Thomas Nash -- Portrait Academy Series, Norcross, GA -- What a great day!

[Thomas Nash]

You may be referring to a small canister that contained some Maroger a friend gave me. Since I was talking about different techniques, their strengths and weaknesses etc. I considered going into Maroger a bit. I have never used it in my work but do admire the beautiful results that artists like Davide Leffel get while using it. I'm aware that it is controversial (I've read all the contentious threads on SOG about it) and yet am more open minded to it than I was as a student. I did not have time to sufficiently explore it myself to demonstrate with it. I had considered using some form of it as a tool to help me telescope the painting process for the sake of the demo. to be able to get clean distinct strokes over wet paint, rather than find myself at a stopping point as so many demos do, where you are swimming in soup and not really able to express the colors you see or add subtleties . In the end, I decided to use a rough canvas and alkyd white (as I explained to the class) so that I was able to achieve the effect I was looking for during the day. As it turned out, I never mentioned the Maroger because I didn't feel I had time to sufficiently explain the differing views and give the class enough information about where they might go to look into it for themselves.

For the record, I used almost entirely straight paint and only occasionally dipped into some Grumbacher "Pale Drying Oil" which I pulled off my shelf during the week before the demo. I really had not used it before but wanted to have something on hand if I needed the paint to flow a bit more for some passage. I washed my brushes in mineral spirits and tried not to leave much residue in them when I returned to mix paint with them, but there often is a trace.