Wrinkle paint experiments

I'm fascinated by wrinkled paint...

If you look through my blog you'll soon find that I'm typically very deliberate in my process and typically I try to paint in a fashion that the resulting piece is "well crafted". I consider craftmanship an important part of my art-work. The means I typically try to use the best materials I can afford, and I try to not blatantly violate the rules of a good construction of your piece. Within limits, of course. For instance, if I went 100% this route, I would never paint on burlap. Actually, I wouldn't even paint on canvas, but only on panel. I do understand and accept that there are different approaches to making your artwork. Including art that is meant to not last (for instance a model of San Francisco, built out of jello comes to mind, or a sculpture made out of the artists coagulated blood that will simply fall apart if the power ever goes out). I totally see that as art too - it's just not the way I do most of my stuff.

So, why do I talk about this? I'm fascinated by wrinkled paint films. Now, a seriously wrinkled paint film is typically (always?) a signal that something went very wrong in the construction of the piece. It may be that the artist used super cheap materials. Or, in the case of oil paint, that a lower layer of paint was not dried before an additional layer was put on. Another possibility is that there was too much oil in the paint, or a bad medium was used. So there are a number of possibilities how this could happen.

The funny thing is: when I asked around how you deliberately make a wrinkled paint film, I heard all of these and other answers, all of them with "I think so" or "I believe I once heard that...", but nobody could tell me for sure how to make a wrinkled painting, because, after all, that's not what you want to achieve in your pieces, right? Also, I probably asked the wrong people because I asked mostly people who cared about well-crafted paintings and they wouldn't know. The other people who don't care sometimes end up with wrinkled pieces but probably haven't kept records of how a certain piece was created that developed wrinkles much later.

Clearly, it was time for some experiments. I knew that one sure way to create wrinkles is to put two layers on top of each other, when the lower layer is not dry. I did not want to go that route because that really makes for a non-sound painting. The other tip I got was that Joan Brown (Bay area figurative painter who often had paintings that are like an inch or more thick with really deep folds) used regular house paint and that she just laid it on really thick. Also I heard that too much oil in the paint can cause folds. From what I heard, Joan painted a) with very oily house paint, she b) probably added additional oil (stand oil?) to the paints. And c) because he paint films were super thick there was no way the lower parts of the painting could ever be fully dry before she painted over them.

The next piece of the puzzle was my recent painting class. I normally work with Gamblin Galkyd Lite medium but in this class I was introduced to painting with either just linseed oil or standoil as medium (+ turps). I had never worked that way so after the very first class I took a board and put on some paint with just linseed oil and stand oil. Mostly I wanted to see how long it would take to dry. (result: for-friggin-ever!). After almost a month that piece was still pretty wet. So I put it aside and almost forgot about it. Then, a week ago I found it again and believe it or not, it had developed some wrinkles. Mostly on the section that was done with stand oil! So it took somewhere between one and four months for these wrinkles to develop. I'm not that patient.

Obviously, it was time for more experiments and to bring in the heavy cavallery: cobalt dryer to speed things up a bit.

Next experiment.
a) oil paint with lots of linseed oil, to make it well over-oiled. That should wrinkle by itself
b) use stand oil instead but also too much
And becuase I don't want to wait a 1/4 year I added cobalt dryer to the oil. I used one of these clip on palette cups for medium. I filled it half with stand oil and added 2 drops of the dryer. For the linseed oil I used half a cup and added 3 drops.

Cobalt dryer has a relatively intense color and in this concentration it was noticeable that the paint film had a blueish tint. So that was probably way too much cobalt for this amount medium (there is another theory for wrinkles: use too much cobalt dryer ;) )

And the result: Believe it or not but after less than 24 hours the paint film had serious wrinkles. The paint was not dry, but it had developed a serious wrinkled skin, which now turned the piece into what I described above: a layer of paint on top of a not-dried painting. So I think I found the solution: too much oil on the one hand and too much cobalt dryer on the other.

The next experiments will be to reduce the amount of cobalt and figure out how much oil I really need to get this effect and still get the result without waiting for half a year or so.

For the record: The first two photos show the experiment with linseed oil + cobalt dryer. Because this paint was very runny, the wrinkles are less pronounced. But the fluidity of the paint caused some other interesting effects that need to be explored.
The last two photos show the piece done with stand oil + cobalt dryer. Those are more the kinds of wrinkles I am interested in.