added to watercolour paint (oil to oil paint or water to acrylic paint)? It reduces the viscosity, which means it dilutes the paint.  If too much is added to acrylic paint, it will not harden.  When considerable dilution is desired you should use acrylic medium which contains acrylic polymer particles and so it acts the same as the paint. 

Paints usually have a fourth component termed an ‘additive’ which is used to make the paint flow well, maintain its quality in the tube, keep it homogeneous, etc.

Water Miscible Oils

Water Miscible Oil Paint is a modern invention that may be going to revolutionize the oil painting industry.  Time will tell how well it is accepted.  Right now it is just in the trial stage by most artists.  How is it different?  It can be thinned by just adding water and brushes can be cleaned in water only.  No solvent is needed.  How is it formulated so this can happen?  

The oils in oil paint are made of long-chain fatty acids.  Most of these fatty acids are hydrophobic (water repelling) so the paint is incompatible with water.  However, in normal oil paint there are normally some hydrophilic fatty acids (water loving).  If this portion of hydrophilic fatty acids is increased, the paint becomes water soluble.  Water can then become the 'solvent' for the oil paint!  Just like magic, the paint can then be thinned with water and clean-up done with water.  Organic solvents (turpentine, mineral spirits) are no longer needed.  

How does water miscible paint dry?  The water evaporates leaving the oil and pigment on the substrate.  The oil then oxidizes and hardens, trapping the pigment. 

Pigment particles 

Pigment particles are made from natural and artificial compounds which are pulverized into ultra-small particles (0.1 to 100 microns).  Some pigments are derived from naturally occurring compounds like iron oxides (ochre, umber, sienna), carbon black, lapis lazuli.  Others are from manmade pigments which are usually based on metal compounds like cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, lead, titanium and zinc.  When a tube of paint is labelled ‘hue’ it means that the colour will be almost identical to the genuine paint for which it is named.  However, the pigment is not the same as in the original. It is often a cheaper or a blended form. 

Golden has recently marketed an innovative watercolour paint called QoR, an acronym for ‘Quality of Results’.  They are advertising it as possessing some nice features like:  incredibly smooth transitions, good flowing while maintaining liveliness on the paper, excellent resolubility in water, excellent glazing qualities, vivid depth of colour in one stroke, greater resistance to cracking and flaking, more density of colour than traditional watercolours, and easy clean-up.  Besides these stated advantages they have marketed new  grounds and mediums to go with the paint.  These apparently increase gloss, improve flow or wetting properties, and allow you to achieve different textured surfaces.  It is exciting to be part of modern advances in paints and materials.

QoR paint has a newly formulated binder called Aquazol.  It appears that the company is keeping a tight lip on its formulation.  I have not been able to determine its chemistry but expect it is an acrylic or an acrylic/gum arabic mixture.  I have used QoR paints only minimally so far and find them bright and easy to use.  The only negative is that I have found the Aquazol has separated somewhat from the pigment in one or two of my tubes.  Time will tell how successful they are.  They are probably the forerunner in a lot of new products in the watercolour industry.

There is some discussion about QoR paints not ‘lifting’ as well as traditional watercolours.  I have done a short, uncontrolled test on my own and find that to be true.  See the photo below which shows lifting in traditional paint compared to QoR paint. The two on the left show lifting from traditional paint and the one on the right shows lifting from QoR paint.   I used the same amount of water, the same bristle brush and the same number of strokes on each followed by dabbing with dry paper towel.  It appears the traditional paints lift better than the QoR paints.  However, this is too simple a test to draw any conclusions.  One would need to do many more samples and under more controlled conditions.  I like the QoR paints and will continue to use them and time will tell how they work out.  

Lifting Watercolour Paint; Traditional Paint Left and Centre, QoR Right

Vagrant and Out-of-Season Birds

Unexpected Birds

Every fall we are privileged to have vagrant birds arrive here.  A vagrant is a bird that is beyond its normal range.  In other words, its presence here is accidental.  The Franklin's Gull shown below is one such species.  It appeared in a ploughed field in Ste-Marie-de-Kent last week and has remained for several days, associating with a large group of Ring-billed Gulls.

Franklin's Gull [Brian Stone Photo]

 The Franklin's Gull inhabits mainly the mid-continent of North America where it breeds.  It winters in fresh water marshes off the Pacific coast of South America.  It lives inland in North America because it likes ploughed fields and prairie land.  This trait earned it its common name,  'prairie dove'.

It is a medium-sized gull being 36-38 cm long (14"-15").  It is a black-hooded gull and has prominent white eye crescents and a slaty-gray back.  In winter the black hood is washed out with white and the bill changes from its prominent orange of the breeding plumage to black with an orange tip.

Franklin's Gull [L Nichols Photo]

The bird which arrived here is a 1st winter bird.  Note the dark gray-brown on its back.  Older gulls would be all gray on the back.

Ring-billed Gull and Franklin's Gull

Shown above is a Franklin's Gull with a Ring-billed Gull showing the difference in size.  This Franklin's Gull was seen at Scotch Lake several years ago in the fall.  Note it, too, is a 1st winter bird.

