TRICKS AND TECHNIQUE WITH OOPS (OIL ON PAPER SCHOOL)

Abstract

What if opaque colours can be used to create a play of transparency and translucency in thepainting? Since the 14th century, artists have been playing around with various color pigments,binders and solvents to achieve transparency in opaque mineral pigments. These pigments whenpowdered and pulverized with drying oils such as linseed oil, provides an amazing platform forthe artists to work on canvas or pre-treated paper, with an advantage of mixing of colours on thedrawing surface and glaze after drying. The paper, briefly introduces artworks of artists made onnon-treated and pre-treated paper using oil colours with respect to oil-paper compatibility andpreservation of art work.On the similar ground, an opaque blend of oil colours mixed with enamel or polyurethane withother solvents such as turpentine, kerosene and linseed oil, has been explored on art card paper tocreate some beautiful art works. Thus, demonstrating opacity, transparency and translucencywithin a single layer of applied paint which has been further explained by application of thin painton black and white surfaces. In order to bring out such a play of light, various innovativetechniques such as, scraping of color by a cloth, a palette knife or a wedge; creation of cells orbubbles and the sponge and rubber roller were used to get the desired effects. The unique effects,achieved through these techniques, have been displayed in various art works by the author,throughout the paper.These techniques when clubbed together with the unconventional enamel mixed oil paints has beennamed by the author as OOPS (Oil on Paper School). OOPS results in the creation of someextraordinary pieces of art. They bring about the procedure of water colours for gettingtransparency and opaqueness and at the same time, they impart the property of oil colours (highhue of the pigments and an attractive glossy finish) onto the paper.The paper concludes with a description and the author’s perspective of one of his painting fromthe series ‘Kargil White Again’-1999 (figure 1) with respect to the contextual and formal analysis.This painting is one of his finest pieces of work, where he explored the applications and future ofOOPS in creation of some non-conventional art work.