Welcome to
The Painting Lesson
by Linda Carson
big black pig studio
98 King St. N., Waterloo Ontario Canada
www.bigblackpig.com
Impasto
Impasto means applying paint very very thickly. Although the word is Italians, the artist most closely associated with impasto is Dutch: Vincent Van Gogh. Sometimes the paint is so thick on his canvases that it actually casts shadows on the rest of the painting. There are lots of bad photographic reproductions of good Van Gogh paintings because of it.
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For example: The background of the painting is relatively flat and thinly painted. The cherries are impasto, and the paint actually stands out from the panel about a quarter inch/half a centimeter. |
Thick impasto dries very slowly, so it makes a poor underpainting layer. This is part of the only rule in painting:"Thick over thin, Fat over lean."
Back to the main lesson?Art & Text (C) Linda Carson 2002
Loosely translated, that means:
"Please don't copy this material or redistribute it
in some other form, for any reason.
This is my livelihood."