Overbird [Nelson Poirier Photo]

The bird shown above is an Ovenbird which has been coming to a feeder in Moncton.  This species is a common warbler species seen here in summer.  It is unusual because it is still here, appearing healthy and coming to a feeder.  It normally feeds on the ground usually in the forest.  It is not a feeder bird at all.  It is called an 'oven' bird because of the domed-shaped nest it builds on the ground with a side entrance.

The season for rare fall vagrants and out-of-season birds is still upon us.  Keep a close eye for anything unusual.

Animal Friends' Year-End Campaign

Dear Friend,

If you know Animal Friends, you know that spaying/neutering pets is at the heart of our organization. For more than 20 years, we’ve been compassionately and proactively fighting pet overpopulation. For far too long, too many pets have been unnecessarily euthanized in our region. At Animal Friends, we still firmly believe that euthanizing pets is never the solution to pet overpopulation.

To truly stem the tide of pet overpopulation, spay/neuter services need to be accessible and affordable to everyone – no matter their level of income. But that’s only part of combatting this crisis in our region. We need to ensure these services are accessible to the communities that need them most.

Our Low-Cost Spay/Neuter Program is making incredible strides in many of Pittsburgh’s underserved communities. Our staff has been hitting the ground, knocking on doors and getting to know the residents of these neighborhoods to better understand what they need and how we can help.

I’d like to share a story with you that was passed along by our Director of Clinic Services, Carol …

“Earlier this fall, we were visiting a neighborhood east of the city. We got wind that this neighborhood needed help caring for the area feral cats. They were reproducing at an alarming rate and some were even being hit on the road by cars. They didn’t know what to do, so they turned to Animal Friends.

When we visited the neighborhood we immediately saw what they meant – nearly two dozen filthy, starved cats and kittens roamed the street. It was overwhelming. And, it seemed that all of these felines were visiting one specific house – Miss Sylvia’s.

Miss Sylvia is an elderly widow, perhaps in her 80s. She lives alone and suffers from Alzheimer’s. She is a mother to children that have grown and moved away. And more recently, Miss Sylvia became a caregiver to more than two dozen cats.

To Miss Sylvia, these cats are so much more than just animals that need food and shelter.Several times a day, neighbors spot her padding onto her porch in her slippers to feed them.

There on her porch is where Miss Sylvia spends her waking hours. Through snowfalls and thunderstorms, she’s there cooing and talking with her animal friends. It’s clear these cats are the reason for her to get up in the morning.

And if that isn’t sweet enough, Miss Sylvia also selflessly shares the food from her own plate.Some days the cats get spaghetti and meatballs, other times, chicken. But never cat food,she couldn’t afford it.

We ventured to Miss Sylvia’s house. With pink plastic curlers in her hair, she answered the door. We tried to find out how much food she needed to care for the cats but she politely refused and humbly wouldn’t admit to feeding the cats. So we did what we could and left some cat food with her.

Not only did we need to get the colony’s population under control, we needed to help Miss Sylvia. So we started by successfully trapping the 20 cats from her yard who were then spayed/neutered and vaccinated at Animal Friends. After they recovered, they were returned to their home. To Miss Sylvia.

But it won’t stop there. She still needs our help. Miss Sylvia needs the proper tools and resources to better care for her beloved cats. So we’ll keep trying, and eventually, we’ll get her everything she needs.”

The Animal Friends’ staff left with a full vehicle – and even fuller hearts. It’s from hearing stories like these that make me so proud and so thankful for them. At Animal Friends, it’s this compassion that truly sets us apart.

Animal Friends commits nearly $1 million of our annual budget to keep spay/neuter affordable and accessible to low-income families – like Miss Sylvia. But we can’t fight the pet overpopulation crisis alone. To be a true resource to pet owners and communities, we need your help.

There is no better time than now to invest in spay/neuter. To keep our clinics running through the end of the year, we need to raise $250,000. Together, with you, we can make a difference in the lives of pets and people in our region. Together, we can end pet overpopulation.

Kind supporters, like you, are our reasons to be thankful this holiday season. 

Please respond with a donation today.

In appreciation,

David J. Swisher

President & Chief Executive Officer

AnimalFriends Resource Center

562 Camp Horne Road | Pittsburgh, PA 15237

412.847.7000 | ThinkingOutsideTheCage.org

Captain Paul Watson's Moral Compass Loses Its Way

Paul Watson standing in front of the renamed Sea Shepherd Vessel the Steve Irwin. It is ironic that Steve Irwin was not only a conservationist but a zoo owner and his daughter, Bindi Irwin, is now an ambassador for SeaWorld.

"Actually oceanariums are in many ways are victims of their own success. They educated the public so well about dolphins, whales, and other marine life that a public that didn't care a fig about these animals [...] Unfortunately this compassion for whales and dolphins is not harnessed as a force against the killing industry, but is instead turned against the teacher. Paul Watson, 1995"

Many might be aware of the activities of the conservation organisation Sea Shepherd and its controversial founder Paul Watson. In recent years, Sea Shepherd seems to have lost its way and has drifted into the realms of animal-rights. Rather than just opposing the killing of whales and dolphins in whaling and drive fisheries, in such countries as Japan and the Faroe Isles, they have moved their sites to attacking the maintenance of whales and dolphins in captivity.

