HOMEMADE MATERIALS
The artist's home manufacture of painting materials has been criticized and
defended on various grounds by twentieth-century commentators. Modern
painters who make or refine their own materials do so because the particular
quality or variety they desire cannot be purchased, because their process
demands certain operations that must be performed immediately before use,
for reasons of economy, or because they enjoy it as an enlightening avocation.
Well-directed experience in this activity is obviously one of the most valuable
means of acquiring knowledge that leads to control of materials. But note
exceptions under synthetic resins.
A chronological study of the old manuscript treatises that were written
for painters, rather than for those primarily concerned with producing
materials in commercial quantities, shows that one by one, with the advance of
time, recipes for pigments and mediums are, omitted or accompanied by
remarks to the effect that their preparation is not worth the trouble and risk
of failure, since they can be purchased ready-made.
The development of our modern industrial system based on an economy
of mass production makes it quite understandable why it is impossible for the
producer of a raw material that is sold daily in freight-car lots to turn out
with scrupulous care the insignificantly few barrels of his product that the
artists of the world consume annually. One of the contributory causes of the
decline of standards for materials at the same time that advances in technology
and knowledge made it possible to improve quality was the development of
the paint and color industry from one which produced materials largely used
for decorative purposes to one whose products are primarily used for large-
scale industrial or protective purposes. Pigments, oils, and other products.
highly satisfactory for industrial purposes but of a quality inferior to that
demanded for artists' use, are made in enormous quantities.
The superlative grades are produced on a much smaller scale and are not so widely available.
Painters, sculptors, or graphic artists who are well acquainted with the
properties of their materials are often able to improvise quite acceptable
materials when for various reasons their normal supplies are unobtainable or
when they are confronted by the numerous minor emergencies that arise in
the progress of their work. However, writers or instructors who are intent
upon conveying the most correct and approved ways of achieving good results
are not ordinarily concerned with possible remoteness from sources of sunnl
and similar considerations.
Hiler mentions some interesting emergency
methods for the preparation of materials when the proper ingredients and
ready-made supplies are not to be had; other books, including this one, also
note such procedures occasionally. It must be understood that no one
recommends these expedients as regular procedure, and that artists should have
sufficient experience to judge for themselves whether makeshift materials are
suitable for their permanent work or whether their use should be confined
to notes and sketches, or when the situation is such that the only choice is
to use available inferior supplies or not to paint at all. The shortcomings of
common oils, decorators' pigments, homemade curd paints, etc., are all well
known to the careful student of materials.
Inferior paints and supplies have always existed, and past generations of
painters have always had to learn how to choose between the permanent and
the impermanent, the good and the bad.
Perhaps the greatest reward to the artists or students who have gone
through the training and education of making their own paints is the insight
into their control and behavior, which is invaluable in the practice of painting
and the discriminating selection of supplies.