Scumbling

I’ll try not to make this mundane.

I recently rediscovered the utility of scumbling. This is where you shove the paint pigment hard into the surface with an old crappy brush, probably a hoghair brush you borrowed from school and never gave back.

THis is a handy winter-painting strategy. Oil paint tends to not flow well in the winter months, and condenses into these tiny granular drips very quickly. Scumbling does resolve this somewhat, in tandem with a paint that has good coverage.

In my view the best coverage you’ll get is with pthalocyanine blue/green. These are notorious staining paints. Which means that a little goes a long way and they tend to dominate over other colours. Be careful with them!

Pictured is a progress shot of my bashing-a-nerd painting with some pthalocyanine blue added and some scumbling work done.

It’s helped this painting along by spreading the pigment across large parts of the surface and darkening those annoying white pinholes left from early brush-strokes.

Quinocridone Rose/Red do a similar job as I am presenting here in another painting.

The point of scumbling is to make as little pigment as possible go as far as possible. Shove and scrub it where you need it to go. For the povo artist who can’t afford alot of paint its highly recommended. The roughness and aggresivness with which you need to apply the paint is the reason for opting for an old hoghair brush that can take the paint and which you don’t mind abusing as it’s probably too out of shape for any other purpose anyway.