In a recent commentary on their website Paul Watson decries the death of a killer whale at the Marineland in Antibes, France. The whale called Valentin died some time after a serious flooding incident that seriously affected not only the marine park but also the surrounding area and involved the death of at least 19 people.

Watson berates the death and  - without any supporting evidence - makes the statement that it was the flooding that killed this animal due to the ingress of contaminated water into the killer whale exhibit. In actual fact, the post-mortem revealed that the animal died of a twisted gut (torsion) which veterinarians believe is unrelated to the flooding incident. The other whales in the same exhibit remain at the time of writing healthy and well.  He also blames Marineland for being built on a floodplain. Although, during its 45 years of existence this is the worst flooding experienced by this facility. Moreover, as stated, this didn't just affect the park but the large area surrounding it.

Watson finishes his polemic in a predictable way with the now familiar rhetoric and unrealistic aspiration that:

"Marineland must be shut down and the animals rehabilitated and released to the wild [...] These tanks must be emptied and these facilities shut down. Marineland, SeaWorld and other cetacean prisons around the world are a disgrace to humanity and an ongoing ordeal of suffering for hundreds of animals denied their rights to be free and to live a full and productive life..."

This is of course a totally unrealistic objective for many and various reasons. The first of which is that all the killer whales at Marineland (including the recently deceased Valentin) were all born in captivity and have never been in the wild – as is the case for the vast majority of the 50+ killer whales currently displayed around the world in zoological collections.

Further, as the well-known failed release of the wild caught killer whale Keiko demonstrated,  that even with wild caught animals such endeavours are highly risky and likely to not only be hugely costly but also inevitably not successful. It is interesting to note that this fact has also now been accepted by Jean-Michel Cousteau whose organisation Ocean Futures were directly involved in the Keiko experimental release. 

Interestingly, this hasn't always been Paul Watson's position regarding whales and dolphins is in captivity. In a commentary in the June edition of animal people magazine in 1995 entitled The Cult of Animal Celebrity his position was very different.

Watson makes the very good point that:

"Not all facilities holding marine animals are the enemy. And the huge sums raised to free a few individuals could be more positively directed toward ending the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of nameless whales, dolphins, and seals on the world's oceans"

He goes on to say something that many believe are truisms when it comes to the public's changed perception over the years regarding whales and dolphins.

"Actually oceanariums are in many ways are victims of their own success. They educated the public so well about dolphins, whales, and other marine life that a public that didn't care a fig about these animals before 20 years ago now cares a great deal. Unfortunately this compassion for whales and dolphins is not harnessed as a force against the killing industry, but is instead turned against the teacher."

His final statement here is indeed very ironic because Watson is now engaging in the very behaviour he rightly criticises in this cited article.

In the closing passage of this article he makes a judgement that many feel is not without truth.

"There are hundreds of dolphins held in tanks around the world. There are millions whose numbers diminished daily in the world's largest human controlled killing tank of all: the ocean. If we don't hold the wanton killing in the wild, the only place dolphins will survive will be in captive facilities." 

So why has Watson apparently changed his mind completely regarding the captive care of whales and dolphins? Certainly, the situation for these animals in the wild has not really changed substantially. Animals are still being killed as is graphically shown in documentaries.  Watson's own efforts to highlight the drive fishery killings in Japan have failed to have little impact on the continuation of these hunts.

What seems to be happening is that Watson and others have decided that there might be a more lucrative return in targeting the small numbers of animals that are currently being caught in the Japanese drive fisheries for display in aquaria as this would generate better publicity and more public donations. The fact that these operations (which run in tandem within the drive hunt) have only been going on for decades compared with the hundreds of years history of the drive hunts seems unimportant.

This fact became very clear with the release of the 2009documentary The Cove. Whilst this film was very successful one criticism of its presentation was the overemphasis of the role of the live capture of dolphins in the drive hunt against the slaughter of the majority of the animals.  This of course comes as no surprise as the main protagonist featured in this documentary was the former dolphin trainer now animal-rights activist Ric O'Barry.

Whilst, there seems to be a considerable amount of common ground between the animal-rights lobby and the zoological communityregarding the use of drive fisheries for the acquisition of animals for captive display.  It should be noted that the USA and mainland European zoological collections now exclusively use self-sustaining captive breeding for the acquisition of display animals and not wild capture.  Unfortunately, opinions about the role that the captive display of whales and dolphins can positively provide in awareness to the protection and conservation of their wild counterparts seems to have been polarised. 

Sadly and ultimately the only ones that will suffer from this consequence will be wild dolphins, whales and the marine environment.  A situation recognised by Paul Watson in 1995 but seemingly now lost .

Further reading and links

Drive Hunts and Animals Acquired for Dolphinaria.

Cove Cultists?

Blackfish: Please Release Me Let Me Go